Cross-generational reading

   It's lovely when you can share books among the generations, and I find I pass on a lot of mine in one direction or another. For instance, I usually have a pile of books waiting for my mother which I add to whenever I've read something I think she would enjoy. She's just had Diane Meier's The Season of Second Chances and loved it (as did I), likewise Rosy Thornton's The Tapestry of Love (another delight, and just out in paperback), and Stone's Fall (post here) was a hit with her, too. Traffic comes the other way with Mum giving me her Susan Hill Simon Serrailler novels, for instance.

   Of the children, it tends to be Harriet (14) who takes most interest in the books I'm reading, and to her I hand over Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce mysteries ( The Sweetness at ... and The Weed that Strings ...), Alexander McCall Smith's Mma Ramotswe series, and Henrietta's War (another great favourite), while in turn she lent me her copy of I Capture the Castle when the Book Group read it recently. She's away on a school trip just now with Carl Hiaasen's Scat- which happens to be about a school trip, though the book is set in the Florida Everglades while H. and co. are in swamp-free Rome.

    While some books have cross-generational appeal, there are others which one suspects are most fully appreciated by a very specific age group - I'd suggest that Lord of the Rings might be one of them, appealing mostly (though not exclusively!) to people below their mid-20s, say. What do you think?