Great books for high school and older

Here’s a bunch of books I heartily recommend, and that I think would make good gifts. They’re all books that adults can enjoy, that high school kids ought be able to get something out of, and maybe that a smart younger teenager could appreciate. 

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LOVE IN THE RUINS
by Walker Percy

A satirical, prophetic novel written with great love for the weak man. If you haven’t met Walker Percy yet, this is his indispensable work. 

DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT
by Anne Tyler

A fearless and tender book about family doing terrible things for terribly understandable reasons. Anne Tyler is incredibly prolific and has written dozens of good novels, and about half a dozen really excellent novels, but I think this may be her best. 

PIRANESI
by Susanna Clarke

An exquisitely strange, painfully beautiful fantastical novel that sets up a world you think the author can’t possibly support to its conclusion, and yet she does. A moving, hopeful, gorgeously written work. 

PEACE LIKE A RIVER
by Leif Enger

Part adventure and coming-of-age story, part sort of Biblical magical realism, with a thrilling conclusion. A powerful and restorative book with a great story and complex characters. 

HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS
by Isabel Allende

A funny, bizarre, sexy, tragic ambitious novel of three generations set in Chile. Reads like a beach book but it will really stay with you.

BELOVED
by Toni Morrison

Hold onto your butts. One of the finest novels of the century, but reading it is going to hurt. Absolutely transcendent writing, unforgettable. Has some graphic violent and sexual scenes, so not for younger readers.

THE LITTLE WORLD OF DON CAMILLO
by Giovanni Guareschi

A collection of stories about a large and rash priest in rural Italy who often does battle, spiritually and physically, with the equally large and rash communist mayor of the town. These are appealing, funny, sometimes poignant little vignettes of more or less decent people working out their salvation. 

THE MARTIAN 
by Andy Weir

This one, I have never read, but I asked my 18-year-old old son for a recommendation, and this is what he said. He said it is “Funny, harrowing adventure, great lead character, great for people who like space.”

THE JOYS OF YIDDISH
by Leo Rosten

Possibly a bit of a niche pick, but this is a vastly entertaining book, packed with jokes, stories, bits of history, and all kinds of fascinating, rigorously researched details about the Yiddish language and its speakers. 

THE GHOST KEEPER 
by Natalie Morrill

[An excerpt from a review I wrote:] A story about what it means to survive, and what it means to go home; what it is like to love, what it is like to be betrayed. It is about guilt and responsibility, about how to live with unspeakable burdens, and about how to survive when, as one character says, “everyone is excused, but no one is forgiven.” 

But this is not a dark novel, either. Or, rather, it’s dark like the earth is dark, sometimes crushingly heavy, but also fertile and alive — partly because of where the story brings us, and partly because the writing itself is so luminous.

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS
M.R. Carey

The writing is a little bit primitive, but this is a blazingly original book, really gripping and frightening, and it does what many monster stories don’t bother to do: It works out what the world would actually be like, if The Thing That Happened happened. The movie is a worthy adaptation, but the book is better. 

OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET and PERELANDRA 
by C.S. Lewis

The first two books of Lewis’ space trilogy are each have more than one scene that helped me understand something important about God. There is an awful lot of scenery, and Lewis is not as good at describing it as he thinks he is; but I can forgive the unnevenness of the prose because of those seminal passages. And anyway, some of the writing is pure Lewis lucidity and loveliness. Plus it’s just weird and cool and interesting, the product of an active, unfettered mind at play. 

That Hideous Strength is the third book in the series, and it’s worth reading. It’s a powerful story and immensely original; but I can’t bring myself to recommend it with the same fervor, because all of Lewis’ weirdness about women gets distilled into this one, and you can just skip it if you want to. 

JACOB HAVE I LOVED
by Katherine Patterson 

This one really is a YA book, and I probably should make a whole YA list, except that I don’t really believe in YA books. I think kids should read good children’s books until they are old enough to read adult books, and then they should continue reading children’s books while they read adult books. That being said, Katherine Paterson has written many, many well-researched historical novels aimed squarely at the teenaged reader. She understands their problems and their joys so well, and takes them seriously, and also has mastered the art of writing as an unreliable narrator. Jacob Have I Loved is one of my favorites of hers. Twin girls coming of age in a crabbing town in Maryland during World War II. One sister is (or believes she is) less favored, less gifted, less loved, and wrestles with this as she grows up. It’s so delicately done and so good. 

A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ
by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Crazy, man. A three-part post-apocalyptic epic that follows the rebuilding of civilization, including the stubbornly resilient Catholic Church. This book is hilarious and nutty and so smart and tough and strange. The last bit may include some light heresy, but it’s worth it.

