Book recomendations for 14 year old girl please.

[kabbes]

Can't believe no one's suggested Philip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy. Your daughter may have already read them, but if not they are really fabulous. Like all good children's literature they work on all sorts of different levels and can be enjoyed by adults as well as teenagers. I was given them for Christmas a few years back and I read them all cover-to-cover over a couple of days; I just couldn't put them down. Utterly wonderful.

Most disappointing series of books I ever read. Some nice ideas wrapped up in a complete failure to explore any of those ideas with any more depth than a puddle, nor to resolve anything whatsoever. Terrible -- wish I'd never bothered.

They're frequently cited when Harry Potter is brought up as an example of how to do fantasy better. Utter nonsense. Harry Potter works considerably better both for coherence and readability. And there are loads and loads of fantasy works out there that work much better than both series as pure fantasy.

Speaking of fantasy, My sister and I both loved the core six Dragonlance novels and three Dragonlance short story collections when I was a teenager. Marvellous stuff. Avoid anything else with the name on, though, like the plague. Certainly including the awful tacked-on fourth book in the original "trilogy".

 

[Santino]

Speaking of fantasy, My sister and I both loved the core six Dragonlance novels and three Dragonlance short story collections when I was a teenager. Marvellous stuff. Avoid anything else with the name on, though, like the plague. Certainly including the awful tacked-on fourth book in the original "trilogy".

I got sucked into reading loads of the prequels.

Check out this thread from last year: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=272396

 

[kabbes]

Yeah, I read loads and loads of prequels, backstory, expanded universe, all kinds of stuff at the time. And it was universally shit. But I reread the originals later and they were still as good as ever.

 

[kabbes]

Incidentally, I sold all the expanded universe books -- about fifty of them -- in a car boot sale about 5 years ago for £2 the lot, IIRC. But I kept the original nine core books. I'm never getting rid of those -- that's my *history*, man.

 

[Santino]

Incidentally, I sold all the expanded universe books -- about fifty of them -- in a car boot sale about 5 years ago for £2 the lot, IIRC. But I kept the original nine core books. I'm never getting rid of those -- that's my *history*, man.

How many of the Tales are any good? I hated that stuff about the Majere Boys.

 

[DotCommunist]

Don't know if anyones mentioned Katherine Kerr's Daggerspell trilogy, but it's a great bit of celctic-styled fantasy, wih the main character being a young girl.

Not too challenging and better than dragonlance

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Thom Clancy's NetForce

or Andy Mcnab.

Won't most fourteen-year-old girls have read these already?

 

[kabbes]

How many of the Tales are any good? I hated that stuff about the Majere Boys.

WEll I can't say how I'd find them now, but they were definitely a cut above at the time. A lot of the writers that couldn't cope with a novel to save their Level 8 Mage's life were pretty good in the short story format.

 

[geekpenguin]

The Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. It is actually my answer for any book-related questions... Max is a feisty, no-nonsense 14 year old with wings. It's a bit sci-fi but not too in your face. She might like that?

I'm in my early twenties and still read the series. Just bought the 5th one today actually. It's weird they started doing it with adult covers tho . Come on, people - no need to be ashamed of reading teen fiction/kids books .

 

[brix]

Most disappointing series of books I ever read. Some nice ideas wrapped up in a complete failure to explore any of those ideas with any more depth than a puddle, nor to resolve anything whatsoever. Terrible -- wish I'd never bothered.

They're frequently cited when Harry Potter is brought up as an example of how to do fantasy better. Utter nonsense. Harry Potter works considerably better both for coherence and readability. And there are loads and loads of fantasy works out there that work much better than both series as pure fantasy.

Speaking of fantasy, My sister and I both loved the core six Dragonlance novels and three Dragonlance short story collections when I was a teenager. Marvellous stuff. Avoid anything else with the name on, though, like the plague. Certainly including the awful tacked-on fourth book in the original "trilogy".

Completely disagree! Harry Potter is OK, but doesn't work on different levels like the Pullman stuff. I teach English and would much rather my kids were reading Pullman than Rowling. I was enthralled by the whole trilogy; thought it was sophisticated and extremely well written.

 

[Santino]

His Dark Materials had too many plot holes. If you create a fantasy universe in which almost anything seems possible, you need to at least indicate why some of the things that do happen have happened, and others haven't.

What did Lord Asriel know about the other worlds before he went?

How did he construct that giant fortress?

Was The Authority the god of every world or only one?

Were all those dead souls from the same world or all worlds?

Were there several versions of the same person in different worlds?

In short, what the hell was going on?

 

[DotCommunist]

It's a beautifully strange coming-of-age tale Alex, plotholes be damned

 

[Santino]

It's a beautifully strange coming-of-age tale Alex, plotholes be damned

Your mum is a beautifully strange coming-of-age tale.

 

[camouflage]

The un-petaling of 'O'.

now that's out the way...

The curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I recommend that one to anybody, no matter how different they are to myself. Young or Old, Male or Female, God-job or Not, Yank or Chinese....


Not so much Aspergers people though, they wouldn't get as much out of it as the rest of us.

 

[brix]

His Dark Materials had too many plot holes. If you create a fantasy universe in which almost anything seems possible, you need to at least indicate why some of the things that do happen have happened, and others haven't.

What did Lord Asriel know about the other worlds before he went?

How did he construct that giant fortress?

Was The Authority the god of every world or only one?

Were all those dead souls from the same world or all worlds?

Were there several versions of the same person in different worlds?

In short, what the hell was going on?

Blimey, do you quiz all books in the same way? I'm not saying that there isn't room for some intellectual interrogation - there should always be a level of that - but you do need to be able to suspend belief or there won't be any literature (or plays, or films, etc) that you'll be able to enjoy

 

[DotCommunist]

Your mum is a beautifully strange coming-of-age tale.

Yeah she comes all over your age

 

[Santino]

Blimey, do you quiz all books in the same way? I'm not saying that there isn't room for some intellectual interrogation - there should always be a level of that - but you do need to be able to suspend belief or there won't be any literature (or plays, or films, etc) that you'll be able to enjoy

I do when a fucking great fortress is suddenly introduced into the plot, and there are vague insinuations of how it was built that directly contradict the spirit of the first book.

It's not just perforations in the plot, or details left unexplained, it's vast chasms of things that make no sense, and don't even feel like they belong to the same story as earlier.

eta: It's actually a credit to his writing that you can still read the books without stopping to say 'What the fuck is this?' and 'How does that work?' every few chapters.

 

[kabbes]

I do when a fucking great fortress is suddenly introduced into the plot, and there are vague insinuations of how it was built that directly contradict the spirit of the first book.

It's not just perforations in the plot, or details left unexplained, it's vast chasms of things that make no sense, and don't even feel like they belong to the same story as earlier.

eta: It's actually a credit to his writing that you can still read the books without stopping to say 'What the fuck is this?' and 'How does that work?' every few chapters.

^^^This. It's speculative fiction for people that don't normally read speculative fiction and don't actually realise how good it can be done when it is done well.

Suspension of disbelief doesn't mean that you just make it up as you go along.

 

[ada]

At that age I was very into dystopian novels - 1984, Brave New World, The Wave, Lord of the Flies. A contemporary novel in a similar vein is Meg Rosoff, How I live now.

I also used to read (and still re-read) pretty much everything written by Diana Wynne Jones - great fantasy novels geared at teenagers.

And instead of the Twilight series (which are addictive but terrible) how about the Southern Vampire Mysteries series (aka Sookie Stackhouse Novels) - by Charlaine Harris. (True Blood, the TV series, is based on these - but there's much less (and less graphic) sex in the books than the TV show).