Finding it hard to get your high schooler off their phone for a few hours? These offbeat books might catch their eye.
Age Group: 16+
Genre: Thriller
Why it's worth a read: Now a major motion picture starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike (pictured above), Gillian Flynn's tale of distorted hearsay surrounding a missing wife in small-town America is the creepiest book you won't be able to put down. Highlighting an eerily familiar "guilty-until-proven-innocent" society, Gone Girl is both a delirious ride into the darkest pockets of upscale America, as well as a bone-chilling reminder that there's two sides to every story.
Age Group: 14-18
Genre: Science Fiction
Why it's worth a read: Keyes' story of a mentally challenged man that gains advanced intelligence, after he's subjected to a neurological experiment, is as tragic as it is thought-provoking. The protagonist, Charlie, starts his journey with barely-functioning mental acuity. He's pure and holds an unadulterated kindness about him and, although many try to take advantage of him, he's oblivious to the meanness of strangers. After his procedure, Charlie gains supernatural intelligence and it fundamentally changes him for better and for worse. Flowers for Algernon is high-concept, but never gets wrapped up in its machinations. The "science" part of Keyes' science fiction always points inward, toward Charlie's suffering. And his suffering is filled with moving lessons we can all learn from.
Age Group: 14-18
Genre: Postmodern Superhero Graphic Novel
Why it's worth a read: Superhero stories are usually campy fantasy. Not so with Watchmen. Moore & Gibbons' graphic novel is a true deconstruction of modern mythology. Set in an alternate version of 1980s America, Watchmen centers around a highly dysfunctional, deeply flawed group of crimefighters. It's an epic, disturbing, but ultimately empowering parable for the pitfalls of deification and, with our celebrity-obsessed society today, its postmodern themes have never been more relevant. Bradford Wright, a peer of Moore's, described the novel as "Moore's obituary for the concept of heroes in general and superheroes in particular." In our world, where Kylie Jenner has 96 million followers on Instagram for being artificially beautiful, I can't think of a better time to read Watchmen.
Age Group: 17+
Genre: Magic Realism
Why it's worth a read: Esteemed Japanese author Haruki Murakami can be frustrating, but for more patient readers he is intensely rewarding. Kafka on the Shore weaves two distinct plots together; one about a 15-year-old Japanese boy named Kafka, who runs away from home to escape an Oedipal curse and find his mother and sister; the other about an old man named Nakata, who helps people find cats. In Kafka on the Shore, Murakami blends magic with a touch of the mundane, paints suspense with boredom and innocence with taboo. His style is inimitable and his themes are potent.
Age Group: 16+
Genre: Science Fiction
Why it's worth a read: This reimagining of Homer's Odyssey features three warrior queens, Odyssia, Gamen and Ene, as they return home from space conquest. It's vivid and sprawling, yet grounded in humanity. Fraction originally wanted to rewrite the Odyssey for his daughter as a story about a mother trying to return home to her daughter, but as development progressed he realized how "wildly inappropriate for children" his story had become. So he aged it up, and now the central themes – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, feminism, humanism, sexuality – are informative and mature but embedded in a youthful, vibrant graphic novel.
Age Group: 15+
Genre: Historical fiction
Why it's worth a read: O'Brien's collection of Vietnam War stories blurs the line between fact and fiction, but he's not lying to sell books. Quite the opposite, actually. Central to The Things They Carried is the philosophy that fiction can be every bit as truthful as fact. Fact is mostly irrelevant in O'Brien's work. What matters are the stories themselves, vignettes that represent the highlights (and lowlights) of our core identities. Those stories are, for O'Brien's semi-autobiographical protagonist, what kept him going during the War; little reminders of man's potential to feel – scared, happy, lonely, horny, homesick, serene – whilst O'Brien and his platoon trudge through swamps of mind-numbing paranoia. For his readers, O'Brien offers up 21 short, well-wrought stories for us to carry: a collection of memories that run the gamut from grotesque viscera to the visceral truths at the heart of human existence.
Age Group: 16+
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy
Why it's worth a read: Pratchett and Gaiman will have you laughing all the way through this witty fantasy about the birth of the Antichrist. The book begins at The End where, on the eve of the Apocalypse, an angel and a demon –uncomfortable with the end of mankind for their own reasons – come together to raise the Antichrist from afar, ensuring that he grows up right and doesn't end the world. Unfortunately, the boy everyone believes to be the Antichrist is actually just a normal 11-year-old kid. The real Antichrist lives in small-town Britain, with zero knowledge of his destiny as The Devil incarnate. Good Omens is farcical, for sure, and a really fun one at that, but it's also an interesting thought experiment on the idea of destiny versus free will.
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