When I won eleven brand new paperbacks from MCG I didn’t know what to do because I’d never taken possession of more than six new books in one go before. So, naturally, I pretended I was a Booker Prize judge. And then I put them in an artfully wonky pile and took a photograph of them.

I looked at the titles, read the blurb, fondled the covers, read the review quotes, checked how many chapters they had, read the first lines, fanned the pages, smelt their scent, made a cup of tea and then put them in an artfully wonky pile again. I did all the procrastinating things people who supposedly like reading do before they start reading. And eventually I did start to read one of them. I’ve now read four and here’s what I thought of them.

‘Dry’ by Augusten Burroughs (in short: the true story of a recovering alcoholic).

Why did I start with this one? Because of the first line. It dragged me in. Augusten the chaotic drunk was funny, his resistance to admitting he had a problem was understandable and his mockery of his fellow drunks in rehab was spot on. I even found myself – as he was – won over by process of therapy. I also loved his stories from the ruthless world of advertising.

But when Augusten stopped drinking – when he stopped bitching about his colleagues and fellow drunks – I realised something: sober Augusten was a bit dull and boring.

Partly, of course (if not wholly), it’s a brilliant device by the author. In fact it was almost too good because I nearly gave up reading. Just as Augusten was bored with sobriety and craved a return to the bottle, I wanted more tales of wild drunkenness (and a lot less of the tiresome AA meetings and the tedious infatuation with a fellow addict).

On reflection those pages of creeping dreariness merge into one and were a necessary device to provide real insight into another person’s world – the vivid, frightening, yet often very funny, world of a proper pisshead.

‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I first read this at school and loved it, but second time around it was a whole lot better. It’s so well known that my opinion seems a bit pointless. I’ll only say this: it’s the short, melancholy and brilliant tale of a failed attempt to un-thwart thwarted love. Oh, and that the smell of the thin paper pages of the Wordsworth edition was as beautiful to me as the scent of a newborn baby’s head.

‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen. A bit like ‘The Great Gatsby’ there’s not much I can add that hasn’t already been said. However … why aren’t new novels illustrated with scratchy little pen and ink drawings any more? They should be. I’m sick and tired of waiting three or four years for the film or TV adaptation to add visuals.

‘The Complete Stories’ by Truman Capote. This was a bit of a revelation to me because a) I hate short stories, and b) I thought ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ was rubbish and gave up reading it. These stories are great though: weird, creepy, haunting, funny, smart, odd, quirky and always sparingly written. They remind me of cheese dreams.

Finally, this is not the only Book Club I have been involved with this summer. In May I went to the recording of an edition of Radio Four’s Book Club with James Naughtie where we discussed Mohsin Hamid’s brilliant short novel ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’. It was broadcast last week and if you want to listen to my question failing to make the final cut, click here.

More relevantly, the archive also includes William Fiennes’ ‘The Music Room’ and Roddy Doyle’s ‘Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha’, both of which are in my MCG eleven and waiting to be read.