I've been reading all my life. As a child I used to cycle down to the library every Saturday. I can still remember the thrill of selecting books from the adult shelves and I loved going upstairs and sitting at the tables with their little wooden walls and lights that you could click on and off. Every book taught me things and made me grow.

So, what books to recommend? Let's start with the obvious topics.

Some on Spain:

Andalucía by Michael Jacobs (Pallas Athene London, 2000. ISBN 1873429436)
He shares a glimpse of the Spanish and their lives but doesn't gawp at them; he pricks the stereotypes of romanticism but reminds us that there is much to be romantic about in such a beautiful country. His gaze can be unforgiving but it is always truthful.

South From Granada by Gerald Brenan (Penguin 1963. ISBN 0140167005)
The original and still the best, a wonderful insight into village life 80 years ago when Southern Spain was as remote as a land-locked African country is now. He describes the people with insight and intelligence and, although often baffled by their attitudes, never laughs at them or uses them as a cast of colourful characters. He was a bit of an oddball himself and that adds to his charm immensely.

Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart (Sort of Books, June 1999. ISBN 0953522709)
Chris is a natural storyteller. I went to see him at the Essex Book Festival and his skill at telling anecdotes and keeping an audience enthralled is up there with Sir Peter Ustinov (readers of a certain age will remember his great performances on Parkinson). His politics about the environment are wonderfully uncomplicated by compromise. Engaging account: lovely man.

Don Quixote by Cervantes (mine is the Wordsworth Edition, 2000. ISBN 1853260363)
I haven't read this for years but will get around to reading it again some day soon. For those of you who are writers, Don Quixote is widely regarded as the first ever novel, and many authors - including A.S. Byatt - credit it with having an enormous influence on their work. If the book is too thick for you, try listening to it on tape; I know the BBC have serialised it on Radio 4 so I'm sure there is a good version out there somewhere.

Spain by Jan Morris (Penguin, 1979. ISBN 0140095152)
In my book, the best living travel writer (Bill Bryson would be up there too but to my mind he is more witty social observations than reportage). She brings a sense of authority and wonder to everything she writes about and her weaving of the historical perspective into the present is masterly. She is a travelling companion whose opinions you can trust.

Some on Writing:

Living the Writer's Life by Eric Maisel (Watson-Guptill, 1999. ISBN 0823088480) and
Deep Writing by Eric Maisel (Tarcher/Putnam, 1999. ISBN 0874779472)
These books aren't about writing techniques: they are about attitudes and mindsets and lifestyles and creativity and choices. Do you - can you - believe these things?
'Creating is one of the few genuine answers to the question "How can a life be meaningfully spent?"'.
'A writer's inner life matters: it is hard to imagine that anything matters more'.
'Why do writers write? To save the species and to light the way for others. At its most important, writing is the ethical, existential occupation par excellence'.
If this approach resonates, then Eric Maisel is the man for you. He was for me.

The Art of Fiction by David Lodge (Penguin, 1992. ISBN 0140174923)
Entertaining, thought provoking and instructive little pieces on key elements of fiction. It reminds me of being in the best sort of seminar with a tutor who both knows their stuff and has a passion for imparting it to others. It is not high-brow but it is discussing literature and not the vagaries of bestsellerdom.

The Merry Heart by Robertson Davies (Penguin, 1998 ISBN 014027586-X)
One of my favourite authors (try What's Bred in the Bone or The Cunning Man), this is a collection of his essays and lectures on 'reading, writing and the world of books'. An immensely knowledgeable man with the wisdom of his 82 years and the curiosity of a child, his approach is summed up when he says: 'Knowledge may enable you to memorise the whole of Gray's Anatomy or Osler's Principles and Practice of Medicine but only wisdom can teach you what to do with what you have learned'.
Believe him when he says: 'The author today is the descendent of the storyteller who went into the market-place, sat himself on his mat, and beat upon his collection bowl, crying, "Give me a copper coin and I will tell you a golden tale".' He was one of the best.

And one last, because it is so delightful:

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (Minerva, 1997. ISBN 0749399236)
A story, a mystery, a writer's journey into their own work, an intellectual conceit all rolled up into one. A book about story telling from a master storyteller. Read some of my other recommendations first and then come to this, you'll appreciate it much better and once you can truly appreciate the joke, then you'll know that you have learnt.

As to the others?

There are just too many to choose so . . . I'm going to start a bookclub. They're all the rage now but I was in one 20 years ago when no one could understand why we'd sit around and talk about books (the copious bottles of wine might have had something to do with it) but here's the thing: in this one I get to choose all the books myself.

Every once in a while I will recommend a book that I have loved or been stimulated, challenged or inspired by.

OK: book, the first, picked at random off my shelves:

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.

This book was recommended to me by Mrs Smith, a retired teacher who befriended me when I was 17 and showed me a whole world of literature that I didn't know existed. Much later I heard the author read from the book on BBC Radio 4 and, later still, saw the play in the West End with Sir Anthony Hopkins.

It is the true story of a writer living in New York who orders secondhand books from Marks & Co in London. Over time (the book spans from 1949 to 1971) her letters become more than simple requests for specific editions in a particular condition and turn into a sort of long distance love affair with London and everything that the bookshop represents.

It is beautifully written and you can feel very clearly her deep affection for, and interest in, the people working in Marks & Co; the thawing out of the frosty, formal correspondence from them in the face of her forthright and spontaneous outpourings is delightful. It is a book about class, writing, reading, dreams, post-war London and the need to make connections.

When I read it I had such a clear idea of what it was like being a writer in New York that I desperately wanted to live in a brownstone too even though I'd no idea what one was (I finally saw some in Brooklyn Heights in 1999). As far as I was concerned she led the perfect life: writing, being surrounded by books, and (at the beginning at least) enduring picturesque financial hardship. And I'm still hoping that one day I'll grow up to be just like her.