The book I am currently reading

Mostly at this stage I am rereading myself, and finding something marvellous on every page. I’ve just received the advance copies of my new book about Philip Larkin, called Somewhere Becoming Rain. Holding it up to be observed at various angles, I gloat audibly. On a less self-involved note, I should say that I am very much enjoying Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds. And I’ve just read Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine. Her clarity reminds me of Olivia Manning.

The book that changed my life

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. I can still quote whole scenes from it. I read it in my early 20s, still a bit young to have fully understood that a book can be simultaneously entertaining and serious. Abruptly I realised that it could be a possible aim, for a writer, to raise a serious point and a laugh along with it.

The book I wish I’d written

I won’t say that I wish I’d written Larkin’s poems because I remain endlessly glad that he did.

The book that had the greatest influence on my writing

SJ Perelman’s Westward Ha! I loved the sublime mixture of high style and low content and I thought: yeah, both those doors at once.

The book I think is most under/overrated

I still think there are paragraphs by Raymond Chandler that are underrated. But it’s an open question whether he wrote any underrated novels. The most overrated books almost all emerged simultaneously from a single genre: magic realism. I can’t stand it. I always found ordinary realism quite magic enough.

The book that changed my mind

George Bernard Shaw, his preface to Saint Joan. Reading that wonderful stretch of prose started me on the road to a more human version of Christianity: a road I like to think that I am still pursuing.

The last book that made me cry

It was 20 minutes ago when I was reading Larkin’s poem “To the Sea”. Sometimes I could swear his memories were mine. Although Australia and Britain have very different beaches, when he was near the sea he always thought it was his element.

The last book that made me laugh

When Philip Roth died I started reading Portnoy’s Complaint again, looking for a quotable line, and couldn’t find one that wasn’t.

The book I couldn’t finish

I very rarely give up on a book that I’ve really started. Closing a book in disgust half way through the first paragraph doesn’t count.

The book I’m most ashamed not to have read

That means nothing. I’ve read all the books I thought ought to be read. The books I haven’t read are the books I thought didn’t need to be read.

My earliest reading memory

Reading to myself, it was a Biggles book by WE Johns, but I can’t remember which one. Biggles Flies East? Biggles Flies West? Biggles Flies West was much better, incidentally. Long before that my mother used to read me The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám on the back verandah of our house in Kogarah. She had a natural sense of rhythm, which became a model for the rest of my life as a performer.

My comfort read

That’s not a concept that I’m familiar with. If reading didn’t make me uncomfortable in one way or another, it would just send me to sleep. I get comfort in other ways. I once wrote a poem called “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered”. I’m afraid I still get a big bang out of seeing the books of my rivals being utterly ignored.

The book I give as a gift

Larkin again: The Whitsun Weddings.

The book I’d most like to be remembered for

Since by definition the world will have to still be here in order for anyone to remember my book Cultural Amnesia, then that’s the one. EP Thompson talked about history rescuing the past from the “enormous condescension of posterity”. Condescension towards the past has never been more enormous than it is now. My book not only says that we have to remember the past, it presumes that we will, so there is hope in it as well as a warning.

• Somewhere Becoming Rain by Clive James is published by Picador (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.