Book recommendations for 17 year old ds please.

teacher22 are you Michael Gove!?

Toni Morrison, who to my knowledge has never been on an A level syllabus, is a living black woman, as is Zadie Smith. Both great writers. And enjoyed by boys ime.

Most students take A level English because they appreciate its value and worth. They don't seem particularly invested in the actual books on offer. The only writer most boys actively avoid is Austen.

In spare time, boys or girls can read whatever they like : it's not usually Hardy, I have to say! I love Hardy with a passion but he is not very fashionable at the moment.

I trawled through the OCR spec recently : a common route through (not the one I chose) meant you could study an entire course devoid of any femalle writers (well, three poems) , or any writers who are not white, thereby missing out some very rich writing and ignoring the great diversity of literature.

Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books
Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War books - two trilogies
Pat Barker's WW1 series starting with Regeneration
Helen Dunmore, The Siege

Robert Graves. Goodbye To All That
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
James Baldwin, Another Country
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
David Downing's Station Series starting with Zoo Station
Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
Jane Gardam, Old Filth
Emile Zola, Germinal
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

English seems to be a subject which is fast being eradicated by the ditching of 'the canon' and literary merit in favour of PC issues and feminism. Boys are not going to be attracted to the piffling choices on offer at A and degree levels.

I knew the rot had set in when I used, as an A level English teacher, to attend grade standardisation meetings at which the exam board examiners would utter such gems as: 'We have had enough of dead white men. Now we want living black women.'

Dead white men! Like.... Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, Keats, Milton and so on.

But, of course, there are still boys who will read and great writers for them to read. Thank goodness.

(Sorry. Rant over.)

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Station Eleven
I am Pilgrim
The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks (might be a bit hard to get hold of)
The Girl with all the Gifts

Congratulations to the OP on raising a literary son.

What about Nick Herron's 'Slow Horses'. It'd a spy story with a cracking pace and is also, in parts, hilarious. The 'hero', Jackson Lamb, is a comic character of genius. And, if you like the book, there are sequels.

(As for Jane Austen, my DH, who is 61 has just picked up 'Mansfield Park' for re-reading and is loving it.)

Don't get me wrong: there are fewer lit, theatre and MFL candidates by far than STEM, just like in state schools, but the sexes taking them are really reversed. Loads and loads (M and F) do art though; all is not lost.

I think, sadly, that might be the difference. Numbers of A level English are dwindling in state schools. It's not seen as 'important' enough and very much felt by students that they 'should ' be doing sciences. The very clever ones soemtimes take A level to supplement the sciences, but then drop it when they discover they no longer need 4 subjects. It's very sad. MFL, of course, is in an even worse pickle.

I am cheered to hear that there are reading males!

Ps. I have This Thing of Darkness on my shelf, unread. Sounds like I should push it ds's way.

Piggy - absolutely not the case with ds and his male A level lit friends. They're all super nerds, arty, classics and mythology minded, history geeks. At his school, it's the girls who are focused on career goals and money and the like and the boys who waft about quoting poetry (yes, it is a private school...)

A lot have already been mentioned above, but pretty much anything by:

Dan Brown
Lee Child
Andy McDermott
Clive Cussler
Stephen King
Neil Gaiman
Terry Pritchett
James Patterson
Anthony Horowitz
JRR Tolkien
Michael Crichton
Jo Nesbo
Robert Galbraith
Richard Chizmar
Dean Koontz

Just a few there

The Universe Versus Alex Woods is terrific. It includes discussions on assisted suicide though, just in case that might upset him.

Ooh, has he found Fowles yet? I reckon 17 is the perfect age for The Magus...

and non fiction stuff like Whit Teeth

Sorry : I have no idea how that sentence was actually meant to end!

They like to think they are discovering the modern condition
Gatsby is actually good for this reason
Teenagers all like that book

Ohhhh - is that why I couldn't bear it in my forties? I can't even remember whether I finished it or not...

