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Joined: Sep 2011
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If you asked your son what his favorites/least favorites/weirdest reads have been it might be possible to tailor more recommendations (I skimmed some of the contents of my shelves with an eye to giving some to my son, and realized that what I thought of as "young" had some rather mature themes for a 7yo).
Oh, and does he like fantasy? SiaSL, I love your idea about asking him about his "wierdest" reads - I've asked about his favorite/least favorite before, but never thought to ask about wierd, which I think would be a question he could really get into! My ds is camping with Boy Scouts this weekend so I can't ask him today, but fwiw he loved Ender's Game (he also read it in something like 1/2 a day - which is another challenge with books - finding a book that takes more than 1/2 a day to read - he really loves reading when it's a book he's interested in, so he devours it and then gets depressed because he finishes it and there's nothing left in the house to read - picture me banging my head against the wall frequently lol!). He read War of the Worlds but didn't like it - when we talked about it, my impression was he just didn't like Wells' writing style. He's not particularly into fantasy. polarbear
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SiaSL, I love your idea about asking him about his "wierdest" reads - I've asked about his favorite/least favorite before, but never thought to ask about wierd, which I think would be a question he could really get into! It is the best way I can think of to filter themes that a child might find disturbing in reading materials targeted to an older audience. Some will have less impact on a younger child, who will filter it all out, than on a teenager, who is more likely to get influenced by something that touches on themes that start being relevant to him/her. Reason why the group sex in Heinlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_ at... 12? 13? was less of a problem for me than the promiscuous teenager (turned incestuous mother) in _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_ at 16 (yes, late Heinlein is *that* weird). Also reason why all those dead/tortured kids bothered me a lot less as a teen than they do now that I am a mother  . If your son liked _Ender's Game_ look into the _Ender's Shadows_ series. I haven't read them yet (_Enfer's Game_ was a favorite, but _Xenocide_ was close to "hit the wall, do not open again" for me and I dropped the series, and the author) but people who persevered with Card liked it.
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[quote=SiaSL] but fwiw he loved Ender's Game (he also read it in something like 1/2 a day - which is another challenge with books - finding a book that takes more than 1/2 a day to read - he really loves reading when it's a book he's interested in, so he devours it and then gets depressed because he finishes it and there's nothing left in the house to read This is a sad problem... I force myself to ration out books now because I Hate when they are done. Amazon gets more of my $$ than I should care to admit. The kindle is probably my most favorite thing ever, lol.
~amy
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Joined: Jun 2008
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G�del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (not exactly sci-fi but includes fiction and essays on science), by Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Mind's I (more thought-provoking essays that include sci-fi), edited by Hofstadter et al. I cannot recommend GEB too highly. Also, most things by Bach. http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Livingston-Seagull-Richard-Bach/dp/0380012863
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Joined: Apr 2009
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Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" series is a good possibility, although you may want to vet it yourself first; Jim DiGriz is a cheerful criminal in a society where there is almost no crime remaining. It's a hedonistic romp through the galaxy, with his own perfectly rational justifications, of course, but he is not violent and in fact hires on with the intergalactic police to catch a violent criminal they're having a hard time with. For all but the first book, he is working for the good guys, but he keeps his fingers in the till along the way.  I can't recall exactly how much sexual reference there may be, but I don't think it was much, overtly. If he's into any kind of fantasy, there is Piers Anthony -- the Xanth series is horrifically punny; the Apprentice Adept series part SF and part Fantasy and lots of fun, about a planet that is scientific with a hidden alternate reality of magic; the Incarnations of Immortality series is about the beings that inhabit the personas of Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, and Good and Evil, also quite fascinating and fun; the Geodyssey series takes one family from the beginnings of prehistoric man all the way to post-apocalypse -- the same people feature in each chapter but move along in Earth's history, if that makes sense -- it's great if you're interested in the progression of civilization and language, and a good story to boot. There is also Robert Asprin, the Myth series, if he's into punny fantasy.
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Joined: Dec 2010
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Some Piers Anthony is definitely adult-themed and some is overtly erotica. The Xanth books are pretty "kid-safe", and great for people who like puns. The "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series is not "kid-safe". "Eroma" is not. At least some of the "Relationships" collections are not.
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Joined: Oct 2011
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Some Piers Anthony is definitely adult-themed and some is overtly erotica. The Xanth books are pretty "kid-safe", and great for people who like puns. The "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series is not "kid-safe". "Eroma" is not. At least some of the "Relationships" collections are not. And I seem to recall significant roles for succubi in the aforementioned "Incarnations of Immortality" series.
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Oh dear, yes -- I forgot about that part. Sorry. I need to have a better memory for these things, as I keep trying to find books among my collection that might interest DS9 and coming up short on something that I hadn't thought of. But then, Ender's Game startled me in places (mostly the Peter ones) when we started reading that! I had read it several times myself, but I wasn't a child at the time.
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I'd also consider Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie as well.
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