I’m jealous of people with antique bookcases and extensive shelving. As well as four shelves in my study, inconveniently placed by the sloping roof, my bookcases are four large IKEA Billy jobs, plus four small ones that I put together myself. There must be a Swedish Royal Medal for self-assembly but I won’t apply because it’ll come with cauldron, ingot of bronze and long spoon.

Instead of Frances’ IKEA offering her favourite book shed, in the garden of The Annapolis Bookstore and Cafe in the US.

No books are unwelcome on these shelves but if what’s missing in your life is Ford Vehicle Carburettors ’78 to ’91, Austin M13 & 16 or the Mini Workshop Manual, give me a call. I bought The Great Book of Brainteasers because I couldn’t do brainteasers. Its task is to sit unopened, and smug, representing all my failings.

For research, I prefer books to the internet. Reference books include The Dictionary of English Law, Whitaker’s Almanac with its perpetual calendar and, Book of Poisons. I have history books and novels set in my period, the 1920s and books about my home county of Yorkshire, setting for the Kate Shackleton mysteries. Crime novels mostly live in the bedroom. Recent reads include Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in the Snow, the Crime Writers’ Association anthology, Guilty Parties, edited by Martin Edwards, and an Ellery Queen magazine.

Having just looked closely at my bookshelves, I see that Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet are among the missing so I have “lent” them or, in some temporary fit of madness, given them to the charity shop in an attempt to create space. Alice Munro’s stories are still there, thank goodness. If they walked, I would have to replace them.

I recently joined the book group at my local library. We have read two bestsellers: Jo Baker’s Longbourn and The State We’re In by Adele Parks . One of our group, Elena, bought a jar of pickled walnuts because Sarah in Longbourn eats them with bread. I thought we should all eat a pickled walnut next time. Elena quite rightly says we’re not allowed to eat in the library. The afternoon knitting group have tea and biscuits but that’s different.

Do books change lives? Of course. It’s said that Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists won the 1945 General Election for Labour because so many returning soldiers had read it. Without that government, we would have had no National Health Service and no Welfare State. I left school at sixteen with three modest but useful certificates in shorthand, typing and English, and the intention to write a novel. A love of reading took me to university. I like to believe that kind of thing, in very different ways due to changed times, is still happening, but it’s not obvious and not measurable.

The book I last gave as a present was a young adult novel, Writing in the Sand, by Helen Brandom. One for my niece and one for her friend.