Are they reading your blog?

By Caitlin Kelly

The first time I posted here — July 1, 2009 — I was shaking.

Seriously.

I’ve been writing for a living since university, and had grown very accustomed to attention and feedback for my ideas, photos and writing. Unlike many bloggers, this wasn’t my first attempt to gain eyeballs, just the latest iteration.

Would anyone ever show up?

Today, this blog has more than 5,400 readers worldwide, in Ghana, Malaysia, Lebanon, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, the Middle East, India. Crazy, but gratifying.

I’ve also been fortunate to have had my posts chosen six times for Freshly Pressed, which showcases a selection of WordPress bloggers every day. If you haven’t ever made time to read any of them, I urge you to. I always find something lovely or thought-provoking.

Every day, five to 15 new people find Broadside and decide to follow.

I’m honored, and really enjoy the diversity of readers, and comments.

For those of you hoping to grow your audience, some things to think about:

What’s your goal?

If all you want is to create an on-line record of your thoughts and work, I’m not persuaded that’s a blog that will ever gain much traction or many readers, while LinkedIn is professionally useful for this purpose.

Some people say they want their blog to be a place to process their feelings. Which is fine — it’s your blog. But if your real desire is to attract lots and lots of eyeballs, you’ve got to be a little more focused. No one, I assure you, has time or energy to read rambling navel-gazing better suited to a long private conversation with a friend, or a journal entry.

Every time you post, consider the question — what’s in it of potential value to your readers?

How often are you posting?

The metric I’ve read is to post three times a week, which I’ve consistently maintained. Some people post every day, which is too much for me to absorb as a reader and too much to produce as someone — like you! — with a busy life and many other interests and commitments.

If you’re pooped trying to make it all up without help — use links and timely, much-discussed news stories as inspiration.

Two women knitters with blogs, holding up their knitting. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you showing other bloggers a little love?

I don’t follow a ton of blogs, but I look at the site of every single person who signs up to follow Broadside. I make it a point to visit the sites of people who “like” a post so I can “like” or comment on theirs.

Are you making your blog visually inviting?

I’m dismayed by how few bloggers seem to understand a basic principle — we’re visual creatures! We want something pretty or interesting or memorable to look at and think about, not just a big fat pile ‘o words. Zzzzzzzz!

Include photos, drawings, sketches, video to illustrate your posts. Since few bloggers bother to do this, yours will immediately stand out from the crowd.

How’s your punctuation, design sense, theme choice and layout?

I won’t read any blogger who simply throws down a huge chunk of copy, (especially white on black), without one single paragraph to break it up visually and intellectually.

It’s like yammering on without taking a breath. NO one anywhere in the real world gets away with that shit.

English: A Saturday afternoon barbeque for the Progressive Bloggers on Parliament Hill, East Block, Ottawa, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you living an interesting life?

If your life is pretty quiet and routine, are you still offering readers some fun, quirky or moving insights into it? What value are you adding to my day in return for my attention?

Elizabeth Harper, an ex-pat American from Georgia now living in Cornwall, posts some of the most beautiful photos I’ve seen on the web. I keep her posts in my email forever just to go back and look at them. They’re like 17th century paintings.

Do you reply, quickly and authentically, to comments?

I try to reply to every single comment. If someone has made time to read long enough to care, to care enough to comment, that’s a hell of a compliment. Replying is polite.

Are you funny?

We all could use a good laugh — and I don’t mean simply plugging in a pile of gif’s. I mean seeing your world, and sharing it, in a way that makes us laugh along with you.

Are you too angry?

I get it.

Believe me, there are many, many things to rant about. But it’s got to be balanced out by something lighter. If all your blog is about is yelling and screaming and bitching and moaning — even if your target(s) are 100% deserving, you’re not likely to grow your readership into the thousands, even hundreds. It’s just too tedious after a while.

Tone matters

Your blog can be whatever you choose, of course. But which voice? Meditative, poetic, sassy, smart-ass, challenging, wise?

One blog with a very consistent tone, is Truth and Cake, written by Rian, a 30-something American woman who married a Canadian man and moved to Vancouver. She’s wise but not dull, encouraging but not sappy, firm but not bossy. I love her choice of header photo — snappy pink heels and all.

