What can my dds read next?

[BelligerentGhoul]

DD1 (15) is an avid reader and in the last two years or so has read books including: Madame Bovary, Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, all of Jane Austen's, The Road, The Handmaid's tale, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. She's now working her way through Evelyn Waugh and demanding more, more, more.

What can I recommend her that she'll enjoy? She says she wants modern rather than classics for now.

DD2 (13) claims to hate reading (I am sure she is a changeling) but is currently reading Lord Of The Flies because she may be working on it in Drama. What can I get her next, that won't feel like 'work' to her and will grip her?

Many thanks indeed! :)

Nobody?

Where are all the readers when I need them?!

Not sure if these will suit, but here are some suggestions from a list at dd's school (in America, if that matters):

Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Ashe, Days of Grace
Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Bronte, Jane Eyre
Buck, The Good Earth
Card, Ender?s Game, Speaker for the Dead, OR
Ender?s Shadow
Crichton, Prey (or other books by this author)
Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Du Maurier, Rebecca
Earley, The Blue Star
Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying
Gies, Anne Frank Remembered
Grisham, A Time to Kill
Gunther, Death Be Not Proud
Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Hersey, Hiroshima
Hesse, Siddhartha
Jenkins, Walk Across America
Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Krakauer, Into Thin Air
Mayle, A Year in Provence
McBride, The Color of Water
Mishima, The Sound of Waves
Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
Orwell, 1984
Potok, The Chosen
Quinn, Ishmael
Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich
Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court
Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Watson, Montana, 1948
Wiesel, Night
Wright, Black Boy
Zusak, The Book Thief

I know this is more of the classics, but has she read Zola? I was quite into them as a pseudo-trendy teen.

Oooh I would never have thought of Zola. Possibly not what a 15 year old would define as 'modern' though! :)

That is a v broad list Earlybird. She's read some of them but I will peruse it properly tomorrow.

Thank you both.

More please? :)

YY to Rebecca and 1984 - dd1 would like both of those.

I read a lot of Stephen King and Virginia Andrews at that age...

Invest in 'The Ultimate Teen Book Guide' (ISBN 978-1408104378). Should offer lots of great suggestions for both DD's - be prepared to spend a fortune though as loads of new, classic and forgotten books are recommended.......

For the 15yo:

Pigtopia, by Kitty Fitzgerald.
Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch.

If she's quite mature, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky.

Books by SE Hinton & Paul Zindel were mainstays of my teen years and suitable for the 13yo.

There are loads of website giving ideas for teenage readers, just google for them.

I expect DS to be plowing thru the Star Wars novels at 15, CaptainNancy .

Me too Captain Nancy, so don't snigger! :)

DD1 says she's too frightened to read Stephen King! Having seen her, I'm sure you know that actually she's not frightened of much really...

Ragged - can you please tell me more about a couple of those? It's good to find books I've never heard of!

MadameHooch - thanks for the rec.

I've read Highest Tide. It's a coming of age tale of a lad in America, set during the long summer vacation. Are his parents splitting up?

A nice read. Pleasant.

Oh ragged (do I know you?)- I loved all S E Hinton books when I was that age, and the films they made of them were excellent too. Paul Zindel was great too- I still think of the chocolate covered ants from Pigman!

BG- I cannot imagine her being scared of things at all! Having said that, I seem to remember 'It' was v scary, and lots of the others were eerie.

I seem to remember reading Heinlein, P K Dick, Harry Harrison, Asimov, Terry Pratchett at that age. Does she like Sci-fi at all?
Lois Duncan too (teenage). Earlybird's list looks good, though am surprised at Mishima and Heinlein (yes, I read Heinlein at that age, but I think it was too old for me really, and Mishima is very adult.)

Maybe pop in to library, and speak to Mary- she'd have loads of ideas.

OOh I forgot about Mary! Only saw her t'other day too!

She doesn't like sci-fi or fantasy, which is a shame, as I'm sure she'd like some of them if she'd give them a go.

She deffo wants adult stuff, rather than teenage.

I suppose I ought to chuck The Colour Purple and co at her really.

Colour Purple excellent idea... To Kill A Mockingbird too?
Cathcer in the Rye, I think I started Capote around 15 too.

I know it is not strictly speaking modern, but what about Testament of Youth? Also if she likes Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford might be good - Love in a Cold Climate etc.
For modern I would thoroughly recommend Carol Shields - Unless is a fantastic book that I could see a teenager relating to.

BG- would this thread help at all?

Any Salinger - Glass family stuff esp.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
David Copperfield/Bleak House
Other Margaret Atwoods - Cat's Eye, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
The Go-Between - LP Hartley
Books by Rose Tremain
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde (and sequels if enjoyed)
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Time-Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy
Any or all of Ian McEwan's, esp. Atonement
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Some Virginia Woolf?
Some John Wyndham

Strangely enough, I offered her Perfume yesterday and she turned her nose up at it! Ditto The Good Soldier.

She was mildly interested in Lolita (one of my favourite books ever) but am not sure - what do people think?

Some great ideas here. Thanks. :)

Anything for book-hating dd2 btw? :)

Nancy Mitford and Stella Gibbons. Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Tyler and Geraldine Brooks for the older DD.

Younger one is harder if she's not a natural reader, she needs to "click" with a genre, and I'm guessing it may not have anything to do with LOTF .I remember my brothers at that age - one dyslexic and neither natural readers - loving anything with a bit of adult humour in. They raced through the Spike Milligan books, the Bill Brysons and oddly, James Herriots. Can you tap into her sense of humour?

If not I would go for a non-gory but gripping mystery for DD2. Dorothy L Sayers or Agatha Christie, I loved them at that age. But then we also read Mills and Boons too so maybe I am no judge

Well, she read LOTF in about 3 hours and loved it. Now says she doesn't want to read anything else!

I think she will need teenage stuff tbh, as she's so easily turned off. She's a brilliant reader and always has been, just claims not to like it now. Grrrrr.

Geraldine Brooks a great suggestion - she's the one who wrote March and the one about Eyam, right?

March and Year of wonders (amazing) and people of the book. I want to write like her when I grow up
I find the early Barbara Kingsolvers similar too - Prodigal Summer and Poisonwood Bible in particular. The Poisonwood bible is narrated by teenage girls actually so might be a winner.

For DD2 what about Gormenghast or something a bit weirdy ?

Yeurgh - Geraldine Brooks: awful. Esp the Eyam book.

Totally recommend Lolita.
Also the Stella Gibbons, CCF.

Depends whether she likes period books as well - same period as the Good Soldier, would be All Quiet on the Western Front, or Testament of Youth, or something like AS Byatt's The Children's Book (though it does suppose a certain amount of knowledge of the era).

For bookhating DD2 (what age?), I'd also say Agatha Christie, or SE Hinton. Depends on her tastes - horror or fantasy or sci-fi or historical or contemporary. I read yards of Jilly Cooper and Christie, and at least some of Virginia Andrews and Jean Plaidy at that age, as well as other stuff.

Ooops, sorry, you mentioned already your DD2 was 13

I wonder whether your youngest might like Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson - the first book to make my bookworm daughter cry (so I tried it, and ended up crying too).