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Crossposts: http://some-stars.livejournal.com/2284598.html

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I'm trying to get Hanukkah presents for my nieces, and while none of them were particularly helpful when surveyed, one said she'd like a book, and mentioned enjoying Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby recently. So on the one hand, awesome, I can buy her a grownup book! On the other hand...I hate the first one and I've never read the second, but I have read another Fitzgerald and hated it. So I have no idea what to do with this.

Therefore: Any ideas from people who don't hate early- to mid-century American dude lit? It doesn't have to be something from that genre, either. Just...something you think she might like. (For reference, she's in 9th grade.)

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To Kill a Mockingbird!

Have you read Code Name Verity yet? Striving for truth and honor like Catcher in the Rye, love and tragedy like The Great Gatsby, unlike either does not use women as props in a story about the real people i.e. men.

Edited 2013-12-01 02:33 (UTC)

Tragically, I gave them that last year! And even so it was my first thought. Such a great book *__*

my favorite book to rec to young people is Sabriel by Garth Nix. it's the first of a three book trilogy. (Sabriel, Lireal, and Abhorsen) it's about a girl who is looking for her missing father, the family business is putting the dead down, her talking sidekick cat might be trying to kill her, and there's a cute amnesiac guy who's been under a curse for the last hundred years. sensible girl heroes are the best.

Sayers? Similar time period but writes about women as hman beings?

...huh, that's a definite possibility. What are her books...like? IDK what to ask about really, just...do you think a 14 year old would be interested?

Their Eyes Were Watching God might in some sense be considered a combination of those two books: it's a (girl's) coming-of-age story and also rather dramatic a la The Great Gatsby. And it's just awesome in general; more people should read it.

All Quiet on the Western Front could also appeal to her. As with Catcher in the Rye and Great Gatsby, it explores the disconnect between social niceties and what lies beneath them.

Drawing a Venn diagram between those two books, what I find in the centre is actually Fight Club. But if you want something more early to mid 20th century, how about an old hard-boiled detective novel? Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler?

Dorothy Parker, perhaps? I liked her in high school and have only liked her more as I've gotten older, and if she's into Fitzgerald, Parker seems like a decent companion.

I also was surprised by how much I didn't hate The Sun Also Rises, because for all the stupid Hemingway machismo BS, there are some gorgeous, heartbreaking moments in it, and they were all my kind of achingly sad and beautiful moments, which is to say the quiet ones where people can't quite get it right with one another.

Oh, maybe some Stella Gibbons? Cold Comfort Farm is best if you've read and rolled your eyes at DH Lawrence and his ilk (although my mother likes it even better as a response to Wuthering Heights) but is still pretty darn great even if you haven't. I'm working my way through her later stuff, as well, and it's lovely.

yeah, I'm currently stuck between Dorothy Parker and Flannery O'Connor, but I have to decide today so it'll get there. I decided to stay away from stuff she may have already had or will have in school. But man, I really can't decide, they're both such great choices. Would that I had more money, alas.

I should reread some Hemingway! I remember enjoying it, in high school, and then I wrote in his voice for the next eight years so there must have been something there.

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