Another is Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecot, by Australian writer Nigel Featherstone. I enjoy his meditative voice and gentle questioning of almost everything. Every time I read one of his posts, my blood pressure drops.

Are you obsessed with being Freshly Pressed?

Easy for me to say, right?

Yes, being FPed will boost your visibility, big-time, probably adding hundreds of new followers within hours. But it’s not the only measure of your blog’s value. If your readers are reading, commenting, talking to you and to one another, it’s working.

Some blogs are just never going to make the FP cut: they’re too specific, too sexy, too curse-laden, too shout-y. Be yourself, but be realistic about the mass appeal of what is more likely to get picked by the WP editors.

Aim for the intersection of personal and universal

This isn’t easy, but it’s what works best.

I’m not a widow, but I’m eager to read what Niva, a TV writer in Los Angeles, is writing at Riding Bitch; her header photo speaks volumes about her spirit.

I’m not an educator, but I enjoy reading Mindful Stew, written by Paul Barnwell, a thoughtful high school teacher in Kentucky. Terrific bloggers manage to find a way to make their concerns matter to the rest of us, even if we don’t share, and never will, their specific experiences.

Are you passionate about your posts?

One of the worst habits I see in many other blogs is the written shrug. If you’re really that bored, tired or distracted, why inflict it on your readers? Bloggers like this annoy me. They want attention, but haven’t done anything special to warrant it, sort of like the five-year-old at the playground yelling “Mommy, watch me! Watch me! Watch me!”

OK. I’m watching, already. Whatcha got for me?

Are you open to differing points of view?

I’m happy that we’ve had some pretty heated (civil) discussions here. A perky, chirpy echo chamber is boring.

How much are you willing to reveal about yourself and your thoughts?

Possibly the most essential element, and one that’s damn hard to do well! Too much emotion and it becomes grossly confessional. Too little, and we never really get to know who you are, just some coy cipher. Yes, discretion is important, certainly for professional reasons. But a tidy/polite/buttoned-up blog becomes a big snooze.

Have you given your posts time to cool down?

It’s rare I write a post and hit publish. Many are refined for days, sometimes weeks.

I’d skip sex, religion and politics. But that’s just me

I rarely post on religion or politics, and almost never about sex, (sexual politics, yes.) Most of the time, it’s not worth it to invite/wrangle trolls and craziness.

What do you think?

What’s working for you?

What do you enjoy here at Broadside?

Here’s my last post about how to blog better, with tips…it got 96 likes, so it might be worth a look if you’re new here.

The rules of engagement

By Caitlin Kelly

I’ve been spoiled here at Broadside by readers who are — thank you! — a lively, funny, smart group, from Danielle and Matthew and Cecile in New Zealand to Leah in Iowa to Rami in Ohio to Maddy in Lusaka to David and Elizabeth in England.

I’d name more, but there are (!) so many of you, which is unlikely but also lovely.

I want to pause our regularly scheduled programming to go a little meta for a moment.

The whole point of blogging, which I do in addition to writing for a living full-time, is to create a community where we can talk to one another frankly about the stuff that matters to us: work, love, the challenge of making a decent living while living our values, friends, family, heath, feminism, public policy, art, creativity, beauty, travel, home, design, ethics, writing, journalism  — frankly, whatever seems interesting.

If it’s not fun, why bother?

Every day, five to 10 new people sign up to follow Broadside, which is crazy but flattering; we’re now at 4,600+ readers worldwide, of all ages and nationalities, from Haiti to Ghana to Malaysia to India to rural Australia.

An example of travelling the world using a RTW ticket. Start in London, travel eastwards through India, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Ghana back to home, all using the same ticket with the same airline alliance. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I was a little shaken recently to get a comment, which I trashed, (which I’ve done maybe twice in almost four years of blogging three times a week.)

I debated whether or not to trash it, or reply publicly or reply to them privately.

But I did trash it. Life is too short to argue with or absorb toxicity from people I don’t know, and for whom I work without a paycheck.

The commenter called me “weak” and a “fucking hypocrite.”

Everyone is entitled an opinion and I want to hear yours.

I’ve been called on the carpet a few times here by readers, for my short-sighted or stupid or unkind thinking. It’s useful and interesting, as long as everyone remains civil and respectful, even in the middle of a hotly contested argument.

But no one is entitled to ad hominem attacks here, on me or on anyone else who makes the time to come here, read and comment.

