What next for book-obsessed DD16 who has “read everything worth reading”

I didn’t know that. I just remember it being huge when I was in the six form.

It’s funny and quite sweet that she thinks she has run out of things worth reading!

Has she read all the classics of Russian literature- Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov etc?
I loved Tolstoy as a young bookworm.

Various 20th century literature from all over- Italo Calvino, Simone de Beauvoir, Nabakov etc ?

Something different might be the original gothic novels that inspired Northanger Abbey like Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. Modern gothic like Shirley Jackson’s work.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is largely autobiographical rather than fiction. The updated edition is especially sad because it reveals that his son, Chris, was later murdered during a robbery.

Margaret Atwood?

I can't recommend The Pact by Jodi Picoult enough. If she's usually into heavier books but you're looking for something slightly lighter then it could work as it's all fiction and the "difficult" chapters are spaced out with a bit of fluff. It's about a teenage suicide pact though, so perhaps worth you reading the blurb and deciding if it's suitable for her.

(The gist of it is that two kids grow up next door and fall in love, they make a suicide pact but only one of them ends up dead and the other is accused of murder. You read about their past and the remaining child's present, and you get a front seat view of the court proceedings which I found fascinating when I was 16. You also see it all from multiple points of view, i.e each individual parent as well as the lawyer.)

I read The Catcher in the Rye (J.D Salinger) at 16. I also read George Orwell and Graham Greene. Doctor Fischer of Geneva (Greene) had me on the edge of my seat with “The Bomb Party.”

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier is an excellent read for a young girl.
Seconding Agatha Christie plus for brilliant psychological mysteries, Barbara Vine. Superb

How could I forget Mary Beard's Women and Power? Short. Brilliant.

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All of Oliver Sacks' books are fascinating, and pretty easy reads as far as pop-sci goes. But she should be aware he was somewhat elastic with the facts. The medical issues are all real, but the details of individual patients are significantly embroidered.

I second Invisible Women - things every woman should know. And if she's interested in psychology then also Gina Rippon"s The Gendered Brain. The latter is not easy reading - it's very well and clearly written but densely packed with facts and goes into quite a lot of technical detail - but it's a really good grounding both in the neurobiology and in the pitfalls of scientific research in general. She'll come out knowing how to spot junk science, and poor reporting even of good science. It will also give her a massive 'must also read' of history, philosophy, psychology, and other women in science.

Biographies/autobiographies: Diane Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist). Lee Miller (Can't remember the title, the one written by her son. Might just be called 'Lee'.) Jane Goodall's In the Shapwmof Man and sequel Through a Window are primarily biographies of the chimps but also an autobiography of herself and how she came to work and live with them

Novels. If she wants something decidedly off the wall (with some interesting bits of history tucked into the weirdness) Tibor Fischer's The Collector Collector. The narrator of which is a sentient, shape-shifting, ancient ceramic. Slightly less weird, but still a bit nuts and with a glossary of unusual words beginning with Z, is The Thought Gang by the same author.

Asimov - the short stories are a good way in, and with some quite thought-provoking aspects.

Ursula le Guin. The Earthsea series is the light 'on ramp' for her work. She may feel a little old for the first couple of books in that series but you need them really to understand the cast of characters and world building for what follows. The later books in the series are more developed, mature and feminist. After that, there's a lot of le Guin to chose from and most very different from each other.

Pratchett. The first couple of Discworld novel are a bit shaky, so she'd be better starting with Mort or - if she likes Shakespere - Weird Sisters.

Jerome K Jerome, Three Men in and Boat and the followup Three Men on the Bummel are excellent light summer reading. And if she gets on with Edwardian humour she can then try the rather more ascerbic Saki.

And for light relief, Inspector Montalbano.

www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

When I was a teenager a BBC list came out “100 greatest reads” or something. I worked my way through most of it. Might be a bit outdated as this was early 2000s but a good start.

I was thinking of suggesting War & Peace, I think I was around 16 or 17 when I first read it. But it is a commitment! Possibly start off with Anna Karenina?

For light fluff, I read a lot of Barbra Taylor Bradford at that age! Also all the Agatha Christie novels.

DD16 has just read The Power which she enjoyed.

I just found the reading list suggested for DS1 for the summer:

1. If you are looking for a summer read, we have the author of Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz coming in to school next year. It's a bit like Jason Bourne.
2. It's the 300th anniversary of the publication of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift this year. You've no doubt heard about it, but have you read it?
3. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen - the English-speaking world's answer to Tolstoy and the most amazing book.
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy - the unseen passage this year. Awfully violent and yet full of love. You'll finish this in three days.
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - one of the defining dystopias of the 20th century
6. Bleak House by Charles Dickens - his greatest book by spme distance.
7. The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor - you will understand when you get there.
8. Middlemarch by George Eliot - regarded by many as the greatest novel ever written (I think you're not ready to read this book perhaps till you're 30. Still - give a go - you'll see through a glass darkly how good it is).
9. The Drowning People by Richard Mason - 500 words written each morning when he was a schoolboy. The book sold over 5 million copies in over 120 countries by the time Mason was 21.

