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?

Congratulations to the OP on raising a literary son.

What about Nick Herron's 'Slow Horses'. It'd a spy story with a cracking pace and is also, in parts, hilarious. The 'hero', Jackson Lamb, is a comic character of genius. And, if you like the book, there are sequels.

(As for Jane Austen, my DH, who is 61 has just picked up 'Mansfield Park' for re-reading and is loving it.)

Station Eleven
I am Pilgrim
The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks (might be a bit hard to get hold of)
The Girl with all the Gifts

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

English seems to be a subject which is fast being eradicated by the ditching of 'the canon' and literary merit in favour of PC issues and feminism. Boys are not going to be attracted to the piffling choices on offer at A and degree levels.

I knew the rot had set in when I used, as an A level English teacher, to attend grade standardisation meetings at which the exam board examiners would utter such gems as: 'We have had enough of dead white men. Now we want living black women.'

Dead white men! Like.... Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, Keats, Milton and so on.

But, of course, there are still boys who will read and great writers for them to read. Thank goodness.

(Sorry. Rant over.)

Robert Graves. Goodbye To All That
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
James Baldwin, Another Country
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
David Downing's Station Series starting with Zoo Station
Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
Jane Gardam, Old Filth
Emile Zola, Germinal
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books
Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War books - two trilogies
Pat Barker's WW1 series starting with Regeneration
Helen Dunmore, The Siege

teacher22 are you Michael Gove!?

Toni Morrison, who to my knowledge has never been on an A level syllabus, is a living black woman, as is Zadie Smith. Both great writers. And enjoyed by boys ime.

Most students take A level English because they appreciate its value and worth. They don't seem particularly invested in the actual books on offer. The only writer most boys actively avoid is Austen.

In spare time, boys or girls can read whatever they like : it's not usually Hardy, I have to say! I love Hardy with a passion but he is not very fashionable at the moment.

I trawled through the OCR spec recently : a common route through (not the one I chose) meant you could study an entire course devoid of any femalle writers (well, three poems) , or any writers who are not white, thereby missing out some very rich writing and ignoring the great diversity of literature.