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Recommended books for a male freshman in high school?

All Quiet On The Western Front


You might have to read it next summer, so why not do it this summer, and not read next summer 😛
 
Are you allowed to read anything? What is Free Choice exactly? Is that like a summer reading list?

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole ( this is a book that I simply enjoyed )
Not on Our Watch (I forget the author)
 
jessica. said:
Are you allowed to read anything? What is Free Choice exactly? Is that like a summer reading list?
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Free Choice is exactly what it means....you choose the book, and do your summer assignment on that book. They give you the summer assignment, but it's open-ended, so you can choose whatever book you want.

Like, for me, one of mine is to read any book, and on the first quarter of the book, write a 1pg essay on how I relate to the main character.
 
If you are interested in fantasy, there's always Lord of the Rings, or even better some of the short stories and ancillary stories that Tolkien wrote.

I would also second "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time".

Depending on how fast you read/how much time you have, "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" (I might have the name slightly wrong). It's DENSE is the only thing.

Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" are also really good. They read like short stories, so you can read it in drips and drabs, but the stories are interconnected and build together to the end. Also nice is that if you need to write a report on it for work there's a ton of great themes that can be linked to historical and current events, which makes it a good source for interesting essays and such.
 
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. And then you'll want to read the rest of the series. And then you'll want to read the Ender's Shadow series. So good.
 
Lets see some books I read from back then that I enjoyed.

Eve, Redwall series. The Fly Dutchman I think is a really good book (same author as redwall.

When I was 13-14 years old I read Timeline, Jurassic Park, Lost World, and Congo all 4 were great books and the movies were crap compared to them. Hell in the book Jurassic park had a very different ending than the movie and some of the people that lived in the movie died in the book this made the book The Lost World very different because some of the chars were dead that were in the start of that movie. Both are very good books.
 
fireshot91 said:
All Quiet On The Western Front


You might have to read it next summer, so why not do it this summer, and not read next summer 😛
Click to expand...

It (All Quiet on the Western Front) is a good book, but it can be hard to stay focused while reading it.

I personally like 1984 by Orwell. It's a very good book, and can IMO can captivate anyone who has a brain.

War and Peace by Tolstoy, is also a good book, but it isn't the easiest book to follow. It's a challenge to read, but it has a very interesting plot IMO.

Those are the "classics" that I'll recommend.

I also like The Company by Robert Littell. It's an interesting albeit fictionalized account of the cold war, and the spy games played by the CIA and Moscow. It is a long read though. If I remember correctly, it's somewhere around 800 pages.

BTW, I'll be a Sophomore in high school this year if that matters.

Don
 
Read something that's easy to expand on in a paper. Perhaps something that has a message/underlying message that can be argued for/against. Don't read a book you have a hard time understanding, because it will be even harder when you have to write about it!

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Im-Calling-Selected-Stories/dp/0679722319

Now that is a book that you can write 100 pages on easily. It is basically a lot of short stories but each one has so many messages about the way people act or how humanity is in general.

It's a fantastic collection of stories and it is high in content. Very easy to understand / grasp his point.
 
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Blades of Glory by John Rosengren.

Its based on a Hockey team but it is a great book talking about the perils of moving up in sports ultimately playing Varsity.

It takes you through the journey of the best team in the nation and the lives the kids live and what they have worked for their whole life. I would definitely read the summary to get an idea because I can not do this book justice.. It carries over to all sports...

5/5
 
Catcher in the Rye
Catch 22
All Quiet on the Western Front
1984
Animal Farm
-all books you will probably end up reading if your Lit teachers are worth their salt-

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
-this one I read because I was working with Autistic kids, it can be a bit hard to read, as it is written as if you were in the mind of an Autistic person-

Lord of the Rings is great, but probably not what you want for a one page assignment.

I would avoid reading most of the books that are made into movies, as there is the temptation to drop the book and watch the movie. The movies will almost never be as good as the book.
 
Read the Uglies series by David Westerfeld. It's a great series with awesome futuristic technology. It's about a girl name Tally who is trying to find out what secrets the city and government are hiding. Highly recommend these.
 
Surely said:
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. And then you'll want to read the rest of the series. And then you'll want to read the Ender's Shadow series. So good.
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I agree. I finished Ender's Game and am now finishing Speaker for the Dead. Such good books. In the two days I have had it, I have read over 300 pages in it and am almost done!!
 
ShaunPriest said:
The Catcher in the Rye.
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As a teenager who is reading that book for a required reading, I disagree. He is so full of angst that its ridiculous. Every other thing "just kills him!" or is so goddam this or that.

But thats just me. 🙂


I would recommend reading Paper Towns by John Green. Excellent book, but got a little to sappy at the end for my tastes.
 
+ 1 for Nineteen Eighty Four. Possibly my favourite book ever written. I've lost track of how many times I read it.

I'm a bit of a fan of dystopian literature so my recommendations are...

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley.
Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Ridley Walker - Russell Hoban
The Children of Men - P.D. James
 
iAmAzN said:
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. No, not the movie!
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+1 🙂

I'm in high school as well. I recently finished reading "Of Mice and Men" and "Fahrenheit 451".

"Of Mice and Men" is quite a good book, and unfortunately short. But it's still worth a read.
"Fahrenheit 451" is quite an interesting read. I can't really describe it, so i'm hoping for someone else to back me up on it 😀
 
The Chosen by Chaim Potok. Great book in general, but especially for your age group. If you like fantasy you could go with The Once and Future King by T.H. White. It's his version of the King Arthur legend.
 
Its very long and very complex but also THE meodernist novel.

James Joyces Ulysses

Although on second thought something a more approachable would probably be better and since I like science fiction why not:

Alfred Bester's The Starts My Destination

Very cool easy to read book that also happens to be really good.
 
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