Books for Boys

Supposedly, boys are pickier readers than girls are... I'm not sure where that assumption came from, nor do I have any statistics to back it up.  I do, however, have quite a few friends and family members who are English and Language Arts teachers, and they report a certain luke-warm attitude toward reading among their male students.  I, of course, believe that everyone is a reader, and if someone claims not to be, he (or she!) just hasn't found the right book yet.  That being said, here are a few suggestions that might appeal to the gentlemen:


Historical Fiction:
       The King Raven Trilogy by Stephen Lawhead
       Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
       The Song of Albion Trilogy by Stephen Lawhead
    
Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror:
       Abarat by Clive Barker
       Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
       American Gods by Neil Gaiman
       The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
       The Myth Hunters by Christopher Golden
       The Magicians by Lev Grossman
       A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
       The Road by Cormac McCarthy
       The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix
       The Matt Cruse Trilogy by Kenneth Oppel
       The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
       Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson
       Dragon and Thief by Timothy Zahn
       Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies
       Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
       Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
       The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
       Unwind by Neal Schusterman
       The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
       Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding
       Feed by M. T. Anderson
       The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
       From a Buick 8 by Stephen King


Mysteries/Thrillers:
       The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
       Thr3e by Ted Dekker
       The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson
       The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
       Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
       Acceleration by Graham McNamee
       The Knife and the Butterfly by Ashley Hope Perez
      

Nonfiction/Memoir/Biography:
       Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
       The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
       The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
       A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
       Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
       Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northerners by Gary Paulsen

Acceleration

Title: Acceleration

Author: Graham McNamee

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (2003)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Crime Thriller, Suspense

Length: 210 pages

Synopsis:  Duncan’s summer day job, as gopher in the dungeon-like Toronto Transit Authority’s lost and found, is anything but glamorous.  Looking for a way to spend dull hours, however, Duncan stumbles across a little brown book filled with newspaper clippings and disturbing diary entries.  Sick and twisted descriptions of mutilated animals and arson fill the pages, and Duncan becomes convinced he’s found the diary of a serial killer.  Haunted by recurrent dreams of a drowning victim he was unable to save, Duncan feels that at last he’s been given the chance to redeem himself by catching the book’s creator, but the more he immerses himself in the terrifying diary, the more he becomes convinced that he alone can catch this killer.  As the puzzle unravels, however, the question becomes less of how Duncan will accomplish this, and more about what will happen if he does.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: 

An excellent book for that hard to please audience: the teenage boy.  Like a summer blockbuster action flick, it’s got a little bit of everything: thrills, suspense, redemption, comic relief, and a pleasantly subtle romance.  Also like that blockbuster, however, Acceleration is just a little too cut-and-dried to reach great heights.  From Duncan’s motivation to the neatly packaged resolution, everything has an explanation.  With the exception of Duncan, all the characters feel somewhat flat and generic, though this doesn’t really detract from a plot driven largely on Duncan’s single-minded quest for redemption.  It plays to everyone’s secret (or not-so-secret) desire to be a hero, solve the crime, and save the day.  With a truly frightening villain lurking behind the scenes, the reader can’t help but hope that Duncan will succeed, and quickly!  Acceleration is a pleasant diversion and certainly worth your time, but probably not about to land on the classics shelf.