OK, I've finally caved in today and bought myself an acoustic guitar. I did try to resist, honest I did, but I had a momentary lapse in my self-control and suddenly it appeared in my house!

Actually, I blame my 9-year-old son. He's been asking for an electric guitar for a while and I've been trying to put him off because I knew I wouldn't be able to resist getting myself one too, so now we have two new guitars in our house.

Can anyone suggest a suitable tutor book that would suit us both? - myself who can read music, albeit in that "strange" thing called alto clef (joking - I'm fine in treble too), but has never touched an acoustic guitar before - and my son, who just started to learn to read music, and has never touched an electric guitar before.

I would like to improve my son's music reading ability at the same time as us both learning the guitar together. It would be great if we could use the same tutor book.

Oh well, a new year, a new instrument!

Steel strung or nylon?

What style of music do you want to play?

Steel strung. I've been playing it for three days now, and I've learnt five chords. It's great fun, but I'm finding that if I play it for any more than about 15 minutes, the tips of my LH fingers get really sore! Not going to practice today as I have orchestra tonight so don't want sore fingers for orchestra rehearsal. Will resume tomorrow!

Guitars keep appearing mysteriously in my house too - funny coincidence!

Take it easy if you are finding the fingers get sore, they will toughen up. You have chosen the harder route from that point of view by having steel strings: although your viola experience should have toughened your fingers quite a bit, a steel strung guitar has tighter, probably thicker strings and you will probably be both pressing in a slightly different place in the finger tip, and pressing harder, especially as the chords will feel unfamiliar.
Assuming the strings are properly set up and not too high, just remember to keep seeing if you can get the chord sounding clean (eg no buzzing but all the notes present and correct) with less pressure.

To answer your original question, I'm not sure there is a book that would readily suit both yourself and your lad, but in principle, if you are both willing to play stuff outside the chords or electric style, any tutor, such as The Guitarists' Way, would at least get you going...albeit without any technical help along the way. There are various beautifully produced books you might find in book shops that purport to show you how to play all kinds of guitar. They might work or they might just be written to order and published as presents...