Can anyone recommend books for me to read over the summer (17 years old)?

Question

Can anyone recommend some book titles to read over the summer vacation? I enjoy Fiction, Nonfiction, Mystery, Suspense, Comedy, (WWII era), History, etc. I am 17 years old and I am looking for good books to read. I love both books to entertain me and/or are challenging. I love to learn too! I enjoy reading classics, (I love Sherlock Holmes and Catch-22, academic books are also wonderful). I don't want to read anything too young (No Princess Diaries or Harry Potter). I also dislike the Twilight series.

Something that is challenging, entertaining, etc. is what I am looking for that is in the reading level range of a 17 year old.

No Twilight Series.

Answer 1

HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!



Someone dislikes the Twilight series... that's all I ever hear about anymore.... f-ing vampire books.



Here are the best books I've ever read. I'm 23 and I know what I'm talkin about. A lot of these are classics, and a lot are contemporary, but great anyway:



"The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran (not a novel, but imperative to being cool)

"The Good Earth" by Buck

"I Know This Much is True" by Lamb

"Love in the Time of Cholera" and "100 Years of Solitude" by Marquez

"The Blind Assassin" by Atwood

"White Oleander" by Fitch

"Bless Me, Ultima" by Anaya

"A Million Little Pieces" by Frey (screw Oprah, this is a great book)

"The Illustrated Man" by Bradbury

......annnd if you never want to sleep again, "The Shining" by Stephen King. It's the scariest book. Ever.

"The Awakening" by Chopin

"The House on Mango Street" by Cisneros



non-fiction:

"Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers"

"Papillon" by Charriere

"Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors" by Read



enjoy your summer!

Answer 2

WEBSITE BELOW HAS LOTS OF DIFFERENT LISTS.



John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968; American):

The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Cannery Row (1945)

East of Eden (1952)

Of Mice and Men (1937)

The Pearl (1947)

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)



Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961; American):

The Old Man and The Sea (1952)

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

A Farewell To Arms (1929)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)



Margaret Mitchell (1900 - 1949; American):

Gone With the Wind (1936)



Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892; American):

Leaves of Grass - A Collection of Poetry



George Eliot (1819 - 1880; English):

Silas Marner (1861)

The Mill on the Floss (1860)



Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951; American):

Main Street (1920)

Babbitt (1922)

Arrowsmith (1925)

Elmer Gantry (1927)



F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940; American):

The Great Gatsby (1925)



William Faulkner (1897 - 1962; American):

Light in August (1932)

Absalom, Absalom (1936)

The Sound and the Fury (1929)

As I Lay Dying (1930)



Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968; American):

The Jungle (1906)



John Updike (1932 - ; American):

Rabbit, Run (1960)

Rabbit Redux (1971)

Rabbit is Rich (1981)

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Rabbit Remembered (2001)



Virginia Woolf:

To the Lighthouse

Mrs. Dalloway

The Voyage Out

Jacob's Room

The Waves

Orlando

A Room of One's Own

Three Guineas



Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832; Scot):

Ivanhoe (1819)

Rob Roy (1818)



Herman Melville (1819 - 1891; American):

Moby Dick (1851)



Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832; German):

Faust (2 Parts; 1808 and 1832)



Henrik Ibsen (1828 - 1906; Norwegian):

A Doll's House (1879)



Albert Camus (1913 - 1960; French-Algerian):

The Stranger (1942)

The Plague (1947)



Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885; French):

Les Miserables (1862)

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831)



Moliere (1622 - 1673; French):

Tartuffe or The Imposter (1664)

The Misanthrope (1666)

The Miser (1668)

The Imaginary Invalid (1673)

The Bourgeois Gentlemen (1670)



Leon Uris (1924 - 2003; Jewish-American):

Exodus (1958)



Boris Pasternak (1890 - 1960; Russian):

Doctor Zhivago (1957)



Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904; Russian):

The Seagull (1896)

Uncle Vanya (1899-1900)

The Three Sisters (1901)

The Cherry Tree (1904)



Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910; Russian):

Anna Karenina (1877)

War and Peace (1869)



Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 - ; Russian):

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

The First Circle (1968)

The Cancer Ward (1968)

The Gulag Archipelago (3 Volumes; 1973 - 1978)



Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881; Russian):

The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

Crime and Punishment (1866)

The Idiot (1869)



Homer:

The Iliad

The Odyssey



Virgil:

The Aeneid



Geoffrey Chaucer:

Canterbury Tales



Dante:

The Divine Comedy - Paradisio, Purgatoria, Inferno

Answer 3

Well, my first thought is Dracula. Really excellent, though it starts out *very* slowly. Definitely worth wading through the first chapter. Free online.



The Sword in the Stone by T H White. Considered a classic of fantasy, the vocabulary causes most reading level scored to put it at your level. A full review here

⌘ http://www.life-after-harry-potter.com ⌘



If you like it, definitely get The Once and Future King by the same author.



For even more obscure vocabulary in a great fantasy book, get Vance's "Tales of the Dying Earth". Adult content, not explicit.



Agatha Christie is always good for mystery readers, even though there not really the same as Sherlock Holmes stories.



Some you may like even more are the Ellery Queen books. These are famous because the writer, near the end of the story, pauses to inform the reader that all of the clues necessary to determine the identity of the villain have been presented. The reader can then try to figure out for himself "whodunnit" before the detective reveals it. Most detective novels, like Holmes, keep information back from the reader.



The funniest thing I've ever read is Calvin and Hobbes. It's a comic strip - definitely low brow - but it's hilarious. Try one of the paperbacks, they're cheap, and they're great.



Jim

⌘ http://www.life-after-harry-potter.com ⌘

Answer 4

I don't know how big your local library is but can I suggest the random patrol method ... start at one edge of fiction or non fiction count to say 10 taking 10 steps check the nearest shelf ... if you dont find anything pick a random number take a few more steps ... once you find a new author you like use catalogue to find or reserve more books by them

Answer 5

The Book Thief

Answer 6

The Orange Code, Seven Months to Live

Answer 7

I love Meg Cabot (Heather Wells & Queen of Babble) and Sophie Kinsella's (Shopaholic [soon to be movie] & Remember Me) books. I am in the process of reading Emily Giffin's (Something Borrowed & Something Blue) books. They are all great authors!



For I teen I recommend Meg Cabot's young adult books. She is the best author. Also best selling. She wrote tons of books including the Princess Diaries (Movies based on her books), Mediator (upcoming movie), 1-800-Missing (TV show based on her books), Jinx, and more. She has adult books too, so you can grow with her.



If you want more info or meg cabot's website email me.

Answer 8

Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER series (you have never met a sexier, hunkier, lovelier man in fiction than Jamie Fraser):

- Outlander (called 'Cross-Stitch' in the UK)

- Dragonfly in Amber

- Voyager

- Drums of Autumn

- The Fiery Cross

- A Breath of Snow & Ashes



Adriana Trigiani's BIG STONE GAP series:

- Big Stone Gap

- Big Cherry Holler

- Milk Glass Moon

- Home to Big Stone Gap



Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella (I like this one much better than her 'Shopaholic' series)



The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (a twist at the end that leaves you breathless!)



The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger (have a box of tissues handy)



The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (She meshes Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' with the historical Vlad the Impaler and tosses in vampire legends to make a thoroughly fabulous read)



Evening by Susan Minot



The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve (you won't see the twist coming. Fabulous, emotional, touching.)



Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons



Jasper Fforde's THURSDAY NEXT series (very funny books, slightly bizarre; be sure you read the copyright page, all the footnotes, the adverts in the back -it's all relevant!):

- The Eyre Affair

- Lost in a Good Book

- The Well of Lost Plots

- Something Rotten

- Thursday Next: First Among Sequels



Dean Koontz' ODD THOMAS series (he sees dead people, but it isn't horror):

- Odd Thomas

- Forever Odd

- Brother Odd

- Odd Hours



Also by Dean Koontz:

- Lightning (interesting presentation of time travel)



Eyes of a Child by Richard North Patterson (legal thriller centering around a divorce, a child custody case, allegations of child abuse, and then a murder.)



The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (the King Arthur legend told from the viewpoint of the women in his life; a thousand times better than the television miniseries!)



Gregory McGuire's fairy-tale retellings are brilliant:

- Wicked

- Mirror, Mirror

- Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

- Lost



The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan (first book of a trilogy set in the present, but built around the theory of a Mary Magdalene-Jesus bloodline. Interesting and fun book even if you don't believe that Jesus was married.)



The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell - told from the viewpoints of Iris, a young woman who owns her own dress shop; Esme, the great-aunt that Iris never knew about because Esme has been in a mental institution for 60 years; and Kitty, Iris' grandmother and Esme's sister who is living in an assisted-care facility and suffers from Alzheimer's. The three viewpoints and the three women's knowledge converge to tell a tale of betrayal and family secrets that you can't put down.



Stardust by Neil Gaiman



Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt



Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson



The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough



The Princess Bride by William Goldman



Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln



1776 by David McCullough



Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography



The Reagan Diaries, by Ronald Reagan



All the President's Men, Woodward and Bernstein

Answer 9

The Uglies series. It's this really cool Sci-Fi series I love it.

Answer 10

What Color Is Your Parachute



Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Answer 11

when I need to find something new to read I go to www.bookreporter.com and see what's new there...read word of mouth...these are reviews written by people....I have read some amazing books that way.

Answer 12

:-( u should like the twilight series i love it and im only 12!!! lol )-:

Answer 13

twilight ...