Book recommendations for 17 year old ds please.

[BertrandRussell]

Ds has asked me to come up with 5 books he hasn’t read for the summer holidays. He’s a reader so all the obvious ones are gone. I’ve come up with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog and The Kite Runner. Any ideas?

The Godfather
Altered Carbon

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

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

Roddy Doyle is good too.

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

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

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.

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

Salinger?

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies.

Anthony Boudain - Kitchen Confidential
John Niven - How to Kill your Friends
James Ellroy - LA Confidential
Douglas Coupland - Microserfs or Hey Nostradamus
Jay McInerney - Bright Lights Big City
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex Delaware series
Matt Beaumont - e
Freakonomics

Oh, and

nick earls - zigzag street
John Birmingham - he died with a felefel in his hand

2 good Australian authors

I was the right age for Atonement then. If he likes war movies it might suit him.

Yup, freakenomics, and any of the football economics ones if he likes football.

If he likes football, The Bromley Boys, now out in film. M

Despite being part of a v vbooky family, our child has reverted to norm.

The Master and Margarita
Ham on Rye (or other Bukowski)
Any Hemingway, Faulkner, Capote
The Magus

At that age I really loved American authors - the grittier the better. so although I wasn’t a boy, I might suggest the following:
Paul Auster
Richard Brauigan (revenge of the Lawn - short stories)
S E Hinton (The Outsiders)
Charles Bukowski (very gritty, with poor view of women though. But great poetry and very honest writing)
East of Eden by Steinbeck.

BrauTigan

I think it was at this age I first enjoyed your own History of Western Philiosophy. But I assume you read it to him as a bed time story?
And your first volume of your autobiography, though I expect he knows your family stories.

The White Goddess, though not by you.

I also think that this was the age when I started to read historians and social theory, . In my day it was eg Christopher Hill, EP Thompson, Ladurie’s Montaillou, Asa Briggs, Willmott etc. How about Simon Schama, Sebag-Montefiore, Antony Beevor?

And now is the age to read Hardy if he hasn’t.

Tim Mackintosh -Smith’s travel stuff is delightful.
What about Utopia, Candide and Rasselas?

If he likes primary sources, Pepys 1660 and 1665 are jolly good, or an abridged Pepys and for scurrility Saint-Simon, again possibly abridged.

Prob too young for him in the first volume but if he hasn’t read it, the complete Once and Future King. The sword in the stone is young but the rest is harrowing, you will remember.

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

The Signature of All Things is outstanding, though, and a million miles from Eat, Pray, Love. No, it doesn't exactly scream 'teen boy', but then most of the stuff I read at that age wasn't targeted at teenage girls either.

V pleased to hear it, Bertrand!

I came on to say The Once and Future King Orlando! Only I think read all of it.

Seconding Nevil Shite- great call.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart (first in a trilogy)

The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson.

Shute. Nevill Shute.*

Iain Banks non science fiction books. Wasp factory was my favourite teenage read. James Kelman - how late it was, Irvine welshs short stories (can't remember it's name but I think he's maybe done more than one). I also used to love horror like Stephen King and James Herbert.
I also worked my way through the books your "supposed" to read like Catcher In the Rye, the Bell Jar, 1984 etc.
I Am Legend is also a great book, a short read and a million times better than the film

Mipmipmip love it!

This is a wonderful list..I think I shall print it out, read the unfamiliar and keep it by me in down days. Just looking at the books reminds me of happy hours.

Bertrand, any reactions? What’s he interested in? We are light on maths and science, sport, let us know..

And have we said Dickens? Great Exoectations, David Copperfield are the two obvious bildesroman but my fave Bleak House, or the entry one, A Tale of Two Cities..alongside George Orwell, perhaps...

My DS enjoyed the Shardlake novels, recommended to him by his A Level history teacher.