The other day my intrepid co-worker Jordan asked me to compile a list of my favourite ever books, to be posted on our website at some point soon.

Initially this seemed a very straightforward, even fun exercise. It’s something I’ve mulled over vaguely hundreds of times, and I’m sure many of you have too. It’s human nature to classify and categorise everything around us. Why else would I have a personal list of worst romantic comedies in history? (I don’t care how many Oscars you win Sandra Bullock, you still made Forces of Nature).

When we have finished a book, we quietly add it to our internal lists, whether it be the titles we loved (The Book Thief- no I will not shut up about it!) or hated (Lolita. Lolita. Lolita.).

So with a blank word document open and that infernal cursor blinking away in front of me, I went about building a list of my favourite books.

The first five-not necessarily the top five- sprang to mind in easy succession. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Persuasion by Jane Austen. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

Following that I came up a little blank. Suddenly In Cold Blood by Truman Capote popped out. It’s the last book I read and it was startlingly good.

More list-writers block ensued, before I remembered To Kill a Mockingbird. I slap myself for not thinking of it sooner. Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Oliver Twist came next.

Now things have started to get really difficult. It’s not that I can’t recall any books; it’s just that Babysitter’s Club #13 ‘Logan likes Mary Anne’ wasn’t going to be on the shortlist.

I was stumped.

So, idiotically, I turned to the Internet. Who needs a brain when we can just Google stuff, such as ‘Best ever books’ and ‘Top 10 books ever written’. Search phrases like that of course got about 6 billion hits, from the Time Magazine list of best books,  to lists of authors’ favourite books, to a random nerd rant about why damnit Tolkien’s Silmarillion is the greatest book ever written, good day sir!

Trawling through list after list, a number of legendary names appeared repeatedly. Tolstoy, Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Joyce and Faulkner, and modern masters like Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Peter Carey and Thomas Pynchon.

Going online had been a measure intended to jog my memory and rediscover the books I’d loved but had somehow forgotten. Instead it served as a reminder of how hideously under read I am.

Few of these authors had titles present on my list- simply because I haven’t yet read them. I’ve read a bit of Dickens, but no Tolstoy and no Faulkner. I’ve attempted James Joyce several times but his writing appears to have the same effect on me as horse tranquilisers. All the same, my list was starting to sag under the weight of these literary giants.

That’s when a terrible, terrible thought occurred to me. Once it surfaced it started scratching around my head like a rat over floorboards.

What if I just lie?

It was tempting. Very tempting.

I don’t even have to write reviews for the books. My list could positively swell with the most celebrated (and boring) books ever written! And if nosey co-workers ask for my opinion on them, I can shrug and say ‘There’s not much to be said-it’s a masterpiece’.

There I was, fingers poised over the keyboard, ready to pad out my list to look like something from The Institute of Long Dead and Irrelevant Authors, before I realised exactly what I was about to do.

I was about to become the person I despised, the insufferable book elitist who thinks the word ‘old’ naturally connects with ‘good’. Others might not discover the truth, but I would know that I didn’t read The Iliad, I went and saw the movie Troy starring Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt.

With that in mind, I flee the Internet. I have tea and a cookie and allow reason to fully return.

And I finally approach this list the way I always should have: I just stare out the window and wait for the books to come to me. And eventually they did. They didn’t pour out easily; it was more of a prolonged regurgitation type of process and it looked suspiciously to those around me like I was doing zero work.

But there they were, there was my list, rounded out at 15.

After all that I was drained. So I took my copy of Dubliners into another room and put myself to sleep.

Which books do you know you should read, but you just haven’t gotten around to yet?