Suggestions for a 16 year old girl that loves to read!

Suggest away please...
THANKS :)

Help us narrow it down a bit.

What was the last book you read that you really liked?

Do you have a favorite genre? (scifi, romance, mystery, fantasy, etc.)

Are there any kinds you really DON'T like?

May not be the right genres, but The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and Graceling by Kristin Cashore are all topnotch recent YA titles.

A book I read recently that I loved and would also have loved at 16 (as long as you are reasonably broad-minded) was Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill; another is Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern. 16 was also the age at which my son and daughter discovered Stephen King, though your parents may not thank me for that suggestion, and I'd also recommend books by Graham Joyce and Shirley Jackson. All those are a little 'off-centre' and much will depend on yours tastes and the genres you particularly like. If you prefer the more mainstream kind of thing, you may well be at the perfect age to tackle some of the classics like Jane Austen or maybe Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm.

Whatever you decide on, do let us know how you get on. We've caught you, now we want to keep you ;-)

If you are looking for something slightly (but not much) heavier, I read Cannery Row by John Steinbeck when I was 16 (8 years ago) and it changed my life.

Great one, Weener! Can't believe I didn't think of it!

I absolutely loved The Hunger Games and Graceling.
I liked the Twilight Saga, but it's a little overrated now.
Um, I also enjoyed The Mortal Instruments.
That's some of the stuff I likes :)
And I will definitely check out Cannery Row and Lullabies for Little Criminals.
Thanks so much keep suggesting though please.
♥

I see you've read the Garth Nix Abhorsen trilogy, and the Chima books, Angie Sage,and a lot of other fantasy. Have you read Tamora Pierce? Not the Magic Circle books, but the TortallSeries. How about Patricia Wrede and her Dealing with Dragons quartet? Patricia A. McKillip and Robin McKinley write wonderful fantasy--try The Blue Sword or The Hero and the Crown. I think you'd like The Thread that Binds the Bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman as well.

Okay, I'll just give a few (hopefully diverse) suggestions since you didn't really specify your preferences.

--Looking For Alaska by John Green.
--Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.
-The Bermudez Triangle, Devilish and Suite Scarlett are my favorites by Maureen Johnson.
--Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan.
--A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray.
--The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
--Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause.

Hope this helps a bit.

The Belgariad by David Eddings is also a good series--a five book series that is quite enjoyable.

not listed as ya ,but I think I'd hand over The Septembers Of Shirazby Dalia Sofer to the 16s .
Current,not devoid of horror,but not a hard read,either.

And how about The Color Purple - a great one for a young woman! Or, since we're on 'women's stuff' now, The Women's Room or the marvellous, historical The Madness of a Seduced Woman.

ET try to fix Touchstones - didn't work. (The Color Purple is by Alice Walker, in case you didn't know.)

The Tomorrow When the War Began Series by John Marsden are fantastic reads.

Or The Diary of Anne Frank or The Boy in Striped Pyjamas. in you fancy knowing a bit more about WWII without it having to be all blood and guns.

You should try the Attolia books by Megan Whalen Turner. They are, in order, The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia. It's fantasy with great writing and unforgettable characters. The only problem is that we fans are eagerly awaiting the fourth book, and it's taking FOREVER...

I second Suite Scarlett and also 13 Little Blue Envelopes also by Maureen Johnson. And her in general!

Dairy Queen and its sequel The Off-Season are awesome - everyone I've recommended them to has loved them.

Artichoke's Heart is one of my very favourites from last year.

While it's not a top fave of mine, The Poison Apples is a pretty good fluffy one and it's popular at my library.

The Blue Bloods books if she likes vampires (just as one example, vampires are everywhere!).

Books by Holly Black or Melissa Marr for dark, urban stories about faeries (hot genre right now).

The Peaches trilogy by Jodi Lynn Anderson is good.

I could go on and on! :)

I have read both books by Maureen Johnson..
I have read Blue Bloods..

Thanks everyone :)
You're helping a lot.

I just finished The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. A very good read. If you liked The Hunger Games, I think you'd enjoy it.

Also, Juilet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing and Cymbele's Secret are wonderful.

I am 16 years old. You can look in my library to see if there are any books.

But,

mabay

Harry Potter
Twilight
The Uglies Series.

some of Jodi Picoult's books would be a good read for a teen... the one I would recommend to read first is My sister's Keeper been out for years but still the best one especially for a teen.

