Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Top 160 Books for Boys

The complete list is here.

160 books on must-read list for boys – full of blood, guts and class heroes-Arts & Entertainment-Books-TimesOnline: "A list of the top 160 books for teenage boys will be published today by the Education Secretary in an ambitious attempt to encourage them to read more for pleasure and keep up with girls at secondary school.

To launch the 600,000-pound project, Alan Johnson has promised to give every secondary school in England the chance to chose 20 books from the list free.

The list contains no Dickens and no J. K. Rowling, but Philip Pullman, Anthony Horowitz, Robert Muchamore, Terry Pratchett and Darren Shan all feature in a list that is full of gritty, fighting, spying, fantastical, bloodthirsty and sporty working-class heroes from authors past and present."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget www.guysread.org

mybillcrider said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Christopher Paolini on the list...humph. But, then again, I never liked S. E. Hinton's teen novels (meaning the ones she wrote as a teen) back when, either. Teens' writing usually reads like teens' writing. Even C. M. Kornbluth's juvenilia, as good as it is, is not really a patch on his adult work, and I'm sure there are other examples that should come to mind.

mybillcrider said...

I overlooked Christopher Paolini's name. I'm surprised he's included.

Anonymous said...

Well, aside from his (probably fleeting) popularity, he is probably a good negative example..."I could do as well as this!"