I have seen this book meme thing going around like a case of avian flu and been keeping my head down, hoping that everyone has forgotten about me – but Paulie found me out.

My mind goes blank at this sort of thing and its tempting to cop-out and just give the Porridge answer (“I read a book once… it were green”) but let’s have a try anyway.

1. One book that changed your life

Doesn’t every book change your life one way or another? Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time changed my life to the extent of making me think differently, act differently and understand some things better. It helped me to realise that even when our boy does something apparently weird and random there might be a reason behind it which is perfectly logical to him, and I hope I am now more tolerant as a result.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once

It would be easier to list those I have only read once. I tend to re-read a lot. One that I have probably read more often than any others is the Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes.

I used to collect Holmes-related books and still have at least 60 including several different versions of some of the individual books, as well as the pastiches like Solar Pons and Arsene Lupin but I used to read the big Penguin book mostly and would often take it away with me when travelling on business as I knew I could always re-read it again if I found nothing else on my travels.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island

It would be cheating to say the Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t it? If not that then it would have to be Douglas R Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. For a start its a big book so would keep me occupied and it would stand multiple readings. In fact it probably needs multiple readings to really understand it, especially when it gets to explaining Gödel’s theorem.

I remember when I first read the book and came to the passage explaining how an ant colony can exhibit a collective intelligence. While reading the book you fell you can almost understand how intelligence works if you just don’t think about it consciously. I bought the book in the bookstore at Amsterdam airport just because I liked Escher’s drawings and knew nothing about Gödel or Bach, but by the end I had an appreciation of both and had gone out and bought Bach’s Musical Offering long before I reached the end of the book.

Another example of a book changing one’s life I suppose.

4. One book that made you laugh

There are so many, but I’ll go for Spike Milligan’s war memoirs as one of the first which made me laugh aloud and uncontrollably. I read the first volume (Adolf Hitler, My Part in his Downfall) while at school without any clue that within about 10 years I would be living in Brockley, only a couple of streets away from where the book started.

5. One book that made you cry

All I can think of is When The Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs or Maus by Art Spiegelman, both about the horrors of war in different ways, and both graphic novels. I hope that does not mean I have such little imagination that I can’t be affected by mere words… more likely just a case of poor memory.

Lets mentally toss a coin and go for the Raymond Briggs as I can still remember the very real feeling during the early 80s that this could happen at any time.

6. One book that you wish you had written.

I wish I had written, or could be capable of writing, any of Robert Rankin’s books, but especially the early Brentford Trilogy books. What must it be like to have a mind so inventive?

7. One book you wish had never been written

Mick Wall’s biography of John Peel. Is that too obvious? Not just because it is a cheap, cash-in rushed to publication following his death but also because Peel had to die to make it happen.

8. One book that you are reading at the moment

The Book of Dave by Will Self. Only on the very early chapters at the moment and still trying to get used to the circumstances and language. If I remember rightly his book Great Apes took a while to get into but there was a tipping point where suddenly it all made sense and I am hoping that happens real soon with this book.

A good sign is that I started by looking at the maps on the inside covers and the glossary at the end and both made me giggle.

9. One book that you’ve been meaning to read

That would be Albert Camus’ The Stranger so I can find out what all the fuss is about. Apparently its a book you are supposed to read in your late teens and get very affected by, but for some perverse reason I got my dose of existentialism from Sartre’s ‘Nausea’ instead.

I was recently reminded of this when The Stranger popped up in the news twice – through being top of a list of books which men felt had influenced them and through GW Bush saying he had read it.

10. Five others that you’d like to do this

I’ll have to bail out here. Its not that I wouldn’t want to inflict it on anyone, but that everyone else seems to have it inflicted on them already. If anyone is dying to do this and wishes they had been tagged they can add their name here!