Highly recommend the classics: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables series etc. Not only are they great to read, and if you are like me may even want to re-read them every few years, but they are also referenced frequently in contemporary novels. E.g Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet and even Anne of Green Gables were referenced frequently throughout the Twilight series

Hunger Games and Graceling both have sequels coming out in Fall 09. OK and this is strange because the girls' names are so similar Katsa and Katniss - both sequels have "fire" in the title!
Catching Fire is the sequel to Hunger Games.
Fire by Kristin Cashore is a prequel to Graceling. I read the ARC. It's really good but it takes place before Katsa and Po were born so they are not in it at all.

I also really liked Life As We Knew It.

I think you should check out stephxsu's 50 book challenge....

http://www.librarything.com/topic/55525

I have taken many a book suggestions from her for my daughter. She reads and reviews a TON of YA books, from a variety of genres.

Others that I haven't seen mentioned are the Pretties series, The Book Thief, or The Sisterhood of the traveling Pants series. But steph's list has many more.

I don't recommend Cybele's Secret. I read and was not overly impressed with Wildwood Dancing, but Cybele's Secret was just so utterly predictable, clichéd, and laughable right from the start that I couldn't finish it. It's a pity. I really liked Marillier's Sevenwaters trilogy.

21 &22: I have read all of those and they were amazing!
And I totally agree about the Katsa Katniss thing because
I read those back to back.

Cannery Row always has been one of my favorites. If you're interested in a fun read, try The Nanny Diaries. Also, I would highly recommend To Kill A Mockingbird and The Secret Life of Bees. I read The Hiding Place by Corie Ten Boom when I was your age, and it had a big impact on me.

I would also recommend Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts

I adored reading at that age and often read above my age level - I'm guessing your daughter does as well. Depending on what genres she likes, here are some of my favorites:

The Book Thief by, Markus Zusak
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle - actually any book by Madeleine L'Engle - A Ring of Endless Light, An Acceptable Time - I loved all of those as a teenager
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Freeze Frame by Heidi Ayarbe
Feed by M.T. Anderson

Those are the ones I can think of right now! Good luck and please let us know which ones she reads - and likes!

And how about the Inkheart series?

22 sydamy, thanks for the mention! Yeah, I read mostly YA and review it for my book review blog, Steph Su Reads. There's a really great blogosphere for YA lit out there that you might enjoy. I know that my own TBR list EXPLODED when I joined the blogosphere and began picking up suggestions from everyone else!

Some recent favorites of mine that I think (hope) you'll enjoy are:

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey
Swim the Fly by Don Calame
The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King
Gone and its sequel Hunger: a Gone Novel by Michael Grant
Genesis by Bernard Beckett

Also a few authors to check out are: Elizabeth Scott, Jennifer E. Smith, C. K. Kelly Martin, and Jennifer Echols.

Hope this helps, and keep on reading!

Back to the 'classics' - what 16 year old girl could possibly fail to love Rebecca?

I Recommend:
anything by Catherine Cookson,
A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan,
Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones,
anything by Madeleine L'Engle,
The Watcher in the Woods by Florence Engel Randall,
At the Back of the North Wind and other books by George MacDonald (yes they are for younger kids but there is a lot for older people that you wouldn't get when read earlier),
and The Once and Future King by T. H. White

Touchstones never seem to work for me, sorry.

Mention of Lois Duncan reminds me of The Third Eye, always a favorite.

Philip Pullman is an excellent storyteller. And - whether it's the "Dark Materials" trilogy or the Sally Lockhart mysteries - his principal characters are heroines.
Of course, one of my personal favorites (since I'm the author), is "Christmasville". Mary Jane Higgins, the heroine of the tale, suspects that there is more to the town of Christmasville than what meets the eye. What the reader discovers at the conclusion of chapter one is that "Christmasville" is actually situated on a model train platform. The novel culminates in a surprise ending.
As in the Pullman novels, the principal character in "Christmasville" is a heroine - one vested with superior intelligence, marked resourcefulness, relentless determination.
Readers comments can be viewed on Amazon, B&N, etc.

I can also recommend Scott Westerfeld's Pretties Quartet, starting with Uglies a captivating story and I'm 28! I loved Ruby in the Smoke and the consecutive stories, I didn't like the BBC version with Billie Piper. I tend to love the fantasy, urban fantasy and paranormal genre much more. You may also like...