So I welcome your ideas and insights, your advice and stories. I am very eager to hear comments, especially from more of you.

But nasty behavior not only scares and annoys me, it creates a tone I don’t want here and inhibits others from speaking out.

This whole talking-to-total-strangers thing requires a level of trust and candor that is highly counter-intuitive, to me anyway.

When I write journalism, the comments flooding in to The New York Times in reply to my stories there, (258 came in worldwide on one recent story about workers over 50), are very rarely directed at me personally. I’m shielded both by the nature of those stories — far less personal than these posts — and by the institution that chooses to publish my work. Nor am I required, (as a freelancer), to reply to anyone.

I did read every single of those 258 NYT comments, in full. But the rules of engagement here are very different. I do answer almost every comment here.

So let’s stay cool, OK?

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for being here.

Life after being Freshly Pressed: tips, advice — and welcome!

English: Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whew.

More than 5,000 views (in three days) later, and 532 likes, life here at Broadside is back to normal. It’s fun to be featured, but the Niagara of comments is overwhelming if — which I do — you try to reply to each comment and visit everyone’s site who “likes” a post and/or who signs up to follow this blog.

For those new to Broadside, welcome! It’s a bit like throwing a party, happy to see old friends, and finding 300 people you’ve never met in your living room.

I blog every other day, sometimes a bit more often, on a variety of topics, often on writing. I am happy to hear dissenting views, but won’t tolerate rudeness, to me or others here.

If you want to argue a point, cool! But please do it with wit, facts and intelligence.

Insults are a direct route to the trash bin.

For those of you new here, I hope you’ll visit the blogs of some of the regular commenters here, like Nigel Featherstone, a writer in Australia; MrsFringe, a snappy mom in Manhattan, Michelle, a feisty, fun mom in Minneapolis; Rian, an expat American in Vancouver; the witty C, who I hope to meet for tea in London, Elizabeth, who traded Atlanta for Cornwall mid-life and the loquacious Rami, a student in Ohio.

A few thoughts on being FPed and how to get there, which Rami asked me about. I’ve been FPed six times, which is crazy, but flattering. The posts were about everything from why we need to thank one another, the lost art of conversation, how to write better to this most recent, about women’s obsession with their bodies.

I’m Caitlin Kelly, a Tarrytown, NY-based career journalist who writes for a living, and have been doing so since 1978, so blogging comes easily to me. I write frequently for The New York Times and have written two well-reviewed books. I hope you’ll buy them, and spread the word if you like them!

“Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail” has sold well; it’s the story of my 27 months’ working in an upscale mall, and includes interviews with dozens of others nationwide, from the CFO of Costco to a woman who’s 51 making $7.25/hr — with a master’s degree and $60,000 worth of student debt.

Retail is the largest source of new jobs in this economy. Terrible jobs!

Here’s a link to both…

I’ve also sold personal essays to places like The New York Times and Marie Claire, so I have some experience writing for an audience about things personal. My second book, a memoir of working retail, is also filled with personal detail, interwoven with dozens of interviews.

So…how to get Freshly Pressed?

Be consistent

Blog on a regular schedule. People who start to enjoy your work want more! It’s frustrating to find a terrific blogger but never hear from them. People have short attention spans. Don’t let ‘em wander off.

Choose your tone

I think this is key. The blogs I linked to above each have a clear and consistent voice, some calm and meditative (Nigel and Elizabeth), some encouraging and upbeat (Rian), some funny and smart (C.) When FPs editors go looking for people to feature, they, too, need a good mix of voices. If yours isn’t clear and strong, your chances of being featured likely diminish.

Tags and categories!

Be sure you are adding these to every post.

Mix the personal with the universal

This is the toughest balance of all. Too personal is confessional and tedious. Too universal is too vague and no one can relate to it.

How about a call to action?

Several of my posts that have been FPed make clear I want readers to do something — Say thank-you! Start a conversation! Write better! They might not do any of them, but it’s clear what I want them to think about doing, at least.

What are people talking about?

Not the bloody Kardashians! But in a more general way, in the culture. It might be the U.S. Presidential election or Hurricane Sandy or unemployment or Christmas or Eid. People want to read something that’s current and meaningful to them.

