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100 Books Kids of High School Age Should Read

Why 100 books?

Why not 100 gigabytes?

en.m.wikipedia.org

M-DISC - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

An optical disc technology that is supposed to last for centuries.
 
The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood

I read that in 1976. It made so much sense I decided that something had to be wrong with what I was taught about economics in college.

I still had my Samuelson's Economics book so I decided that I was going to figure out what was wrong if I had to read the book cover-to-cover. That is when I discovered NNP, Net National Product. Now we use NDP and GDP instead.

The instructor cherrypicked the chapters when I took the course. I don't recall any mention on NNP and since I have been paying attention to the subject economists still ignore it.

Consumer products got more complicated from WWII to 1976 and even more so since then. So how well are products evaluated and what happens to demand side depreciation. I asked a PhD economists from the University of Chicago to explain how an automobile engine worked. He couldn't even start. There were 200,000,000 cars in the US in 1994. All of that depreciation is irrelevant.
 
Napoleon said:
Had an interesting conversation in another thread about a list of 100 books that high school age kids should read. I found that list to be unsophisticated detritus. I’m curious which books other members think should be represented in such a list. What are your top 100?
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The Catcher in the Rye
 
j brown's body said:
It's remarkably hard to make a kid read anything. Anyone who thinks one is going to read 100 books is out of his mind. The 100 list should be absolutely be as diverse as possible, including graphic novels. Whatever it takes to get them interested is fine. Then they'll be more likely to tackle the classics.
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Yes -- and give them the CHOICE of what to read.
 
psikeyhackr said:
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You don't like that one?

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy"
 
NolanVoyd said:
You don't like that one?

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy"
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I tricked my son into reading that one by telling it had been banned at school (it had been, but wasn't currently) told him if he read it to keep it in his backpack at school. He read it in like three days. Loved it. And has been an avid reader ever since.
 
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NolanVoyd said:
I tricked my son into reading that one by telling it had been banned at school (it had been, but wasn't currently) told him if he read it to keep it in his backpack at school. He read it in like three days. Loved it. And has been an avid reader ever since.
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ROFL

Actually that was one of the books I was supposed to read in high school. I started it and saw it was about some white boy being kicked out of school and he had been kicked out of other schools before that. I was pissed! I got straight A's in math and sciences and straight D's in religion. If I had had any sense I would have taken accounting too, but I don't even know if they had the courses. Our schools fill kids heads with bullshit and call it education.

I read The Scarlet Letter and The Mayor of Casterbridge but I would not claim that they are any more useful than Catcher. I am much more of a STEM kind of guy.

But now kids can find "Classics" on Librivox and listen to MP3s on their smartphones. It's a whole new ballgame.

LibriVox

LibriVox
librivox.org librivox.org
 
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psikeyhackr said:
ROFL

Actually that was one of the books I was supposed to read in high school. I started it and saw it was about some white boy being kicked out of school and he had been kicked out of other schools before that. I was pissed! I got straight A's in math and sciences and straight D's in religion. If I had had any sense I would have taken accounting too, but I don't even know if they had the courses. Our schools fill kids heads with bullshit and call it education.

I read The Scarlet Letter and The Mayor of Casterbridge but I would not claim that they are any more useful than Catcher. I am much more of a STEM kind of guy.

But now kids can find "Classics" on Librivox and listen to MP3s on their smartphones. It's a whole new ballgame.

LibriVox

LibriVox
librivox.org librivox.org
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The point of literature is not "to be useful".

Sad you never learned it.
 
Gatsby said:
Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order. Some of these are on everyone's list, some of them aren't. I put an asterisk next to the ones I think might be too difficult for high schoolers.
  • Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
  • Sula, Toni Morrison
  • The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Sound and The Fury, William Faulkner *
  • Life of Pi, Yann Martel
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
  • Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy *
  • Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
  • Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
  • Emma, Jane Austen
  • Love In the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace *
  • The Harry Potter series, JK Rowling
  • The Great Divorce, CS Lewis
  • Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides *
  • White Teeth, Zadie Smith
  • Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel
  • The Dubliners, James Joyce
  • Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
  • Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke *
  • His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman
  • Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
  • The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon *
  • Ubik, Philip K. Dick
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon *
  • Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
  • Dracula, Bram Stoker
  • All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren *
  • The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
  • The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
  • Neuromancer, William Gibson
  • Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
  • Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
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Nueromancer......I read that book when it first came put. It blew my mind.

It is so 'techy' though, I wonder how it reads now?

I might read it again to find out.
 
NolanVoyd said:
Nueromancer......I read that book when it first came put. It blew my mind.

It is so 'techy' though, I wonder how it reads now?

I might read it again to find out.
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Neuromancer was techy!?

Try The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P Hogan. He worked for Digital Equipment Corporation.
 