Tamora Pierce - with the Song of the Lioness series or Protector of the Small
Midori Snyder - I loved the Beldan Quartet
Jenny Carroll, who is also Meg Cabot - wrote the Mediator Series which rocks
Kelley Armstrong - Darkest Powers series, start with The Summoning
Holly Black's TIthe, Valiant and Ironside
Cassandra Clare's City of Bones
Garth Nix's 'Old Kingdom' rock too! start with Sabriel

Most of the books in my library are tagged, I'm loving the collections so sorting out them at the mo, you may want to have a browse tho, Young Adult tags are appropriate

MerryMary: You are indeed correct! now amended, I sometimes get so excited that I forget/confuse what I mean :) you can call me kitten.

Great list, vlt. (I don't want to call you vicious for short!)

But I think Westerfeld's series starts with Uglies.

If you think you'd like historical classics, you should try Anya Seyton. For example, Theodosia, Dragonwyck, Avalon,-those are good to start with.
Also, The Silk Vendetta, by Victoria Holt. Also, Marion Zimmer Bradley is great. Mists of Avalon and Firebrand are two, for a start.

house of the night series by p.c. cast
gallhager girls series by ally carter
the luxe series by anna godbersen
airhead series by meg cabot
vanps series by nancy a. collins

Wake by Lisa McMann is a grabber about a girl who can't help getting drawn into others' dreams. LTers also have liked the sequel Fade, which I haven't read yet.

I've read Fade and enjoyed it. The third book isn't due out for a while. Worth reading.

Here are my non-Harry Potter suggestions:

Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison by Lois Lenski
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
King Dork by Frank Portman
Go and Come Back by Joan Abelove
Holes by Louis Sachar
The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Witch Child and Sorceress by Celia Rees

Oh YES to Sophie's World! Can't believe I didn't think of that!

The Perilous Gard a great YA historical that has the best heroine ever. If you like that, I recently read The Sherwood Ring by the same author (Elizabeth Marie Pope) and loved in even as an adult.

The China Garden is a fun YA romance with an otherworldy flavor and even though it is a bit of a guilty pleasure it kept me reading all night.

I just started Tamar, a YA historical that I am looooving. For beach reading or the 16 year old equivalent (long summer afternoons on the bed maybe) try the James Patterson series about winged teenagers who are a genetic experiment. I think one is called Maximum Ride, which I think a teen might like as just a good fun read.

For more realistic fare try Thirteen Reasons Why and I know a girl who loves the Crank series by ellen Hopkins, in spite of the fact that they are written in verse.

I loved Gone and Hunger: A Gone Novel. I also agree that this was the age that I started to love Stephen King. Carrie springs immediately to mind, but so does The Stand if you arent afraid of an epic.

I also discovered Stephen King at around 16 and The Stand is one of my favourites, I also love It and The Shining.

I would suggest Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for the classics, not to mention Pride and Prejudice and Little Women.

I just finished the House of Night series so I would recommend this series if you were a fan of Twilight and were looking for more paronormal style books.

the saga of darren shan

I wish "the 1001 books you must read before you die" list had been published when I was 16. Some of the classics on the list have been mentioned already, but the list is an amazing introduction to works I would have never come across any other way. There is a group on Library thing that is reading from the list. The list is easy to find through google. There is a 2008 edition and an older edition.

I recently read Elsewhere and really liked it. It is about a girl who dies and goes to Elsewhere until she has time to age backwards.

I also like Jordan Sonnenblick and Gordon Korman

Vampire academy by Richelle Mead : It’s a series better then Twilight and the house of night series. They are also my favorite books.
Clank by Ellen Hopkins
Girl 15 charming but insane by Sue Limb (very funny book)
The secret countess by Eva Ibbotson (this book is also published under another title: Countess below stairs)
Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

pirates

epic book about female empowerment

jurrasic park

a classic

Have you read Jane Yolen's dragons' trillogy? Dragon's Blood, Heart's Blood and A Sending of Dragons. Though it may not be a trilogy any more as there are rumors of a fourth book to come.

How about Diane Duane? She writes the Young Wizard Series. There are eight so far with one more to come starts with So You Want to be A Wizard.

There is also Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series and C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

Or even Lord of the Rings if you haven't attempted it before.
~ Missy

noughts and crosses
knifes edge
checkmate
double cross
stuff of nightmares

cdnbookworm, just so you know, the fourth book of Jane Yolen's is already out (at least here). It's called Dragon's Heart.

cnposner: you are beginning to sound like "Johnny One-Note." Got any other titles?

ibet -
I looked at your library and you really are a big reader! You must make your librarian very happy. ;-)One book that I didn't see on your list is Gone with the Wind. This is a romance that will knock your socks off!

