Halcyon Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Just what the title says. It's been a struggle to get my 15 yo to read for pleasure and i would love recommendations on great, captivating books that he might like. He likes gripping, can't put em down books and has little patience for books that take a while to build. I love reading, and am sad that he doesn't share my love at this time in his life, but i WOULD like to see him reading. My attempts over the years: The Book Thief (a dud) To kill a mockingbird (read in 9th, liked it) A Long Walk to Water (read it, but found it really depressing) 1984 (liked it) Holes-read in 8th, loved it. Where the red fern grows (read in 7th loved it) Unbroken-thumbs up a tree grows in brooklyn-dud hatchet (read in 7th, still talks about it) the giver-nope So that might give you some ideas of what might appeal to him.... HELP! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halcyon Posted April 5, 2018 Author Share Posted April 5, 2018 oh, and obviously this isn't everything he's read LOL, but a sampling. Thanks for any recs. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Might he enjoy books by Jon Krakauer like Into Thin Air? It's not a novel, but it is a gripping adventure. How does he feel about nonfiction in general? You said he liked Unbroken... how about Seabiscuit? How about The Martian? It wasn't high literature, but the science was great and it was definitely gripping. I thought Station Eleven was a beautiful mix of literary and gripping story... but it's definitely a dystopian, so if that's not his thing, then maybe not? How about things like Michael Crichton or Stephen King? I guess... is the goal just to get him to like a book? Any book? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kendall Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 The 39 Steps by Buchan The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (trust me) Leave it To Jeeves by Wodehouse Three Men in a Boat To Say Nothing of the Dog My 1st son read lots. My second son read only the books he saw his brother not want to put down. My 2nd son liked all of these. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kendall Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Hero of the Empire by Millard. History that reads like fiction in a lot of places. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Pot-Pouri (lol) The Thief (Turner) -- first in the Queen's Thief series Life of Pi (Martel) Sherlock Holmes short stories (Doyle) Code Talker (Bruchac) -- non-fiction Midshipman Quinn series (Styles) Popcorn books / just for fun / keep alive reading for pleasure Alex Ryder series (Horowitz) The Graveyard Book (Gaiman) Artemis Fowle series (Colfer) Leviathan (Westerfeld) -- first in a rollicking steam punk/alternate WW1 history trilogy The Martian (Weir) -- stranded in space survival story His Majesty's Dragon (Novik) -- and sequels Eragon (Paolini) -- and sequels Ready Player One (Cline) Foundation (Asimov) I, Robot (Asimov) The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury) Books along the lines of 1984 House of Stairs (Sleator) When the Tripods Came (Christopher) Animal Farm (Orwell) Brave New World (Huxley) Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) Lord of the Flies (Golding) Alas Babylon (Frank) A Canticle for Leibowitz (Miller) -- and then Anathem (Stephenson) -- which is much lighter/adventure-like Books along the lines of To Kill a Mockingbird Black Like Me (Griffin) -- non-fiction Warriors Don't Cry (Beals) -- non-fiction The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963 (Curtis) Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (Taylor) Bud Not Buddy (Curtis) Cry the Beloved Country (Paton) Jim the Boy (Earley) Moon Over Manifest (Vanderpool) Maniac Magee (Spinnelli) The Outsiders (Hinton) Peace Like a River (Enger) Books along the lines of Holes, or humorous books Hoot (Hiaasen) -- and others Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Adams) Bromeliad trilogy: Trucker, Digger, Wings (Pratchett) Discworld books by Pratchett The Princess Bride (Goldman) -- although, he may find the interspersed first-person Goldman narration/storyline to be annoying... you can actually read the whole book and skip those insertions for just the princess bride parts Books along the lines of Hatchet (fiction) or Unbroken (real people) Everest: The Contest (Korman) -- book 1 of a trilogy The Colditz Story (Reid) The Forgotten 500 (Freeman) The Terrible Wave (Dahlstedt) Soul Surfer (Hamilton) Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (Lansing) Kon Tiki (Heyersdahl) Books along the lines of Where the Red Fern Grows (animals) Summer of the Monkeys (Rawls) -- same author as Red Fern All Creatures Great and Small (Herriot) -- and sequels My Family and Other Animals (Durrell) Owls in the Family (Mowat) -- and others by him The Black Stallion (Farley) War Horse (Morpurgo) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katilac Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Hunger Games is a modern choice that certainly hits the themes of adventure and survival. My kids still read Percy Jackson and the other Riordan series at that age for fun. I'll second Farrar's idea of Into Thin Air and other non-fiction adventure. Between a Rock and a Hard Place is written by the guy who had to amputate part of his own arm with a pocketknife in order to survive (he got trapped while rock climbing). There are tons of books in this genre, plus the magazine Outside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junie Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Seconding the recommendations for Animal Farm and Sherlock Holmes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pink and Green Mom Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 My almost 17 year old hates to read. He has been required to read (but secretly enjoyed): Animal Farm The Hound of the Baskervilles The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time Fareneheit 451 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laurel-in-CA Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 