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN
by Betty Smith

Betty Smith wrote several novels, all of which absolutely wallow in pathos and sentimentality, with a few passages that ring true and hit home. This book, which is clearly semi-autobiographical, is the opposite: It frequently tiptoes up to sentimentality, but the bulk of it is just too raw and real and beautiful. A brother and sister grow up in Brooklyn in poverty in the 40’s with a drunken Irish father and a German mother who loves them all, but isn’t great at showing it. Smith shows and tells, and it’s pretty close to an American epic novel, that just takes place in a few blocks in Brooklyn. 

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL
by James Herriot 

My comfort read. Immensely gratifying, funny, moving, fascinating, well-told stories of how a young man sets up his veterinary practice in the Yorkshire countryside. You can tell that he’s embroidering the truth to make everything a little more tidy, but he does it so well and the stories are so good, you don’t mind. I love this book and its sequels dearly, and want everyone to read them. 

THE MOONLIGHT
by Joyce Cary 

Sure wish Joyce Cary were more well known.

From a mini review I wrote: The Moonlight deals with two generations of women living through social transformations of sexual mores, and the choices they make, the hardships they can’t escape, and what it does to their souls. That makes it sound tiresome, but it’s super dramatic, but also extraordinarily true to life, very tender and funny and sometimes shockingly, horribly familiar. 

Cary is one of those authors who understands human nature very deeply, and also loves his characters very deeply, even as they allow themselves to do stupid and monstrous things. The book would be a wonderful portrayal of the interior lives of women in any case, but the fact that the author is a man makes the book extraordinary. Love, suicide, pregnancy, art, sisterhood, beauty, sex, taxes, dead sheep: this novel has it all, and it’s so fluidly and engagingly written, and always with the element I admire most: clarity.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF PRACTICALLY EVERYBODY
by Will Cuppy 

Just hilarious. Great read for anyone who knows a bit of history. Rigorously researched and then run through Will Cuppy’s quietly antic brain; copiously illustrated with very cheeky pictures. Just funny stuff. 

GOING POSTAL
by Terry Pratchett

I included this as the one installation for the Discworld series, which has about 846 novels, because it’s the first one I read, and I loved it. I used to like Douglas Adams, because he is so clever and sardonic and so witty with his words, but I got really tired of the basic nihilistic worldview. Terry Pratchett is clever and sardonic and incredibly witty, but he clearly cannot shake the feeling that it all means something. He’s just not sure what. Anyway, the Discworld series is all it’s cracked up to be, and this would be a great place to jump in. 

THE GREAT DIVORCE and THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS
by C.S. Lewis

Do I have to say things? You know these books, right? I feel like The Great Divorce doesn’t get enough attention, and everyone focuses on Screwtape, which definitely deserves it; but The Great Divorce has equally gripping and searing (and often consoling and heartening) insights about human nature. I think these two would make great reads for confirmation students, and should be part of any high school faith formation class. 

TIL WE HAVE FACES 
by C.S. Lewis

*ahem*
possibly my favorite book
This is really just a perfect book. Like it’s a miracle. I wouldn’t change a line. It helped me so much to synthesize all the weird contradictory emotions and ideas weltering around in my head about the gods and God and mythology and all kinds of things. I think it is Lewis’ best book, and puts together everything that is best about his storytelling prowess and his capacity for articulating theology. 

HE LEADETH ME
by Walter Ciszek, S.J.

The spiritual memoir of Fr. Walter Ciszek, who went to Russia to minister to the Godless Russians, kind of failed miserably, was arrested, unexpectedly met God, succeeded in a way he wasn’t expecting, and then was liberated against his will. He tells the story very plainly and humbly, but it really is, as the subtitle says, “an extraordinary testament.” He is a very kind man and I’m very glad to know him, and he has been a good friend to me ever since. I thought the book was going to be searing and convicting, and it . . . kind of was, but it was also strangely consoling and encouraging, considering the topic, which is rough stuff. 

BEOWULF: A NEW TELLING
by Robert Nye

I actually read this kind of a while ago, but I remember it being a wild ride, and enjoying it immensely. I read it out loud to the kids, who loved it. I have read strict translations of Beowulf, which this is not, and what this does is tell the story and put across the extreme Beowulfitude of the whole thing very successfully. The cover image is incredibly dumb, so don’t worry about that. 

And that’s it! If I think of more, I’ll add them. I meant to do more book lists before Christmas but I was overtaken by events. Is it too late? Would it be helpful to do other lists of recommended titles for other age groups? 

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Image from https://freestocks.org/ (Public Domain)