Which Books Should Teens Have Access to in a Dream Library?

[StainlessSeal]

Sort of based on the Top Ten Classics thread. If you were to build/ add to your home library, what books would you include so that your teen DC have access to them at home?

So, books I loved as a young teen include:

Cold Comfort Farm
Diary of a Nobody
The Colour Purple
Catcher in the Rye
To Kill a Mockingbird

Would love to hear others' suggestions!

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Honestly I think by the time they get to teens they're so varied in their tastes, and there's so much competition from high dopamine entertainment that there's no such thing as a blanket list: you have to just give them access to books that might suit their interests at the time and keep them reading. Get them library cards (and have your own so you can grab books and put them in front of them), point out the books in your own library that chime with their current tastes/needs, and go with the flow.

I might think that Emma is the greatest portrayal of human emotions in world literature, but if BookTok is all over Wuthering Heights then Wuthering Heights <<sigh>> it shall be.

DS has read the entire Ben McIntyre oeuvre on the back of watching SAS: Rogue Heroes. I gave him the SAS one in his stocking and then grabbed the others from charity shops. They're not The Great Gatsby, but they're well written and he's learned a lot. And he's reading Dune for obvious reasons.

DD doesn't really like reading novels but does love plays and poetry so we have:
Various Shakespeare plays
An Inspector Calls
A room with a view
A view from a bridge
The Crucible
Oscar Wilde
Emily Dickinson
Maya Angelou

Books she has enjoyed
Animal Farm
Sherlock
1984
Frankenstein

I think because she's autistic and how it impacts her she struggles with the imagination required for novels unless she's seen a version on TV or the theatre. Whereas in a play she likes that it has the stage directions so is more obvious what the characters are doing and with poems she loves language as a tool so will spend ages breaking them down and analysing them.

My teens were when I read some heavy themes as well as more lighter stuff. It seems to be a good time for the heavy thinking type of stuff. I found they stay with you even now. I think it's important to know books can be fun/funny too

Agree with Cold Comfort Farm, The Colour Purple, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Room with a View, Emma, 1984 and Animal Farm.

Also Brave New World, Hitchikers Guide series, Pride & Prejudice, Jeeves & Wooster series, Lord of the Flies and the Handmaid's Tale - some of these are for teens that can handle mature themes. Sure loads more.

I read all of John Wyndham books as a teen.

I'd add Watership Down and Rebecca (plus other Daphne du Mauriers).

A lot of Morpurgo books are good reads for teens and adults.

I loved MM Kaye and Mary Stewart then too.

DS read all the original James Bond books as a teen. I think they were a bit hit and miss but he found several great reads - obviously dated and from a very different perspective to now! He loved PJ Wodehouse. And he read all the Eragon books.

I adored (along with a fair few things mentioned above)
A Time of Gifts (seemed quite pretentious on a recent reread!)
I Capture the Castle
Terry Pratchett
Oscar Wilde short stories
AS Byatt (as a late teen)

As a teen, I was reading Stephen King, Jackie Collins, and VC Andrews, all very unsuitable but I loved them. My mum gave me free rein regarding books, something I've always been very grateful for.

My parents just let me get on with it too @GalileoHumpkins. I did the same. I'd forgotten the Stephen King books I read. The Flowers in the Attic was my 'lighter stuff'! I read Jaws aged about 12, the film isn't 100% faithful to it(two characters have a pretty detailed affair), and that was certainly a bit of an education for me!

1. If you want them to love language, then P. G. Wodehouse's Right Ho Jeeves and Kipling's Just So Stories and Jungle Book. Wodehouse was the first writer to show me that language itself could be fun. Reading Wodehouse and Kipling also showed me that language could be beautiful.

2. If you want to inspire a love of ideas, however, Aldous Huxley is your man. I discovered him in my 20s and never looked back. His novel Crome Yellow is the place to start. I'd also suggest Wilde's Dorian Gray. Both are full of brilliantly clever, witty people having clever, witty conversations. Be warned though, they might turn your teen into a pretentious little shit – they did me.

3. For those who are good at science (I certainly wasn't), Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Bill Bryson's Short History of Everything.

4. Everyone should read Orwell's 1984 at some point. It should be a set text in every school across the world. It has its faults, but it is the great defence of freedom. I just wish a few of the woke bullies would read it.

5. War is another great subject children need to know about. Robert Graves' Goodbye to all That is a superb account of the reality of war, so is Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. Then of course there's the poetry of Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 is another great anti-war book. I've never read it, but I'm told Catch 22 is also great.

6. When it comes to poetry, Robert Frost, A E Housman, John Betjeman and Ted Hughes would be a good start.

7. Every teenage girl should read Sylvia Plath. She was amazing – fierce, brave, brilliantly clever, and highly educated. The Bell Jar gives you a real flavour of her personality. I also think Pride and Prejudice holds up. Even after 200 years it's still vivid and fresh and moving. And Lizzie is a fantastic role model for a young girl: gutsy, witty, defiant and gorgeous. No wonder D'Arcy falls in love with her. I love her too.

Some fantastic books here, and pleased to see that we have a fair few in our bookcases!

I loved and my teens also loved The Outsiders by SE Hinton.

I read all sorts of of books as a teen - Jilly Cooper , Orwell, Waugh , Margaret Atwood

For older teens - Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. A fantastic story and so relevant at this point in time.

As a teen I was mostly reading Stephen King, James Herbert and Dean Koontz style books.

I agree with much of your list but it's very much a case of you can lead a horse to water... and the important thing is they know reading is for enjoyment and it's OK to not finish a book you are not enjoying.

I've tried suggesting books like Oranges are not the only fruit (which I loved as a teen) but with not much success. I try and avoid the type of books at home that they study at school (although DD1 adored studying The Yellow Wallpaper. Treasure Island not so much), too much serious literature read too early is not good for you because you just don't have the life experience to really understand and appreciate it.

As a teen you jump backwards and forwards in your reading, I still read children's classics as a teen and there's definitely benefits to rereading books like The Secret Garden, Carrie's War, Little Women or The Owl Service so I have some of those classics hanging around. Although DD2 tried The Dark is Rising aged 13 and said she was both too old and too young for it.

The Picture of Dorian Grey was a random hit here.

WRT Wuthering Heights vs Emma, I think WH probably should be read as a teenager so you can wallow in the overblown gothic romance. Then reread it as an adult and realise what it's actually about. P&P is probably the best Jane Austen to start a teen on, or, talking of gothic novels, Northanger Abbey. Emma can wait till later.

Oh, and I spent my teens reading crap like Flowers in the Attic and bonkbusters like Lace. My Mum was horrified (but sensibly didn't believe in banning books) and as an older teen I started getting interested in reading The Classics before I became confident in my own taste and started reading more widely.

The Flowers in the Attic books and some Jilly Cooper ones were passed around at school but we were sensibly very discreet about it!

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
The Grapes of Wrath
Valley of The Dolls

Along with many of the classics up thread, I loved these as a teen. Jilly Cooper hadn’t written her bonkbusters then.

One of the reasons why my Mum didn't ban any books was because her boarding school had distributed a list of unsuitable books they weren't allowed to read. Unsurprisingly they used it as a reading list and passed round any illicit copies ofbanned books they got. So when Mum saw the kind of books I was reading she didn't say anything and only told me much later what she thought of them.

Which books? All of them. Let them read whatever they want for the sheer pleasure of it.