Can you list your Top Ten book suggestions for my 14 yr old bookworm?

[reddhead]

My daughter is 14 years old and has moved on from teen fiction to more adult books. However, there are so many great books out there, I don't know where to start. I don't want to make choices for her - she loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy and To Kill a Mockingbird so I think she will have varied taste.
Can you suggest your Top Ten books for her to try? Thank you!

[Eve]

Like Erin, I read The Shining about that age and ended up reading a lot of Stephen King books. I also read James Herbert but some of his can be quite nasty so maybe not him.

I loved some of the classics, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Jane Eyre etc...

You could go for the school syllabus type of books like Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men.

Dan Brown sounds like a good suggestion too.

I have to say though, even in my "grown up" days I loved the Harry Potter and Twilight books, more than the films.

Maybe some biographies as well depending on what kind of people she would be interested in?

[seadogg]

1984.by George Orwell had a strong impact at that age as did Aldous Huxley's Brave New World but possibly gated by now. The Hobbit should precede Lord of the Rings ideally. What a marvellous selection we have.

[seadogg]

dated for gated lol

[webbo3]

A walk in the woods or Down Under by Bill Bryson, both very very funny.


Dave.

[Ellipsis]

Love Philip Pullman but I'd assumed she had already read that ...

If you're going to read Dan Brown then "Deception Point" is the best but avoid "Digital Fortress" - absolute tripe.

My favourite classic - and it's a short one, so a perfect introduction - is "A Tale Of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens. Superb writing and a great story. Another short one of his is "A Christmas Carol" which makes good reading at Christmas-time. So what if you know the story? It's still very much fun to read ...

[patriciaah]

I found with my daughter that an introduction to "real" literature (no offence to teen fiction writers and I hope none taken) was made easier by suggesting some short story collections. In that way she could learn to appreciate the more adult form without getting potentially weighed down by the size of a novel. A World of Difference: An Anthology of Short Stories from Five Continents is a good one as is Offbeat - A collection of 10 Quirky Short Stories and a collection by F Scott Fitzgerald which was particularly liked. My daughter reads lists of numbers to relax, and manuals (!!!) so it has been an adventure enticing her towards literature ... successfully. Good luck!

[mosesg]

I read some Maeve Binchy books are that age, Phillipa Gregory, might be worth looking at the likes of Cecilia Ahern and Katthy Kelly as well. Might be worth trying the Shopahollic series as well by Sophie Kinsella. My sister read a bit of Danielle Steele at that age but I never got into them.

[sandyRoe]

Portrait of the artist as a young dog, by Dylan Thomas. It's written with a style as smooth as honey.

[rowanwitch]

Terry pratchett.... more to them than meets first reading
Kelley Armstrongs Otherworld books... Nice vampires/werewolves/sorcers etc.. might be a bit grown up but really good stories and very girl friendly
If she liked lord of the rings Terry Brooks is a good author
Tom Holt is fun but a bit mad.... and Adams hitchhikers series are well written and amusing.... she's more likely to continue the habit of reading if she reads for fun....

[annie0000]

Jean M Auel's Earth Children series
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Scribbling the cat - Alexandra Fuller

[AB Editor]

Get her reading Cormac McCarthy (The Road, Child of God, Outer Dark etc).

I certainly wish I had when I was 14!

[sophie_1003]

The Secret Life of Bees is excellent and although a book for adults the main character is 14 (I believe) so maybe more relatable than some characters?

[Ellipsis]

Sophie, you've just reminded me of Sophie's World which I read and enjoyed as an adult (as I was an adult when it was released) but is, supposedly, aimed at teenagers. It's a clever and unusual book, a combination of a novel and an introduction to philosophy. According to Wikipedia ...

Sophie's World is a novel by Jostein Gaarder, published in 1991. It was originally written in Norwegian, but has since been translated into English (1995) and many other languages. It sold more than 30 million copies and is one of the most successful Norwegian novels outside of Norway. Sophie Amundsen is a fourteen year old girl who lives in Norway in the year 1990. She lives with her cat Sherekan, her goldfish, a tortoise, two budgerigars and her mother. Her father is a captain of an oil tanker, and is away for most of the year.

[DaisyNonna]

The Book Thief

[NOX]

Yes Daisy is right, ' The Book Thief' is simply superb, but very heavy in subject matter, anything by Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams if she's clever and/or irreverent or alternatively why not just take her to a really good book shop and let her browse for a few hours, sometimes books just unexpectedly jump out at you.

[horseshoes]

I was enjoying Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy at 14. I'm reading His Dark Materials at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it (I'm now 57). Wuthering Heights and as previously mentioned, Of Mice and Men.

[islasmum]

I should think that your daughter has enough suggestions to last her until she's about 40! My favourite books when I was in my teens were the James Herriot vet books - well written and amusing, and sometimes sad in places, and if she likes horses, Black Beauty (Anna Sewell, I think?)also some of the John Wyndham books - The Midwich Cuckoos, and The Trouble with Lichen were two I enjoyed. Also pretty much anything by Jilly Cooper, Jill Mansell, Catherine Alliot etc are all fun, and I agree with other posters about the historical romances by Georgiette Heyer. Hope she has fun, I love reading most types of fiction, as you can tell.

[horseshoes]

Ooh yes - I'd forgotten John Wyndham - they're really good.