Ask HN: Great books for teenager age 15

2 points·tmaly··5 comments

I am trying to supplement my nephew's education with books to expand his mind into other subjects. Public school is not cutting it. Do you have recommendations for books that inspired or helped you during the teenage period of your life? So far I have had him read Thinking as a Science by Hazlitt. How to win friends and Influence People by Carnegie. Also started him on the online inventwithpython.com programming book.

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Let him explore his own interests. The most important is that he gets into the habit of reading and enjoys the experience that books provide, so it doesn't matter if he reads sci-fi, fantasy, philosophy, science books. You can of course recommend him some books, genre or author, but it should be his decision wether to read them or not. You could recommend him some divulgation books like "A brief history of Time" by Stephen Hawking, "Parallel Universes" by Michio Kaku, or "The Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan, they're all quite enjoyable.

If he likes the Terry Pratchett books then the 3 "Science of Discworld" books are surprisingly good (in both science and story) when I was half expecting something along the lines of a cut-away diagrams of space ships that you might find in a Science of Star Wars book from Dorling Kindersley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld

i am 16 years old so i think that the main thing is not to shove anything down his throat. if you do that, he will intrinsically hate that thing, most of the time. and just have him read, think, be intellectual. and the rest has to come from him

Economics in One Lesson by the same Hazlitt is also a good one. Of course it all depends on his interests.

I had him read the lesson, and the chapter on the broken window fallacy. He likes business books

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