Parents will often ask what books they can pick for their children for over the summer holidays. They want titles that will supplement their children’s academic progress, improve their vocabularies, and whet their interest in new topics. Of course, they also want these books to be enjoyable. In my experience, someone who reads for life  is often voracious, undiscriminating and eclectic in their taste. I have seen teenagers checking out five books at once, happily including Maeve Binchy, J.K. Rowling,  Manga (a Japanese comic book), Charlotte Brontë and Chinua Achebe. We worry about whether their reading material is challenging them sufficiently or whether they should be reading more nonfiction. Writers ponder whether it is time for them to move beyond mass-market fantasy series and try contemporary fiction while, perhaps hypocritically, adults around the world are […]