NolanVoyd said:
Of course it can be. But that isn't the point of it. Instruction manuals, how to books, self help books, etc. Are meant to be useful. But they are not literature.
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I found A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke quite useful. I have read Childhood's End and found it much less so though it gets mentioned far more often among SF aficionados.

People who are not into SF are even more out of touch. The tons of e-waste produced every year demonstrates how far out of touch. Try The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl. I have never seen that in a SF list by English literature types. It is only 70 years old.
 
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psikeyhackr said:
The usual suspects.
I refused to read Catcher in the Rye when I was in high school.

Some people say Heinlein wrote Tunnel in the Sky in response to Lord of the Flies.

Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez
en.m.wikipedia.org

Daemon (novel) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

Would be way more up to date than the stuff in that list.
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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline has 20 times more ratings in Goodreads as Daemon and a somewhat higher rating. It has also been made into a movie that is significantly different from the book.


Daemon and Ready Player One are based on extrapolations of the same technologies that nearly exist today. Player may be more fun but Daemon & Freedom are more relevant to what is happening in the near future. But the 2040s of Ready Player One don't look too good.
 
psikeyhackr said:
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline has 20 times more ratings in Goodreads as Daemon and a somewhat higher rating. It has also been made into a movie that is significantly different from the book.


Daemon and Ready Player One are based on extrapolations of the same technologies that nearly exist today. Player may be more fun but Daemon & Freedom are more relevant to what is happening in the near future. But the 2040s of Ready Player One don't look too good.
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I like science fiction too, but you should broaden your horizons. There are truly great reads in other genres too, including classics.
 
NolanVoyd said:
I like science fiction too, but you should broaden your horizons. There are truly great reads in other genres too, including classics.
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When did you solder together your first computer?

Science fiction is not all the same. I have written a computer program that counts the science and fantasy words to compute science and fantasy densities in works. Lots of literature do not project the future that students must learn to deal with.

Like Shakespeare said:

"Lord, What fools these mortals be." - Puck, Midsummer Night's Dream
 
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NolanVoyd said:
I like science fiction too, but you should broaden your horizons. There are truly great reads in other genres too, including classics.
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What did I do to stop you from listing whatever you want? I can't stop you from complaining about what I suggest.

For all I know the science fiction you like is garbage. I do not regard Star Wars and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as SF.

But if you don't like my not suggesting anything other than SF, too goddam bad. Great Literature isn't stopping global warming as far as I can tell.
 
psikeyhackr said:
When did you solder together your first computer?

Science fiction is not all the same. I have written a computer program that counts the science and fantasy words to compute science and fantasy densities in works. Lots of literature do not project the future that students must learn to deal with.

Like Shakespeare said:

"Lord, What fools these mortals be." - Puck, Midsummer Night's Dream
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What does any of that have to do with my point.

I know science fiction is not all the same. Like I said, I like science fiction. So im not sure what you are talking about.

Perhaps you should read my last post again.
 
Napoleon said:
Had an interesting conversation in another thread about a list of 100 books that high school age kids should read. I found that list to be unsophisticated detritus. I’m curious which books other members think should be represented in such a list. What are your top 100?
Click to expand...
All I know is that Catcher in the Rye should be removed from the required reading lists. Never understood the love for that damned book.
 
psikeyhackr said:
What did I do to stop you from listing whatever you want? I can't stop you from complaining about what I suggest.

For all I know the science fiction you like is garbage. I do not regard Star Wars and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as SF.

But if you don't like my not suggesting anything other than SF, too goddam bad. Great Literature isn't stopping global warming as far as I can tell.
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You didn't do anything to stop me.

What in the world are you talking about?

It was just a comment. You know, conversational.

Seems like you are having a bad day. Your posts are full of unwarranted arguementativness and hostility.
 
roughdraft274 said:
All I know is that Catcher in the Rye should be removed from the required reading lists. Never understood the love for that damned book.
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It's the book that got my 14 year old son to like reading. Hooked him. He has been an avid reader ever since.
 
NolanVoyd said:
You didn't do anything to stop me.

What in the world are you talking about?

It was just a comment. You know, conversational.

Seems like you are having a bad day. Your posts are full of unwarranted arguementativness and hostility.
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You said I should broaden my horizons.

This thread proposes 100 books for high school students. Then someone listed the usual drivel, 1984, Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye.


I started reading about Greek philosophers in 7th grade because of a science fiction book. But I also decided to go to college for engineering because of SF.

I could suggest The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase

But no! I learned about that because of Robert Heinlein's interest in General Semantics by Alfred Korzybski. A E van Vogt used it too. Lots of writers of really great SF tend to be exceptionally bright and well read people. But junk like Star Wars won't get suggested by me.
 
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