Adult fiction for lazy 16 year old DS?

[mysteryfairy]

My 16 year old DS does read which is something but is incredibly lazy. He constantly rereads Charlie Higson, Robert Muchamore, Hunger Games etc. I would never have believed when he was at first school and totally enthused by Alex Rider that he would still be rereading his adventures now!

There's nothing wrong with rereading old favourites or enjoying an easy read but I would like to see him challenged and stretched too.

I've been trying to get him to read adult fiction and have had success with contemporary fiction if it is bleak enough e.g. The Wasp Factory and The Cement Garden went down well. Anything that is remotely challenging doesn't work - he won't read Irvine Welsh due to the Scottish dialogue and rules out a lot of American lit I think just because it tends to be slightly different stylistically. He thought The Catcher in the Rye was rubbish.

Phone just posted before I'd finished but it's probably pretty obvious I'm looking for ideas for him!

Robert Harris? Enigma or Fatherland, or Pompeii are all good.

Stephen King - The Talisman is great, or the Bachman books?

Has he read Lord Of The Rings?

He's read Lord of the Rings.

I'm just thinking that some of the issue might be that he lacks empathy/imagination so even the books I mentioned have teenage protagonists not much harder to relate to than teen super spies etc.

I read Pompeii when it happened to be in a holiday villa but even though he had read the books he had taken umpteen times he was massively scornful of it for being set in Ancient Rome and wouldn't try it. He has thawed towards Rome a bit having read and enjoyed Julius Caesar for GCSE English lit so I could give it another go, thanks for suggestion.

I'm just reading Game of Thrones by George Martin... it was recommended by my 24 yr old DS. I think there are 5 in the series.

alastair maclean, john le carre, tom clancy,

How about classic reads like Sherlock Holmes, or some Agatha Christie? Or John Le Carre - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is ace.

Do you think he would like Woman in Black?

Michael Crichton - Jurassic park (darker than the film) or Prey has a hi-tec storyline.
James Bond
Wilbur Smith - the African ones

Not the original James Bond, they are dry & read as so dated (cold war stuff, esp)! Ditto Le Carre (imho).
Edgar Allan Poe short stories.
Ernest Hemingway
Stephen King deffo
The Outsiders (other stuff by SE Hinton).
Anything by Paul Zindel.
Flowers for Algernon
The Aztec Code by Steve Cole
Robert Westall
Freddy Forsyth (Day of the Jackal)
James Follet, Mirage is a page-turner
John Grisham
Douglas Adams
Robert Swindells
The Book Thief
Pigtopia (seriously twisted)
Amityville Horror

American Gods by Neil Gaiman, or Neverwhere by him.
Eye of the Tiger is a good stand alone one by Wilbur Smith, and very exciting.
Earth Abides, or Day of the Triffids maybe?
Divergent is a new "hunger gamesy" type one I read recently, and the second in the series is out any day now, I think it's called Insurgent.
John Connolly's books are pretty dark, the Charlie Parker ones - they are best read in order (and I can't remember the order offhand) and are very good.

Jonathon Wyndham, Ken Follett, Christopher Brookmyre? Recommend All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye by Brookmyre, Day of the Triffids or Midwich Cuckoos for Wyndham and anything by Follett. Ben Elton's pretty good too.

Dragons of Pern, too.
Lots of classic 1950s sci-fi, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Asimov, G. Orwell, Heinlein (plenty of age-appropriate nookie in them, too, that will convince him to give them a try ).
Earth Abides is very good, On the Beach, all those end of the world books.
Heart of Darkness, maybe, though I found it too dense.
Piers Anthony, Aldous Huxley, William Gibson, maybe Slaughterhouse Five, although I couldn't understand it when I was 16. Could try to steer him towards short story anthologies, too.

I find Ben Elton beats a dead horse, first half always good & rest dull dull dull.

Blimey, this thread reads like "diary of a teenage bookworm".

I was going to say Day of the Jackal too
Also the Eagle has landed by jack Higgins.
Both books I really enjoyed aged ~ 14/15
also the two war time Ken Follet's, Eye of the Needle and Key to Rebecca (I'm not sure his others would appeal to a boy).

Then give him Shogun - James Clavell

It's long, it needs loads of imagination and it will take him totally to another world.
One day I will find time to reread it!
(I spent 10 days not speaking to anyone at home or breaktime at school the first time.)

Wow thanks for all the suggestions. A few of them he's already read - slaughterhouse 5, John Wyndham, Neil gaiman so perhaps he isn't quite as lazy as I thought.

He read the book thief in y7 and got to the most tragic bit whilst in supervised reading in school and,to his mortification, cried. He has had various nasty injuries including incident coming off bike requiring 30+ stitches and broken foot at Leeds fest and that is the only time he has ever cried in front of his mates. Y8 parents eve took ages as so many teachers told me he had lent it to them and what a fantastic book it was!