Great headlines matter

Hard as hell to do well. Really hard. But the best posts draw in many readers with a funny, moving or quirky headline that make you want to read more.

Get angry!

One of the major changes I’ve seen recently in what’s featured on Freshly Pressed, (which I read every day), is their choice of material that’s more challenging and provocative, whether grief, divorce, politics. Women bloggers, especially, tend to be too polite. Say it loud and say it proud! What’s the point of blogging if you keep pulling your punches?

Read your competitors

This is pretty basic. If you really want your blog featured on FPed, you have to read at least some of what is chosen there to analyze what they’ve done so well. As a journalist and author, I read a tremendous amount, often envious of others’ clarity or turn of phrase. The only way to get better is to read the best.

Those of you who’ve been FPed — Rian, Michelle, others — what advice would you offer?

The bitterly disappointed reader — who’s to blame?

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s the problem:

You, the reader, want someone to write a book that resonates with you. It’s all about you!

Except, sadly, it’s not. It never will be.

Writers, certainly of non-fiction, write what they know, how they think, what they’ve studied or taught, how they were raised.

Every single one of us writes through multiple filters: race, age, gender, nationality, religion, political beliefs, income level, ethnicity.

Then we have to pass the gatekeepers of agents, editors, publishers and their sales and marketing staff. And, oh yeah, the retailers who only order our books on commission, shipping them right back within six weeks unless the merch is moving.

So when readers expect writers to write in a way they find cosy and comforting, a peculiar and somewhat infantile rage often emerges when some of them, inevitably, find our work disappointing.

“It’s not what I expected!” they wail.

Well, what did you expect?

Some readers who feel a writer has failed them not only dislike our books — they dislike us personally.

Which, while I love the passionate involvement readers can have with our books, is also a little weird — I don’t loathe Alexander Payne as a human being if I hated (which I didn’t) — his new film, “The Descendants” or his hit “Sideways.”

Separating the creative product from its producer seems a challenge these days.

I’ve seen this in four instances and I think it really bears discussion and reflection.

The first, of course, is the huge best-seller “Eat, Pray, Love” written by a childless, educated white woman who left her suburban marriage to travel the world in search of herself.

The very idea! Jowls shook worldwide in horrified indignation. How dare she…pursue…pleasure?!

If I pick up Dickens or Balzac or John Grisham or David Sedaris, I know what I’m getting into. I’m an adult making an informed choice. If I loathe the book — its tone, content, voice, pacing, dialogue, plot (or absence of same), well, tant pis! It’s the price of admission, kids. Just because it’s for sale doesn’t guarantee it’s great or that it will make me happy.

So when this blogger was chosen for Freshly Pressed, I took immediate exception to her decision to tear up the book she was reading because she disliked the author’s point of view.

Part of her objection was the privileged background of its author, Gretchen Rubin, whose father-in-law is the former secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin. Her book, “The Happiness Project,” has been a huge best-seller.

She is who she is.

I chose the cartoon of Popeye because I live and write by his motto: “I yam what I yam and that’s all I yam.”

Expecting any writer to write as if s/he were someone else you might have a beer with instead burdens even the smartest authors with an added hurdle to clear when trying to find and grow an audience.

Same criticism has followed Laura Vanderkam, a young Princeton grad whose third child’s arrival just preceded that of her third book. For a woman in her early 30s, that’s a whole pile ‘o achievement.

I know Laura personally. She’s privileged, well-educated, a driven, goal-oriented woman.

She is who she is, and whether you agree with her gogogogogogogogo mindset, her worldview inevitably colors how she thinks, the subjects that engage her and how she approaches them.

If you don’t share her worldview, you probably won’t enjoy her books either.

My memoir of working retail, “Malled”, has drawn some of the most vicious comments I have ever heard anywhere, including three years of relentless high school bullying.

“I actually started to hate her”, wrote one woman.

“Bitter, pretentious and lazy, lazy, lazy,” wrote another.

These are not book reviews, dear readers.

These are character assassinations, written under the soothing cloak of anonymity, and posted forevermore on Amazon.com — the place where would-be buyers, you know, make decisions about our work.

I can assure you, if someone stood outside my store or my home, shouting how nasty my food or products or service were, I’d take direct action.

But in this virtual world, where total strangers make snap decisions about who we are (based on — hello! — a deliberately chosen and heavily edited narrative voice), the real person behind the words on the page becomes some weird, annoying ghostly abstraction.