Merry - the ironic thing is that cn doesn't have a single book in their library.

Anything by Ellen Hopkins, Sarah Dessen, or John Green.

Fantasy
I second Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Daughter of the Flames by Zoë Marriott
Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Part I by Lisa Mantchev
Chalice by Robin McKinley,
Rampant by Diana Peterfreund
Dark Divine by Bree Despain (Paranormal romance)
Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
General Winston's Daughter by Sharon Shinn

Anything by Melody Carlson is excellent for a teenage girl - especially the Diary Of A Teenage Girl series.
Nancy Rue also has some really good ones.
Brio Girls series by Lissa Halls Johnson is wonderful.
I'd also recommend Lisa Samson's Hollywood Nobody series
~ J:-)mi

http://ctfdevourer.blogspot.com

I suspect someone mentioned it above and I missed it, but my daughter, who isn't much older, loved Cassandra Clare's City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass trilogy, and on her recommendation I liked it, too.

The Boston Jane series, by Jennifer Holm is such a great YA read. There are 3 books in the series and I consider them as some of my favorite reads. I recommend them to everyone.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card!

If you are really in the mood for a whopper of a read, try Tad Williams' Otherland series. It's a quartet of "doorstopper" sized proportions.

Anything by Margaret Petersen Haddix, although my favorites by her are Just Ella, Palace of Mirrors, and Running Out of Time. Also Ella Enchanted and Fairest by Gail Carson Levine.

I second the recommendation for Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I also liked The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is pretty good, if a little confusing. It's the first in a series.

I liked Hollywood Nobody by Lisa Samson, and it's also the first in a series.

There's the London Confidential series by Sandra Bryd.

And I loved Piratica: Being a Daring Tale of a Singular Girl's Adventure Upon the High Seas by Tanith Lee. (Don't you love that title?)

Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress is technically for younger readers, but I thought it was pretty good. I also liked Rowan Hood by Nancy Springer.

The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley has an interesting take on Robin Hood, and an unexpected ending.

If you like poetry, or even if you don't (I sure don't!), read The Song of the Sparrow, by Lisa Ann Sandell. It's an Arthurian legend set to verse.

And finally, I love everything I've read by Shannon Hale, from The Books of Bayern to Austenland. But please, please, please read Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack. They're graphic novels, which I normally don't like, but Shannon and Dean Hale did such a fantastic job on them that I can't help but love them.

I am a 14 year old reading at an 11th grade level so here are some that i liked:

Vampire Academy series is AMAZING if you like vampire stuff
Hunger Games for sure
Life as we knew it (series)
Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
The Knife of Never Letting Go (and the sequel)
Iron King
Life of Pi (harder and kinda descriptive but good)
Nicholas Sparks books are always good
A Match Made in High School is good
I just read 13 Reasons Why and it was seriously one of the best books i have ever read. always reccommend it
well thats good for now i think :)

I recommend all of Tamora Pierces books (I talked about them here). And I see that a few of them have been recommended by others as well! Awesome.

Also:

Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses series consisting of:
Mystic and Rider, The Thirteenth House, Dark Moon Defender, Reader & Raelynx, Fortune & Fate

They are really good books. They're a merriment of the middle ages, mythology, and magic (& romance) & really GREAT characters, who are flawed! I think the reason I especially enjoyed these books, btw, is because of Senneth. She's about 30, if I remember correctly. And it was just so refreshing to read a book (and I first read them in high school) that didn't have a young main character. The maturity of the protagonist was new and alluring I guess. And really, Senneth is just freaking awesome. She'd be cool no matter what xD

The Twelve Houses series just has such a great plot. :) You'll love it!

Also:

The Tales of Lanen Kaelar It's not as much of an epic series but it's still a good one :)

I loved Unwind by Neil Shusterman and Thirteen Reasons Why don't remember the authors name and I read the book The Wednesday Letters in just 4 hours nonstop wonderful book!!!!

I'm a high school librarian and the students (boys and girls) love this series

The City of Bones series.

Alright lots of books!
Mediators series
Mortal instruments series (My very favorite)
Twilight series
The uglies trilogy
The pretty little liars series

I loved Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld