Of course, not every teen is going to spend time reading. But there are books that can take a kid a lot further than a boatload of sage advice. Kids need seeds for thoughts outside the stuff the media machine shovels in their eyes. The idea here is to list books that did something marvellous for you when you were younger - stuff that transported you to places you'd never have dreamed of on your own. Stuff that astounded you. Stuff they can't put down.
- StrangerInaStrangeLand - RobertHeinlein
- to tell the story of the widow's son while effectively insulating them from the rituals and cults surrounding it.
- to learn to be an awfully good kisser
- AlwaysComingHome - UrsulaLeGuin
- to teach the shedding of artifice and materialism, to show how to find/make a community, and to appreciate the lyricism of the wild.
- TheCircusOfDoctorLao - CharlesFinney
- to point out that marvels lurk around every corner, if you're brave enough to turn your self in their direction.
- SnowCrash - NealStephenson
- to show how to throw off HypnoCracy?, subvert your own language, and program your own head.
- TheAncientEngineers - SpragueDeCamp
- to explain the true underpinnings of Western thought, how we got here, and how to see beyond surface understandings.
- MyIshmael - DanielQuinn
- Totally redefined how I looked at school, culture and the world around me. It's especially fun to contrast MyIshmael with IshmaelBook. They both tell the same story, but they're geared to different audiences.
- The Teenage Liberation Handbook (ISBN 0962959170 ) - Grace Llewellyn
- to see that there is a way out, and get many ideas and directions for finding this way.
What else?
These have been seconded:
- TheIlluminatusTrilogy - Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
- to rotate youthful perception out of the mundane.
- SchroedingersCatTrilogy - Robert Anton Wilson
- PrincipiaDiscordia? - Malaclypse the Younger (et all)
- to read the Truth and laugh.
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - MarkTwain
- to ponder the N-word. Some libraries in the U.S. ban this book because of it. I figure anything worth banning is worth pondering! -- Eliz I second that. -- GunnarZarncke
Nominations (please contribute your own, or second these and add them above if you agree):
- HackersHeroesOfTheComputerRevolution? - Steven Levy
- to inspire cultivating ones own hacker ethics.
- EzGo by BruceWilcox, nominated by DavidLiu.
- FightClub - Chuck Phalinuik
- to put angst to productive use.
- TheCatcherInTheRye? - J.D. Salinger
- to inspire oneself to find something to believe in, and to hold on. -- KarlKnechtel
- to inspire oneself to kill John Lennon?
- Lizard Music by DanielPinkwater?
- because sometimes you need something bizarre and amusing to relieve stress
- Go Ask Alice - diary of anonymous 13-year-old drugged-out hippie runaway.
- because sometimes you want to drown yourself in lousiness (safely). This has to be about as bad as it gets when acting on your own volition (not thrown into a concentration camp or something). She wrote it on paper towels from public restrooms. This book was all the rage when I was young, perhaps because we were a bit too young to be hippies. -- ElizabethWiethoff
- AsimovsFoundation
- Fourteen-year-old girl saves the galaxy! -- Eliz
- 1 & 2 Samuel in TheBible
- One heck of a story about interesting figures (Samuel, Saul, David, etc.) as they grow older. -- Eliz
- "Magical Manhattan" by Gregory R. Hoffman, Sam and fairytale friends must rescue a Manhattan that has been transformed into a magical wilderness, from the clutches of drugs, bureaucrats, prostitution, and bigotry.
CategoryBooks
Good Books For Troubled Teens