The writer you meet, certainly in non-fiction or memoir, is but one facet of that person. Judging and dismissing them with a sneer only reflects a sad lack of sophistication about what book-writing is.

My readers no more “know me” than someone who sits beside me on the subway for 30 minutes.

The next time you loathe a book — or love it — try to remember that a real person wrote it.

With their best intentions.

There Are 500 Of You! Thanks!

Woo-hoo! Time for some celebratory fireworks! Image by 雙魚寶寶攝影小天地 via Flickr

It’s taken what feels like forever — and this little blog thang pales in comparison to those with a kajillion readers and ads and sponsors — but we hit 500 subscribers this weekend, after slightly more than a year blogging at WordPress.

(I blogged for a year, paid [sweet!] at True/Slant before that, so have 1,155 posts, the archives of which typically draw in about 20 percent of my daily visitors.)

I’ve been Freshly Pressed three times, which is very cool.

You, my lovelies, are everywhere! I did a rough headcount and found readers in:

Bhutan (hi, Aby! A former True/Slant pal, and fellow newlywed)

London (from which, Ruth, a lovely South African, blogs here)

Belgium

Australia (g’day Charlene and Nigel!)

Amsterdam

Edinburgh (and even met Lorna and Sarge when they came to New York; Lorna blogs here)

Cairo

Spain

Sri Lanka

Canada (my home and native land)

Korea

Ireland

India

Egypt

France

and, where I live, the United States.

I’m awed by what fun, cool, creative and interesting people have stopped by, and continue to do so. Many of you, like me, are world travelers or ex-patriates like Ruth and Lorna. Many are professors and work in the arts, like Lunar Euphoria, who teaches theatre to kids or The Observationalist, who has a thriving career as a theatrical costume designer in New York City, no small accomplishment for a man in his early 30s.

My only wish? That more of you would comment and join in the conversation.

But thank you for making the time to sign up, to read, to converse, to share your thoughts and insights.

A friend recently asked me what I’ve been doing for fun. I didn’t hesitate in my answer:

Blogging!

Why Books Resemble Dandelion Seeds

Christchurch, NZ. My book is down there somewhere! Image via Wikipedia

Tiny, white fragile — they float on the breeze, landing and sprouting in the least likely of places.

The great joy of writing and publishing a book, for me, is watching in wonder as it settles down worldwide — libraries have so far bought Malled in Kamloops, (a medium sized city in the interior of British Columbia, where my college best friend lives) to Christchurch, New Zealand to Denton, Texas, where it’s filed under “vocational guidance.”

A young friend, a fellow journalist, shot me a message on Facebook — “I overheard buzz about your book!” She lives in Hong Kong. Cool!

Like seeds, thoughtful books carry with them the germ of new growth — the spread of ideas, sometimes raising questions, even occasionally changing readers’ minds about an issue they once felt sure about, or maybe never even considered.

I’ve been honored to hear readers tell me “your book bolstered me at work” (from a retail associate in Phoenix) to “I’ll never shop the same way again” (readers in California and Toronto.)

I’m thrilled knowing my babies are finding readers all over the world. A friend then living in Las Vegas once sent me a cellphone photo of my first book, of two copies on his local library shelf.

I was so excited I wanted to wave.

The Dilemma Of The Half-Finished Book

Image via Wikipedia

It sits there, accusingly — half-read, unfinished. Is it worth even more of your time, as they say, a sunk cost, or should you just abandon it?

I just flew home today with two half-finished non-fiction books in my carry-on. And, like some faithless lover, I stood before the racks filled with their shiny, new, uncracked competitors this morning in Tucson, pondering which new books, if any, I’d buy. Wretched woman! How could I so heartlessly dump the two I’d already spent real money one, one even a new, full-priced hardcover? Had I lost my reading stamina?

I could practically feel my unread ones whimpering: “What about me?’

There’s a few of these stacked near my desk at home, too, equally accusatory in their physical presence, their dog-eared pages, their unconcluded arguments. I felt so much better recently when a poll of a bunch of famous authors, asked which books they never finished, included “A Suitable Boy” by Vikram Seth, a bloody doorstop of a book I really wanted to love (a Christmas gift from someone in my family), but just couldn’t and gave up on.

