Modern Classics…

[AlwaysSometimesNever]

DS17 is loving English A Level and has asked for ‘10 modern classics’ for his Christmas present. I’ve bought Catch 22.
Now my brain is frazzled. Catcher in the Rye? What else? Help!

Onl just seen this thread and I know it’s too late, but I’d love to see what you choose.

My top choices would be:

A Clockwork Orange
The Stand by Stephen King
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Lord of the Flies
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
The Book Thief
The Handmaid’s Tale

World War Z

not necessarily because I think they’re all the best books ever written but because I think they all have something worth saying and have broad teenage boy appeal

Hello! Just returning to this as I’m laid up for a bit. It was a combo of what he’d started to enjoy and also what our local bookshop had.
So:
Dubliners, Beloved, The Plague (he loved The Outsider), Lord of the Flies, Mrs Dalloway, Rebecca. I’m reading the new Ian McEwen which he is eyeing up but I’m not sure it’s his bag.
Not quite 10 but enough to be going on with. He has read The Plague (enjoyed) and started Beloved last week. He’s read Trainspotting too as he’s doing the film for film studies and an epq about the translation of books to films (focussing on Le Carre). I love Beloved so I did recommend he left it for a bit and came back. I think he’ll love Slaughterhouse 5/Farenheit 451 too.
He’s autistic and the interior life reading, film and music give him is just magic. He’s even found a few kindred spirits who he is tentatively calling friends in his English class. Here’s to the Arts!

I used to belong to a book group, and one of our members was a retired lecturer. She had a PhD in literature and had taught at Warwick University. We were in awe of her. I once asked her what she thought were the best novels written in English in the 20th-century (not the woke, 'inclusive', PC list, but the real list, based purely on quality). This was what she sent me:

1. James Joyce: Ulysses
2. D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love
3. Nabokov: Lolita
4. Nabokov: Pale Fire
5. Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
6. Saul Bellow: Augie March
7. Joseph Heller: Catch 22
8. Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
9. Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian
10. Ford Madox Ford: Parade's End

She didn't like Hemingway, who she thought was overrated, but she admired Thomas Pynchon and Samuel Beckett. She thought Proust was the greatest writer of the 20th-century, followed by Kafka. She also thought George Orwell was a terrible novelist but a great essayist. She didn't like Aldous Huxley either, which disappointed me since he's my favourite😕.

Nice update and list, a good mix of classics. Hope he enjoys them!