Yes! Rumblefish is so much better than The Outsiders (not that The Outsiders is a bad one either, but I think Rumblefish gets kids thinking a bit more)

And A Clockwork Orange is definitely a goer for high school seniors. If I had a year 13 (last year of high school) class I would probably make them do either The Handmaid's Tale or A Clockwork Orange (I subtly hint that maybe they could see the movie somewhere, as I don't think I'm allowed to show it in class)

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Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.

I escaped somehow. Let's go

actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter

Lovely book, huh? I've been trying to read Finnegan's Wake for like 6 years now, but can't take more than a few pages at a time.

I think I was 16 when I read Portrait, too. They would give us all these terrible and dull books and short stories and poems to read for school, stuff so boring and bad that a lot of people I knew got totally turned off of reading. But there's so much good stuff out there and I was lucky to have parents who read and friends who read and we were able to share new finds with each other. I just remembered another writer I was crazy about in high school. Sandra Cisneros. Her book of poetry Loose Woman and the short story collection Woman Hollering Creek. Also, The Mixquiahuala Letters by Ana Castillo is great.

Just give up on it. Seriously! A gigantic cosmic joke on Joyce's part. Just because one breezed through Artist, and even made it safely through Ulysses, it doesn't mean they have to torture themselves with Finnegans Wake. I think it's like climbing a really difficult mountain. Yes, it's impressive if you can do it, but that still doesn't answer the question of why the fuck would you want to? If just being able to say "I finished Finnegans Wake" and impress people is your aim, I seriously suggest lying, because it's not like they've read it either and can pull you up on it.

Clearly a good age. I'd already tried and failed by then to read Ulysses (I think I was 13 and trying to impress my parents), but Portrait was a revelation to me. Turgid lengthy descriptions of hell and all...

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Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.

I escaped somehow. Let's go

actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter

Those are the type of books I would have loved to study in 5th/6th year of secondary school. Instead I had Jane Austen's Emma and J.M Synge's Playboy of the Western World to contend with. How I loathe that play.

More recommendations:
How Many Miles To Babylon - Jennifer Johnston
Philadelphia Here I come - Brian Friel

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I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

I'm about halfway through. It's honestly really fucking funny once you get into the rhythm of it. The majority of the stuff in "English" is just dirty limmericks. I have no idea what he's saying in all the other languages simultaneously, but I can hang with 14 year old boy potty humor -- for about 4 pages at a time, every few months.

How is one supposed to pronounce "Pegeen"? I've been wondering this for years.

Peg (like normal) een (like the name Ian)

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I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Like EYE-an OR EE-an?

EE-an

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I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Thank you.

Calvin & Hobbes, every single collection.

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"the height of arrogance is the height of control of those who create God in their own image"

The Pirates! books are silly, but quite funny, too. The Author, Gideon DeFoe, is funny outside of the series, as well.

thank god for this list!!

and not just for 13-18yr olds.

and not just Illuminations...all things Rimbaud. Hopefully, they'll be shamed out of their mediocre teenage angst funk.

Tender Is The Night is a beautiful book indeed, but might be a bit much for the younger ones, it's long and it's not exactly a page turner. Same with Portrait of an Artist, it isn't long but it is close to being a stream of consciousness novel, which makes it quite hard to read.

The work itself it so exciting that it's inspiring on its own, but that he created all of it before turned twenty oughtta be enough to put a fire under anyone's ass.

I didn't find Tender dull when I read it at 14, but I've always been fascinated by the 1920's and had a lot of fun spotting the passages in it which were lifted verbatim from Zelda's letters. It's, also, interesting to compare his version of that time with her version in Save Me The Waltz.

As for Portrait and the stream of consciousness aspect, I don't know, that style of writing came pretty close to how I felt as a teenager, this never ending flood of experience.

I think it really depends- a book for a 13 year old whose a bit immature for their age is a very different book to a book I'd recommend to an 18 year old. To be honest, after 16 I think you should be reading adult literature and shouldn't need any tailoring to your age in your choices.

For a younger teen, or one that wasn't keen on reading, I'd recommend something like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

For older teens, it really depends on how they picture themselves. I was a very pretentious and fast reader in my teens so could tolerate books I'd never bother with now (like The Naked Lunch and On the Road). Girls would probably appreciate stuff like The Bell Jar or Wuthering Heights or maybe some of the classic romances. As a girl, I quite enjoyed a lot of the First World War literature, because I felt that it was really the first period of literature where people wrote directly about their emotions and just how terrible things really were, about the futility of everything- things like All Quiet on the Western Front. I suppose boys might appreciate that, or maybe some of the Gothic classics, like Frankenstein or Dracula (which are actually quite good books despite their themes being made into a lot of low-brow movies) or my personal ridiculously over-the-top favourite "The Monk". I also quite enjoyed Evelyn Waugh as a mid/late teenager, its very readable and also hilariously dark humour.

'Snow in August' by Pete Hamill.

Im a tard I know but when I was 16 I adored "Looking For Alibrandi"

i'm a boy and i read books like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre etc. when i was 16/17. Wuthering Heights was a revelation, a dark and beautiful book. Young boys definately can enjoy it, i remember it was Alistair McGowan who was doing the case for it in that bbc best book thingy.