I had my son read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein along with several other SF titles mentioned, some Zane Gray, The Ghost Map (about epidemics, non-fiction), and various Marrin biographies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penelope Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Some of these may have already been mentioned, but here goes: The Wee Free Men (Pritchett) True Grit (read it because of the Circe podcast and think it would appeal to teen boys) Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (if they haven’t been assigned for school) Sherlock Holmes Treasure Island, Kidnapped, etc. by Robert Louis Stevenson Divergent Series and Hunger Games Series (neither are well written, but they are page turners) Never Cry Wolf, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, by Farley Mowat A Long Way Fromm Chicago and the followup, A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck How does he feel about audio books? Audio can be a good way to get into a series. Listen to it in the car (or to the whole first book) and then they want to keep reading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alte Veste Academy Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 Some of my DS15's favorite books are the same ones your DS liked, and some of his favorite more recent reads have been Ready Player One, Ender's Game, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. His very super duper favorite was Born a Crime by Trevor Noah from The Daily Show. This book is incredible. You laugh while learning so very much about Apartheid. Weird to say, but that's how amazing this book is. LOL For what it's worth, he started Into the Wild (same author as Into Thin Air) but the love died fast. Don't know how similar they are... And LOL I made DS read A Long Walk to Water a few years ago when he was being a whiny-hiney. He also found it depressing, but stopped whining so much about the small stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alte Veste Academy Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 By the way, this son is my oldest and least likely to read in the evening for pleasure. And/or he reads non-fiction. Or magazines. He reads happily if he loves the book. Page-turners are imperative. That said, a few things help here... I absolutely allow, sometimes even encourage, quitting books. My personal philosophy is that there are too many wonderful books in the world to be forced to pleasure read something that doesn't actually bring you pleasure. So, I bring home a gajillion books from the library and throw them on his bed one-by-one and he tries them. (I encouraged him to quit Into the Wild because it was taking him forever and a day to finish it. If he's interested, he blazes through a book. If he's daydreaming instead of reading, it's a waste of time.) Also, because not every important book that I want him to read is a page-turner, I still read aloud, and he still enjoys it, thank goodness. Obviously, he has to read other school books that are varying degrees of interesting to him as well. Last, I schedule pleasure reading into his school day. We have a hammock in our back yard, and every day I send him out to read for an hour. I can tell he thinks he is getting away with something, because he is "not working" while he is reading. Sucker! Reading AND fresh air! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katilac Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 12 hours ago, Alte Veste Academy said: For what it's worth, he started Into the Wild (same author as Into Thin Air) but the love died fast. Don't know how similar they are... They're pretty different. Into the Wild is much more of a character study with less of the adventure and suspense. Then he has one on a high school rape and one on a Mormom cult murder, and probably more by now, I'm sure. He's eclectic, JK is. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiguirre Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 This sounds like Trinqueta. She'll slog through books for school without complaint but she's very picky about leisure reading and will ditch any book if it doesn't hook her almost immediately. She's enjoyed the Millenium trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K Jemisin, the first few Game of Thrones books, Station Eleven, The Snow Child, Christopher Moore and, currently, Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman. They aren't great literature, but they get her reading and trying out different genres. Thanks for asking for suggestions. T will like reading them and seeing if something piques her interest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted May 6, 2018 Share Posted May 6, 2018 On 4/4/2018 at 8:07 PM, Farrar said: How about The Martian? It wasn't high literature, but the science was great and it was definitely gripping. This was my thought, too. Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixpix5 Posted May 6, 2018 Share Posted May 6, 2018 When one of my DS was 15 he loved Scott Westetfield, especially "The Uglies" series (Dystopian but more exciting than The Giver which he also didn't like). He enjoyed The City of Embers as well as The People of Sparks. He loved Unwind by Neal Shusterman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted May 6, 2018 Share Posted May 6, 2018 Anything by Michael Crichton Anything by Dan Brown Lord of the Flies Maybe H. G. Wells? Stuff by Oliver Sacks, Carl Sagan, and Malcolm Gladwell Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SanDiegoMom Posted May 6, 2018 Share Posted May 6, 2018 Definitely the Terry Pratchett Discworld series. These were beloved by my daughter - very funny, always weird, and each one covered some sort of theme - racism, monopolies, the gold standard... which don't need to be understood to enjoy the book. My dd Read them all first for the humor and then came back later for the themes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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