For the "Incorrigibly Bookish".......

.....a review on Michael Dirda's Book by Book in Books and Culture.

A paragraph I liked:

Dirda encourages us not to read authors just so we can cross them off a list, but to read what actually stimulates us. Adults should heed this advice not only when it comes to themselves but also for their children—especially today, when video games consume more and more of many a child's free time. In a chapter on encouraging children to read, Dirda urges parents to foster any reading interest their child has, no matter how silly or uninspiring the topic might be. (This reviewer remembers her parents, including a mother who worked in a children's bookstore, along with many parents at the time, tolerantly cringing all the way through the Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High series phases.) "The child who reads The Hardy Boys will read Agatha Christie tomorrow and Crime and Punishment a few years after… The worst thing you can do is ignore or denigrate a child's taste," Dirda writes.

This strikes me as true. We've let Zman read what he likes, and we shuddered through the Goosebumps series. And it really DID turn into Sherlock Holmes and then into Father Brown....