Book recommendations for 17 year old ds please.

Salinger?

• A reed, dammit spellcheck, not a read..

A day in the life of Ivan Denisovic
Agree Camus, The Plague or The Outsider
Down and out in Paris and London, if he’s read Animal Farm and 1984
The Periodic Table or any other Primo Levi
Bonfire of the Vanities
Eminent Victorians
Father and Son or Erewhon
The Psychopath Test
Christ stopped at Eboli
A Child of the Jago
Tristram Shandy
Humphrey Clinker
Confessions of a Justified Sinner
One of the Marquez novels, one hundred years? Love in the time if cholera? Chronicle? Short stories?
Cold Comfort Farm, Flashman, Wilt, one of the David Lodges? O’Brian, Hemmingway?
Kincaid Adventures in the Rifle Brigade
Nevil Shute, eg No Highway, Trustee from the Toolroom
A Philip Roth?
Bryson’s A short History
Gombrich The Story of Art or Meditations on a hobby horse
The Iliad
The saga of Erik the Red
The black swan ( Taleb)
Gide?
Tschiffely’s Ride
A short walk in the Hindu Kush
A read shaken by the wind
A time of gifts
In Xanadu ( v funny at this age)
In Patagonia
The Pavilion on the Links
The Riddle of the Sands ( with the excellent article of why it was a comma that hanged him)
Sassoon Memoirs of...
Graves, I Claudius,
The ragged trousered philanthropists

I agree with Hesse, Mann, etc.

Can highly recommend John Irving- The World According to Garp and A Prayer For Owen Meany

Ian Fleming’s Bond novels -Casino Royale, Dr No and all of those
Gnomon
Iain Bank’s Culture series - all fab.

Anything by Linwood Barclay or Mark Billingham if he like crime related stuff.

Roddy Doyle is good too.

The Godfather
Altered Carbon

these have already been mentioned up-thread:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
1984

Had a look upstairs;
Lots of bill bryson and Ben McIntyre.
He has really enjoyed Andrew Rawnsley's 'the end of the Party'

My 17 yo has just finished Sapiens on holiday which he enjoyed.

Then he read The Old Man and The Sea which I had taken, in an afternoon.

And then a Jack Reacher in the airport because there was nothing else and no Internet.

My 19 yo is enjoying Nineteen Eight Four and also likes Paul Auster.

More obvious ones - has he read Spies by Frayn and Oranges by Winterson? Both loved by ds too.

Your ds and mine (also 17) have enjoyed the same stuff before, I think, Bertrand.

My ds is really enjoying Paul Auster - has read The Music of Chance twice and various others.

He also loves Tom McCarthy and especially enjoyed Remainder.

He's doing Austen for A level and loves her

If he likes fantasy/adventure then Paul Hoffman’s Left Hand of God trilogy is amazing.

Similarly, Joe Abercrombie’s books are amazing.

I’m currently working my way through Robin Hobb’s work.

My 17 ds has just finished The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Ben Goldacre eg Bad Pharma
John O'Farrell eg Things can only get Better
Scoop; Evelyn Waugh
Kerouac, On the Road
Kinflicks by Lisa Alther
Bounce by Matthew Syed
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Anna Karenina
Gormenghast
;
My 17 yo DS reads a lot alongside online games but reads no fiction! I'll go and have a look at his piles of books

Iain banks -the crow road/ the wasp factory.

These are some I've seen DS1 reading

Do androids dream of electric sheep, Phillip k Dick.

Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz .

Hunting the Hangman, Howard Linskey

Ah, I've avoided Eat Pray Love but really enjoyed the Signature of All Things. And I don't follow her on anything because I gather she's really annoying! But I'm glad that didn't put me of her book, because it was one of my best reads last year. Loved the length of history it covered, loved the weord main character, loved the subject matter and loved the whole Darwin thing.

God, Elizabeth Gilbert? Really?
Mine would only read her to annoy me.

Why on earth did you forbid Jane Austen?

Has he read bronte sisters, Orwell, Dickens, catcher in the rye, waterland, what about 'old' school readers like z for Zachariah, color purple, to sir with love, walkabout, the count of monte cristo, the scarlet pimpernel, moby dick,

Boys own adventure type stuff - James Bond, Bourne, le carré, Len Deighton, Tom Clancy, James Paterson...

Catch 22
The Third Policeman
Anything by John Fowles
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead is quite serious but others are more delightfully flippant
All Quiet on the Western Front

Ah to be 17 again. This latter is not a book just a whimsy.

Yy to the Madaddam trilogy.

Also The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert.

The Poisonwood Bible (and any other Kingsolver)

1984

Any Sarah Waters

Galieleos Daughter Dava Sobel
The Map That Changed The World Simon Winchester

Arthur and George Julian Barnes

Off the literary track a bit:

David Nichols? Emma Donoghue?

I've been over and over this post for auto-corrects, hope I've finally got them all out!

DS1 read P and P at about 17 and enjoyed it. DS2 picked up P and P when he was 12, loved it and then read Emma as well. And then watched all of the BBC P and P by himself. So you can make an Austen fan pretty young.

He has just finished The Count of Monte Cristo. The Moonstone is good. I second Wolf Hall and the Handmaid's Tale and The Secret History (DS1 loved that). Dorothy L Sayers?

Bertrand, good point!

Shantaram is a cracking read, really gripped me last summer - is based on true story, and I think would be suitable for a 17 yo boy. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantaram_(novel)

John Buchan, presume he’s read Hitchikers Guide etc, more recently I loved Night Circus and We are all Completely Beside Ourselves, Primo Levi, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Laurie Lee, Bill Bryson (I find them samey after a while but after a break they make me chortle).