I agree it's not 'cute'.

(Also, on the Oliver Sacks recommendation, bear in mind that he's now known to have made up many of the details of his 'case studies' and, while they're interesting and beautifully-written, should be regarded as autofiction rather than science writing/non-fiction.)

Maybe consider authors outside the English canon?
DD is also an eater of books and has got very into the show Gilmore Girls. There is a Rory Gilmore reading list that I can see her doing:
Rory Gilmore Reading List: Complete Challenge (400+ Books) | The Candid Cover

There is a New York Times book on literary pilgrimages called Footsteps (the title is slightly extended) which gathers together travel column writing based particularly on places that are central to some writers' work. It's an interesting read to combine with thoughts on travel or seeking out similar locations to look around and books to unlock them.

I am a big fan of Trollope. I actually think his female characters are written with far more nuance and sympathy than those of most of his male contemporaries. I think his writing on the way that women could become involved in politics while being disenfranchised is fascinating. I do like Dickens, of course, but his female characters are rarely multi-dimensional and tend to fit into very narrow social confines. Trollope's female characters are frequently much more ambitious and intelligent and are allowed a degree of moral ambiguity, while retaining their heroine status, which Dickens does not tend to afford to his female leads.
I loved Victorian literature as a kid, still do, and since most Victorian novels are incredibly long it should keep even the most voracious reader busy for a long time!
Some of my other favourites are Vanity Fair, which I still re-read occasionally with great enjoyment, a truly remarkable historical novel with an extremely problematic but completely fascinating heroine! I also loved Jane Eyre, such a great novel with a really strong and quite quirky female lead, which I have always preferred to Wuthering Heights, which always left me pretty cold. Maybe because I never found Heathcliffe anything but troubling and repellent as the 'romantic hero'! In fact, I think the rest of Charlotte Bronte's work is great too, particularly Villette, definitely my favourite Bronte, though I do enjoy The Tenant of Wildfell Hall!
I am a big fan of George Eliot too, particularly Daniel Deronda and Adam Bede, both extremely compelling stories with genuinely intriguing and well-drawn characters.
One of my favourite Victorian novels is Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant, which doesn't get talked about much but which I have always found charming. It is quite a gentle, low-key novel but an interesting glimpse into middle-class provincial life in a small Victorian town.
For a bit of light reading, I always fall back on a bit of trusted Austen, Mansfield Park probably being my favourite, though I love them all. The Sherlock Holmes stories are also a lovely comfort read for me!

Works by Haruki Murakami are worth a read, I enjoyed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Fyodor Dostoevsky observations of the human condition are astute but of an age, Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov are well worthy of a read.

War and Peace, I managed it around 14. Had to look up words like soiree and samava though!

Oscar Wild short stories are very relatable to today and quite easy to read.

I get almost all my book recommendations from booktube.
Tell her to go on you tube and search the name of her favourite book, someone will have posted a review of it and this way she will find book tubers who have similar tastes to her/ read similar books, she can then watch their other videos to find reccomendations.
The only downside to this is I have now have several book tubers that I follow and spend almost as much time watching book tube as I do reading.

Older stuff is probably good because it won't be too explicit...
I'd recommend The Brontes - my faves are Agnes Grey, Villette, Shirley,
Then Thomas Hardy: Jude the obscure is brilliant, the mayor of Casterbridge
Mill on the Floss is one of my favourite books of all time too.
Dickens? Nicholas Nickelby is quite readable, and Great Expectations. I've almost finished (the audiobook of) Bleak House, which reminded me that some Dickens is unbelievably long-winded...

Herman Hesse Siddhartha
Richard Bach. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
John Fowles. The Magus

A few non fiction ideas

• Humankind
• Difficult Women
• House of Glass
• how to win an information war

Can I recommend the author Robin Hobb - I absolutely promise you your DD will be hooked on her books. There are 4 trilogies back to back, so 12 books in all, and they are honestly the best thing I've ever read. I recommended them recently to my DD's best friend (same age as yours) who has become so obsessed with them she is absolutely racing through them and is on book 5 already after just a couple of months. Here is the link to the first trilogy: The Complete Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest [Paperback] : Amazon.co.uk: Books

Ooh - or Agatha Christie? I only started reading her books this year and they are such good fun