Question is: if you stop reading a book, whose fault is it? You got bored? Fed up? It just wasn’t engaging enough? Badly written? Over-hyped? Is this the writer’s fault? The editor’s?

Or, in the age of CPA, continual partial attention, are we losing the ability to actually focus for several unbroken hours on the written word, whether on a Kindle or paper? I think not: I raced through “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen on vacation and couldn’t put it down. Three women on my flight from Atlanta were glued to their Kindles for most of the two-hour journey.

Now I’m also halfway through writing my own book, a memoir of working retail, and trying not to balk, like a horse at a jump, at finishing it. Partly, it’s fear. Being such an avid reader myself, who opens every new book with a sigh of anticipatory pleasure, ready to be charmed and bitter when I am not thusly rewarded, I hear a chorus of bored imaginary sighs from the worst possible readers, those who paid full price for my book and found it…wanting. Leaving it half-read.

Like every author, it’s my job to grab them all by the lapels, so to speak, happily dragging them into a narrative and writing style so alluring they just can’t bear to leave.

Gulp. No pressure.

What book could you never get around to finishing? What book kept you up all night turning the pages til you’d devoured it in one go?

Two Great Library Stories — Yay Bibliophiles!

Timbuktu’s crumbling manuscripts, validating the notion that Africa had fantastic intellectual resources many centuries before being colonized by Europe,  are getting a new lease on life, reports the BBC:

Across Timbuktu, in cupboards, rusting chests, private collections and libraries, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of manuscripts bear witness to this legendary city’s remarkable intellectual history, and by extension, to Africa’s much overlooked pre-colonial heritage.

“This is the proof,” said Mr Boularaf.

“Africa was not wild before the white man came. In fact, if you will excuse the expression, it was the colonising that was wild.”

Ahmed Saloum Boularaf has been caring for documents for years

But this unique literary evidence is under threat, as time, the elements, and a simple lack of resources take their toll in northern Mali.

“We are losing manuscripts every day. We lack the financial means to catalogue and protect them,” said Mr Boularaf, who recently rescued his collection from the rubble of a mud building next door that collapsed after a rainstorm.

Now a giant, new, state of the art library has landed – rather like a spaceship – in the dilapidated centre of Timbuktu, offering the best hope of preserving and analysing the town’s literary treasures.

After several years of building and delays, the doors are finally about to open at the Ahmed Baba Institute’s new home – a 200 million rand (£16,428,265) project paid for by the South African government.

“It’s a dream come true,” said South African curator Alexio Motsi, exploring the underground, climate-controlled storage rooms that will soon house some 30,000 manuscripts.

And, in Westbury-sub-Mendip, in Somerset, England, a new library — probably the world’s smallest — has opened in a re-purposed red telephone booth. It was bought for one pound and now has four shelves and a red plastic crate with kids’ books in it.

Take one, leave one: no cards, no teeny tiny librarian. No fines!

Reading Books For Pleasure. Radical Idea!

Image via Wikipedia

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. — Groucho Marx

Can you live a day — a week, a month, a year — without reading a book? Whether on a Kindle, borrowed from a friend or the library (i.e. depriving us authors of our desperately needed royalties), bought for 50 cents at a yard sale or thrift store, or, maybe, purchased at full price in hardcover, are you still reading books at all?

Gotta love the irony that the film (which, of course, began with a blog) “Julie and Julia” has now turned Julia Child’s cookbook into a best-seller. “This was a secret dream,” Nora Ephron, the film’s writer and director, recently told The New York Times, “that the movie would sell a lot of books. I’m completely delighted that people are walking out of the multiplex and into the bookstore.”

The Wall Street Journal recently ran this essay on why so many of us turned away from modernist novels — with all the allure of eating overcooked vegetables in their pitiless difficulty — and started reading fun stuff about vampires instead. The New York Times, in a front-page story this weekend, focused on a schoolteacher taking the radical (?) step of letting her students read what they prefer, albeit nudging some of them toward tougher and more challenging material, instead of the same-old “To Kill A Mockingbird” and its reading-list equivalents. I don’t have kids, but if they did, they’d have grown up as I did, in a home where every shelf is filled with books, from reference works on art, design and architecture to cookbooks, travel guides and fiction. A life without books is, for me, a life without oxygen.