I want to buy DD twelve books for Christmas that she'll enjoy but that will also help her with GCSE

My year 8 DD really enjoyed the book thief recently.

The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke

The Last Theorem is a story of one man’s mathematical obsession, and a celebration of the human spirit and the scientific method. It is also a gripping intellectual thriller in which humanity, facing extermination from all-but-omnipotent aliens, the Grand Galactics, must overcome differences of politics and religion and come together . . . or perish. In 1637, the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scrawled a note in the margin of a book about an enigmatic theorem: “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” He also neglected to record his proof elsewhere. Thus began a search for the Holy Grail of mathematics–a search that didn’t end until 1994, when Andrew Wiles published a 150-page proof. But the proof was burdensome, overlong, and utilized mathematical techniques undreamed of in Fermat’s time, and so it left many critics unsatisfied–including young Ranjit Subramanian, a Sri Lankan with a special gift for mathematics and a passion for the famous “Last Theorem.”When Ranjit writes a three-page proof of the theorem that relies exclusively on knowledge available to Fermat, his achievement is hailed as a work of genius, bringing him fame and fortune. But it also brings him to the attention of the National Security Agency and a shadowy United Nations outfit called Pax per Fidem, or Peace Through Transparency, whose secretive workings belie its name. Suddenly Ranjit–together with his wife, Myra de Soyza, an expert in artificial intelligence, and their burgeoning family–finds himself swept up in world-shaking events, his genius for abstract mathematical thought put to uses that are both concrete and potentially deadly.

Oh bother too late! But FWIW I'd add Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

I realise you said you've decided but make it a baker's dozen OP and throw in Room. If she's used to fanfic she might want something page-turner-y and that and The Handmaid's Tale will definitely fill that need.

great thread thanks, I have been thinking of something similar for my yr 9 DD.

Books by Tracy Chevalier - Girl with the Pearl Earring, or Remarkable Creatures (about Mary Anning the fossil collector);
The Time Machine, H G Wells
Fahrenheit 451

For a play idea, DD studied Blood Brothers and enjoyed that.

Here to Eternity - an anthology of poetry by Andrew Motion is a good start for poetry. A bit deep in places but good for someone keen to stretch ideas and ideas which sounds like your DD.

An interesting point, and would explain my disquiet.
It's certainly a remarkable book, but isn't one that I had considered for my 14 year old daughter

A room with a view

Yes to My Family and Other Animals

The House of Sixty Fathers (if interested in world history)

1984

Midnights children (partition of India / Pakistan - fascinating. Maybe when she's older though)

Has she read Anne Frank's diary

Fahrenheit 451

Finding your nicest local library, and going once a month or so, would be a nice thing to do together? Especially if it has good coffee.

errorofjudgement - I think it's one of those books that you read differently at different ages. Enjoy the political distopia as a teen...become more disturbed as the parallels with real life become apparent as you age...read it in a whole different way once you have your own kids...etc...

I found the hand maids tale really disturbing, I read it in my early twenties.
But from this thread I think i must be out of synch, as the consensus is its fine for a 13/14 year old

Two books that I studied for GCSE that really shape my views of literature.
Wilfred Owen's War requiem both reading the poem and listening to Benjamin Britten's music.
A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow.

For the play either My Mother Said I never should by Charlotte Kearney or carol churchill's top girls

Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy)
I remember reading it when I was about her age; it was the first feminist novel I read.

Not Ted Hughes. I'd recommend Plath or Duffy for a teenage girl.

If she's into gender politics than Ibsen's, 'A Doll's House' or 'Hedda Gabler' would be good, or maybe Shaw's 'Pygmalion.'

Or you could go with some drama classics such as, 'Waiting for Godot' or Miller's 'A View from the Bridge' or 'Death of a Salesman.'

Yes to, 'Lord of the Flies.'

Wilkie Collins, 'The Woman in White' or maybe (but I don't like it) Susan Hill's, 'The Woman in Black.'

Trout wuthering heights is one of the few classical novels that I could not finish way too much dialect which imo got in the way of the story

Emily Dickinson for poetry.

My life in my hands (Alison Lapper book) for non-fiction. OH, and The Year of Living Biblically. She'll love that if she's into gender politics. I'm sure I read books like The World According to Garp at that age.

Wow, can't believe she struggles with English but can get thru all that.
Nother grammar school thread in disguise, One supposes

DD is getting constant gender-politics feed from online. You have my sympathies.

DD loves the smug Stephen Frye books. I toyed with getting her to read Withering Heights she is already obsessed with sex but we both reckon that the old-fashioned style of English would put her off reading all together.

Thanks Crochet

Oh, and to go with / expand her Japanese stuff:

Number 9 Dream

The wind up bird chronical / Dance dance dance

The way we live now

The age of miracles

On the beach

Oranges are not the only fruit

My first thought for her age and your description of her was The Handmaid's Tale, which you have already!

Oh great thread! Following so I can compile a list for Ds

Reading widely helps you get a lot more out of the books that you do read. You are able to understand the context, the allusions, the vocabulary, the things that are being suggested more subtly, the themes, etc. Just being told about the Great Depression at the time of reading Of Mice and Men, but not really ever having heard about it before, not realising what life might have been like, having no idea about what the American Dream represented etc, makes it harder to really understand the book. But if you've read various other books set around the time, even children's books, you just have a sense of what the world was like.

Or trying to explain some poetry to a pupil, as I was a few months ago, when she didn't really have an idea of the degree to which sex outside/before marriage might have been disapproved of, or why; another had little idea of how important religion was, or the role of women, etc. so all of that had to be explained before the poems would make much sense.

Many of the children I worked with hadn't heard of the British empire, for example. Or had little idea when Darwin and his ideas were becoming well known, etc., etc. So when reading books that had themes of science/religion in, much of it went over their heads; similarly about articles and stories written from former colonies - the pupils didn't really get that their perspective might have been ignored for years, that some of the books/poetry had unconscious bias to it. They knew little about the first world war and what life might have been like before it.

But a lot of that broader experience can be gained from many other books, children's books, films, etc. I learned a lot of historical type things from a diary series of children's books written by well known children's authors, each taking a different historical time period, and writing from the view of a child at the time. And there are tons of historical children's books that don't have the history as the main subject, but are just set in that time period, and you can absorb so much general stuff about the time as a result. (No, not always perfectly accurate, but a whole lot more accurate that some of the misconceptions that 15 year olds might have otherwise!). You also get an idea of language, how words have changed, famous sayings and proverbs, how words are used differently in other times and places, and so on.