The book I am currently reading
The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey, her memoir, in essays and fragments, about sleeplessness. It’s a claustrophobic, enlightening, moving, existential treatise on sleep, insomnia and death. And it’s funny, too.

The book that changed my life
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I read it at my parents’ house, the summer after my A-levels, having decided (sort of) not to go to university. Terrified of what would happen to me, I read a lot of ‘big’ or “great” novels that summer, taken from their shelves in a panic, hoping to educate myself or prove something. I must have read it for about five hours a day for two or three days, and finished it breathless. It was a hot summer day. I was speechless. I still can’t think of the end of that book without a sort of reverence.

The book that most influenced my writing
Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, not even for the writing, which is astounding, obviously, but for the way he describes work, and his approach to it. It is a book full of the love of writing, and of working hard – and the love of living.

The book I think is most overrated
I thought Donna Tartt’s The Secret History was vastly overpraised when I read it, but that was long ago, and people are still praising it – I might feel differently now. I found it trite and derivative and I couldn’t work out what all the fuss was about. It felt very schematic to me. I should try again maybe.

The last book that made me cry
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, several times. I got into it by cheating and listening to the audio book. A couple of hundred pages in, block broken, I transferred to reading the book properly, by the fire, at Christmas time. Prince Andrei made me cry – the way he gets younger through the book, it’s agonising.

The last book that made me laugh
I picked up Jeeves in the Offing recently, having not read PG Wodehouse for years, wondering how it would look to the (vaguely) modern eye. Half an hour later I was still reading and laughing. He can develop a comic idea and deliver the payoff over a chapter, a paragraph, or a single sentence. He was an absolute genius.

The book I couldn’t finish
I prefer “haven’t finished yet”. It used to be War and Peace, but I’ve put that to bed now so I feel unbeatable. I’ve never finished James Joyce’s Ulysses. People often say “Oh, nobody finishes Ulysses”, but I feel they’re just being kind – a great many people have plainly read all of Ulysses. And I’m competitive, I hate that it’s beaten me. I’m going to read it right now.

The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
The list is so long, the shelf of shame has turned into a table of shame, and I admit having lied about certain things to win arguments. I said I’d read William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, for instance, to win a point about the Beat generation, when I’d only ever read On the Road, and been a bit bored.

My earliest reading memory
Being absolutely gripped by Ant and Bee. I could not wait to find out what happened. It was a massive page turner. As was Peter and Jane. The one with Peter and Jane and the red wagon, when that wagon went off down the hill – honestly, I’ll never get over it.

The book I give as a gift
Stoner by John Williams, probably. But never to a young person. To young women I give Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. If you put money inside without telling them, you find out if they’ve opened it.

• The Snakes by Sadie Jones is out in paperback from Vintage.