Cynthia Shannon asked Matthew J. Sullivan:

You're a writer and your wife is a librarian. Do you have the same taste in books? How do you shape your children's reading?

Matthew J. Sullivan Hi Cynthia. Great question! I just had an essay published about this very subject, actually! (I pasted the url below*, if you're interested.)
My wife Libby and I are both avid readers and our tastes dovetail a lot, so we do read (and talk about!) a lot of the same books, mostly literary fiction. The biggest place where we differ is that I tend toward slightly darker fiction and she reads a greater variety of books, including a lot more "upbeat" nonfiction (like books on trees and artists). As for our kids, we visit a lot of bookstores and libraries and tend to plunk them down in the kids/YA section and let them discover on their own. But we also always sneak a book or two into their piles, things we'd like them to read... and sometimes it actually works!
Thanks for asking, Cynthia!
*The essay, "Two Decades of Reading Beside the Woman I Love," is available here:
http://lithub.com/two-decades-of-read...
**If you're interested, I also published a different essay in the New York Times about Libby and I and books. This one focuses a bit more on overcoming the struggles: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/st...

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