Kate Atkinson's Left Early, Took the Dog.
The book I love most:
Probably something by M John Harrison, In Viriconium maybe, although Ted Chiang's short stories in Stories of Your Life and Others are marvellous.
The last book I received as a gift:
I can't remember.
The last book I gave as a gift:
Bobby Baker's Mental Illness and Me. She's a performance artist who illustrated her struggle through mental illness with a picture a day. There was a stunning exhibition of this at the Wellcome. It was a birthday present for my Mum who's an artist.
The nearest book:
NSM25 | Methods for Automatic Record Matching and Linking and their use in National Statistics - it's a page turner all right.