What books would you recommend for a 15 year old in 11th grade?
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dembboyz56 (
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September 6th, 2009
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All the other 11th grade books? Are you worried about questionable content? I don’t understand.
nothing questionable just some good books on my reading level
Boy or girl? Not that it should matter, but interests tend to vary.
Jack London’s Call of the Wild or White Fang were favorites of mine at that age. So was Anne of Green Gables, but I don’t know if a boy would be interested in Anne. :)
Fifteen is a good age to read Mark Twain if he or she hasn’t yet. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be read by everyone. Sort of along those same lines would be The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter. Little Tree is a good one for discussion because the author changed his name to try to cover his past as a racist speech writer with KKK leanings. It’s difficult to imagine that when you read the book, but makes you look at it in another way. You can then also talk about whether or not the author’s use of the “myth of the noble savage” is a form of racism.
The Twilight books are popular with that age group, as well as the Harry Potter series. If all else fails, find a small local bookstore, go to the young adult section, and ask an employee for suggestions. That will never fail, and beats Amazon.com’s “recommendations” every time.
I also started reading Stephen King around that time, which I believe seriously warped my mind.
If you like mystery-murder type books, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is reeeeeeeeeeeal good.
For some good non fiction though you should totally check out Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. It’s very very interesting and there’s a movie too.
I hate to be cliche, but Catcher in the rye was really good.
Your school should have some sort of grade level reading lists. A lot of these books will be required for college as well, so you might want to start getting them out of the way.
It depends on what type of books you like. Some of the more popular stuff right now is Twilight, Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, etc. I’d recommend just going to the teen section of your local library or bookstore. They have every genre. I’ve got to admit, I’m 21 and that’s still my favorite section.
Off the top of my head, I read these books around the age of 15:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Catcher in the Rye
Hamlet
Anthem
Lord of the Flies
Jane Eyre
The Time Machine
A Clockwork Orange
Frankenstein
The Great Gatsby
Flowers for Algernon
The Portrait of Dorian Gray
Of Mice and Men
Dragons of Autumn Twilight (Dragonlance Chronicles)
The Pearl
The Old Man and the Sea
The Fellowship of the Ring (Lord of the Rings)
Slaughterhouse-Five
Twelve Angry Men
Fantastic Voyage II
I thought this question was being asked by a parent. Silly me!
Check out James Rollins if you like mystery/thrillers. His Sigma Force books have a lot of action and mystery based on some relevant scientific issues. They’re sort of like Dan Brown meets Michael Crichton. I like those for some entertaining reading now and then. The best part of each book is the section at the end where he describes what parts of the book are based on fact.
Speaking of Michael Crichton, he has a lot of great books too. I don’t think I was reading too many young adult books by the time I was 15. When I wasn’t reading whatever I had to read for school, I was “borrowing” books from my parents’ shelves (hence the Stephen King phase).
@drdoombot Lurve for Jane Eyre. I wish I’d had someone steer me toward books like that when I was in high school. You can’t go wrong with Jane Austen either. :)
@teh_kvlt_liberal I was going to suggest Catcher in the Rye too. A lot of books described as classics aren’t that good, imho, but that one is excellent.
Also, try some Albert Camu. The Stranger is very, very good. I think I read it for the first time around the end of high school, and I was super impressed and challenged.
tbh I don’t really read unless it’s a school assignment. I should start reading for fun
crap, too late to edit. It’s Camus.
The Good Earth
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Cyrrano de Bergerac
The Pearl
The Great Gatsby
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Brave New World
any Shakespeare
any of Maya Angelou’s poetry
poetry of Keats and Tennyson
This seems like the age to read The Outsiders, by SE Hinton.
The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is also very popular.
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew series are both very good, but only the older stuff. :)
Beowulf (I have the Heaney translation)
The Iliad and The Odyssey (I have the Lattimore translations)
American Gods
Night by Elie Wiesel
The Prophet
Slaughterhouse Five
The Color Purple
Gulliver’s Travels
Mythology (by Edith Hamilton)
Maximum ride. that is the best series by a long shot
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ( and the rest of that series).
@aprilsimnel props for mentioned American Gods. I loved that book.
@deni. i couldn’t stand animal farm. lol it took sooo long for our class to read such a short book. all though it had a lot of meaning to it, i thought it was a bit too kid-like. i don’t know that’s just me.
uhm i’ve recently read 10 cents a dance which is a really good book.
if you go to this website. it’s our school’s library summer reading site, but i assure you, they’re are really good books in each category. you just click on which ever genre suits this 15-year old the best.
http://libraries.risd.org/summerreading09/summerreading09HSreg.htm
@NazNthahouse23 I reaaaaaaaaaalllly liked it. It took our class a shockingly long time to read it too, despite how short it was, but I think it’s because there are so many elements to that book and they all represent different things/people/events, but that’s why I liked it too.
@deni yeahh. and every character resembling or symbolizing a certain character/person in history.
i liked that aspect of it. but idk. lol just wasn’t a fan of it.
Eragon
Chronicles of Narnia
Lord of the Rings
anything by Chuck Palahniuk
and if you like suspense try out Ted Dekker.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
@Fred931 LMBO!! amazing book!! haha. man i actually miss those books.
i have an awful fear of caterpillars
@deni awww so you were like freaked out back when they used to read that book?
Do you all really think Chuck Palahniuk is 15 yo material? Don’t get me wrong—he’s fantastic and my favorite contemporary author, but a) crazy explicit sex, violence and depravity and b) he kind of ruins most every other traditional novel. I don’t know—maybe that’s patronizing, but it seems like a case of learning the rules before learning when to break them. I mean how can one appreciate the upside-down treatment of scenic description in Invisible Monsters without first experiencing something with an element of naturalism?
Oh, and Ironweed.
ray bradbury. Any of his… I think I started with the martian chronicles.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
You might like to try something from New Zealand perhaps….
The 10 PM Question Kate De Goldie
“http://mary-mccallum.blogspot.com/2009/05/10-pm-question-do-read-this-book.html”
@NazNthahouse23 oh pretty much. and there is a local amusement park near where i live that has a ride called the caterpillar. it basically went around in a circle and then there was like a cloth thing that covered the top and it looked like a big caterpillar. oh god.
Authors:
Edgar Allen Poe
Shakespeare
Emily Dickenson
Mark Twain
E.B. White
Ernest Hemingway
Ray Bradbury
George Orwell
Stephen King
...
I think that the best way to turn a 15 year old off Shakespeare is to have him/her read it now. I just reread most of the plays and enjoyed and understood them, which I did not in High School.
@gailcalled i thought i would like reading shakespeare. i hated it. lol freshman year sucked reading romeo and juliet and those other stories.
maybe if i read them in the future, they will be more enjoyable. idk.
but i agree with you.
@dembboyz56 did you mean like recommend books for leisure or for school like in a curriculum because a lot of people are listing books that are found in a school’s english curriculum rather than a leisure type of thing.
@NazNthahouse23, you probably hated Shakespeare because it’s not meant to be read, it’s meant to be performed. Some of the best performances I’ve seen done of Shakespeare are high school performances. The actors tend to get into the story and the characters, and set the reverence for “Shakespeare” as a literary deity aside.
@PandoraBoxx ohhh I see!! I have to go see a Shakespearian play one day.
@NazNthahouse23 : It’s better to act in a play at your age rather than be in the audience.
I never really payed attention to our theatre program, maybe i’ll consider something. =] btw since you’re looking for leisurely books. that website i posted earlier has some good leisure books to read in your own time.
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