I once saw a book in a second-hand shop that I read as a boy; I think it was called The House of Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales. It has a green and surreal house on the cover, in the style of Edvard Munch's The Scream. It was a strange and poignant experience, linked as it was to an earlier time in my life.

I gazed at it for a moment, as if it were a gateway to a lovely imaginative reverie. But I could sense it was not going to happen; my boyhood literary pleasures have gone. I didn't buy the book and although I now regret that, the fact is I have quite a few of my boyhood readings, and they have very little of this romantic aura. The House of Nightmare was poignant because it was unexpected.

Like most people, I suspect, I could chart my childhood and adolescence with books. Some of them reflected me, and some reflected the era. I am immediately struck by how boyish it was - not that I was ever in any doubt that I was a boy or that I am now a man. But I do not see myself as stereotypically male; I have never liked football or sport and preferred to gaze up into the sky why the other boys were running around after cricket balls. But I read HG Wells, Robert Heinlein, horror stories, Alistair MacLean and the Colditz war books.

When my tastes started to mature, I moved on to Hesse, Steinbeck and standard AEB 'A' level fare. I wanted to prepare myself for university, and read about 30 novels in my year off. I don't remember them all, but they included Camus, Sartre, Alain Robbe-Grillets, Sylvia Plath, Huxley, Thomas Hardy, more Steinbeck and Hesse, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and to make myself feel better after all of that, The Good Companions.

There is something very lovely about this kind of reminiscence, remembering earlier imaginative pleasures. Stephen Fry appeared to have a similar delight when he narrated the BBC2 series Reading The Decades. Prior to this, he described his Christmas Radio 4 reading of Harry Potter as 'rolling in warm chocolate' - or something similarly luxuriant.

It's an interesting idea: that we can define, understand and reminisce about a bygone era, on the basis of the books we were reading. This is the list the BBC offers:

1950s

The Kon-Tiki Expedition Thor Heyerdahl

Guinness Book of Records

The Cruel Sea Nicholas Monsarrat

The Dambusters Paul Brickhill

Doctor in the House Richard Gordon

Day of the Triffids John Wyndham

Casino Royale Ian Fleming

Down with Skool Geoffrey Willans/Ronald Serle

British pulp fiction Hank Janson

Georgette Heyer's novels

Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning Alan Sillitoe

Room at the Top John Braine

Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak

Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

1960s

Born Free Joy Adamson

Lady Chatterley's Lover D.H. Lawrence

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold John Le Carré

Classic Great Dishes of The World Robert Carrier

In His Own Write/A Spaniard in the Works John Lennon

The Mersey Sound Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten

Summoned By Bells /Collected Poems John Betjeman

Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann

The Naked Ape Desmond Morris

Gipsy Moth Circles the World Francis Chichester

Catch-22 Joseph Heller

The Shell and BP Guide to Britain

The Group Mary McCarthy

Alistair Maclean's novels

The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth

1970s

Love Story Erich Segal

The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth

The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer

The Women's Room Marilyn French

Wilbur Smith

James Herriot

Watership Down Richard Adams

The Snowman Raymond Briggs

Roald Dahl

James Herbert

Majesty Robert Lacey

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady Edith Holden

The Joy of Sex Dr Alex Comfort

The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch

Roots Alex Haley The Thorn Birds Colleen McCullough

1980s

Kane and Abel /First Among Equals Jeffrey Archer

Barbara Taylor Bradford The F Plan Diet Audrey Eyton

Hollywood Wives Jackie Collins

Rivals Jilly Cooper

Tilly Trotter Omnibus

Catherine Cookson

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams

The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco

A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking

Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie

The Colour Purple Alice Walker

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ Sue Townsend

Spycatcher Peter Wright

The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook Ann Barr and Peter York

The Bonfire of The Vanities Tom Wolfe

The programme commentators did not have much to say about these volumes; it was authors talking about other authors using words like 'brilliant' and 'genius'.

Much of this list is uninspiring if not embarrassing, but it does reflect the popular interests. However, The House of Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales is not there. I should have bought it.