“I want you to read this one out,” she said, and I raised my eyes to find her looking straight at me.

The words struck fear in to my heart. My novel writing teacher, a quirkily-brilliant, uber-cool author, wanted me to read the opening chapter of the proffered book out loud in class.

Despite being well into my thirties, I instantly became the little kid who was asked to go outside the classroom and read the big clock on the wall, then tell the teacher what it said. All eyes were on me – and I couldn’t tell the time.

I refused. Didn’t fancy it. Rubbish at reading out loud, yada yada yada. But Daphne insisted.

“I know you will love this book,” she said. “I just know it.”

And so I made a snap decision; which made me look more pathetic, not being confident enough to read out loud, or being a bit crap at it?

So I picked up the book and read.

From line one I was hooked.

‘I’m like, I don’t believe this shit,’ it said.

When I look back at that opening line and the content of the story I have no idea what Daphne thought I would love about it. Although I do cuss and curse, I had never done so in front of her. I have a reasonably pleasant accent that was nothing like the New York street slang in the narrative. And drugs are really not my bag.

But on my way home from the college I went to the bookshop, bought a copy, took it home and read it cover to cover. Daphne was right, I loved it.

It’s not so much that this book was the most incredible thing I have ever read, more that it opened my eyes to what I was missing. It was the book that really properly turned me in to a reader.

From that experience onwards I ditched the pot-boilers and light-hearted holiday reads and started to take recommendations. I read pretty-much every book Daphne mentioned, I sucked up E. Annie Proulx and Anne Tyler who were among her favourite writers (and now mine), and then I started choosing books by authors I had never heard of before. Sometimes I just picked titles I liked, sometimes I judged books by their covers. Some of them I hated, others I loved so much I re-read the last few chapters because I hadn’t wanted them to end.

Story Of My Life proved to be pivotal in my reading history. So although Jay McInerney is not my favourite writer and I was later disappointed by his better-known titles, Story Of My Life is officially my favourite book.

I have, in fact, three copies, none of which I can bear to get rid of.

When I worked in a bar one of the other barmaids, a girl called Karen, was doing a writing course and I couldn’t wait to share this novel with her. Big mistake. Huge.

Sometime later, when I had been feeling twitchy about the fact that she had had it so long, I asked her if she had finished reading it.

She looked at me blankly. I reminded her. Described the cover. Re-capped the story.

“Oh,” she said. And then went on to tell me how when she’d split up with her dunderhead boyfriend she’d left loads of stuff at their flat and she really didn’t want to phone him and ask for it back. He’d probably dumped everything of hers in the bin, anyway, she said.

I politely brushed over it, told her it wasn’t important, it was just a book after all. But secretly I was gutted. So my bezzie and me started the search for another copy. We found plenty. None of them had the right cover with the black and white photo on the front. Others found their way on to my bookshelf along the way. A beautiful little Bloomsbury edition that I felt I could lend out. One that arrived all wrapped up with a postcard from the friend who had scoured second-hand bookshops across the land – right cover, but a hardback.

I read each one to make them mine, and then I became attached. Finally she found one that looked right. It came with the inscription that simply said: “I believe you may have been looking for this.” And I loved it, I loved the quest she’d been on to find me a replacement; it was a special thing. Now all three copies sit in among the thinned-out books that remain on my shelves.

But in the same way that some people think fondly of their first teenage love, sometimes I wonder if that first copy that changed my reading habits forever made someone else happy or is sitting at the bottom of a landfill dump somewhere.

Like a first love it has a special place in my memory and I will sometimes think of it wistfully and sigh.