Btw , my experience of boys who do A level English is that they do it because it is 'useful' and a'facilitating subject'. I reckon they must be secret Mumsnetters!

Also, Muncih (mentioned above). My 17 year old DS nearly read that book, so it must be OK.

Do you have or like cats? I think boys should read gentle books sometimes and The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa is the loveliest, softest book : but it is really about being a man who represses emotion. My 14 yo DS and me both loved it.

Hi bertrand : as a teacher of A level, you'd think I'd know! But boys doing A level English is a dwindling thing and those that do it eitehr don't talk about what they read or don't read

However, I cna say those who do liked White Teeth, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared and non fiction stuff like White Teeth. As far as set texts go , some of them liked God Of Small Things and Atonement was popular with the boys.

Boys often like non fiction and Sapiens was a hit.

I recently read This Thing of Darkness ... it's amazing and definitely would eb enjoyed by a clever boy, especially if he likes science , ethics and/or history, too.

Lots of good books about politics and Trump, too, at the moment!

The Secret History is one of my A Level class's favourite books. I found it overwrouhgt , but pretentiousteenagers seem to like it.

I shall keep thinking about this because I love the idea of a reading boy!

Sorry for all the typos - typing while dog walking does not lead to good proofing!

Not read Lisey's Stoey - when i do i shall think about cars now!

I love Duma Key. Possibly my favourite of his. Although I can't remember a dog.

I do agree anout SK having it in for dogs. Cats are fine but dogs not. Stopped reading Needful Things because there is yet another and it just feels unoriginal now. Which is extraordinary because I don't know any other writer with his range of plots and styles.

I've decided after also not finishing The Shining (I thought at the time it was purely style putting me off to go on a SK break. But as I've brought lots recently I don't know how long until I will crack.

@MipMipMip - I don't like that bit either. SK has a way of writing upsetting things about dogs and I always worry when one appears in his books. I got a bit worried about the gerbils as well. I still love Buick 8 though, people don't seem to like it as much as some of his others but I think it's very good.

I have a pet theory that the Buick has something to do with Booya Moon from Lisey's story. I don't think anybody else agrees with me though but I get the same feeling from Buick 8, Lisey's Story, and Duma Key so to me they are all connected.

Duma Key is a good but odd one actually. I read it when it first came out but then I had absolutely no memory about it except I remembered the dog (another upsetting bit) and that the man started painting stuff. When I reread it I felt like I was reading it for the first time. The villain is one of my favourites now though.

Buick 8 really upset me because of the way the dog does. But I'm a wuss!

If he wants some really well-written military/adventure/mystery (humorous) sci-fi then may I recommend Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga? The best book to start with for a 17-year-old boy is probably The Warrior's Apprentice - which starts when the hero, Miles Vorkosigan is 17.

A Mnetter introduced me to them, and I have read them all and loved them - and I never thought I would read and enjoy a book with a spaceship on the cover.

The Handmaid's Tale - I'm worried it will be seen as a girl's book so I'm taking my chance to suggest it to a boy while mine is still too young for it.

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Or Insomnia (in my opinion just as good as the usual favourites of IT or The Stand). Also IT. And The Stand. Maybe Buick 8 because that has a boy of 17 or so as one of the main characters.

If he wants something a little odd and not in the usual book format, Discovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler is good. It's about a man whose twin sons go missing in a dystopian town called Scarfolk, which seems to be stuck in the 1970's but with everything a little skewed. A lot of the story is based on a file of evidence that includes old 70's posters and leaflets and references to things. It's very hard to describe but there is a website that will give you a good idea of the content of the book.

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, if he hasn't read it already.

I was speaking to a 17 year old boy yesterday and he was saying he's reading and loving the series of books about Hannibal Lecter. I think Red Dragon is the first, obviously Silence of the Lambs is one of them. He was very enthusiastic about them.