In the absence of actual parliamentary news, lobby journalists have been scrutinising the holiday reading of the party leaders. While Ed Miliband has been spotted loading up with a pile of heavyweight economic tomes and political biographies, David Cameron has cheerily admitted to being engrossed in the darkly comic novel, Skippy Dies.

The real lesson is perhaps not so much the relative intellectual merits or personality foibles of the two men, but that we are judged by our books' covers. So do you ever pick the volumes on your shelves with others in mind? What sort of titles are you most likely to be seen carrying, and which are stashed out of sight? What books (that you'd actually read or otherwise) project the kind of person you'd like to be seen to be?