I don't remember now what I was reading at 17....though I read both the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged when I was young, about 13 or so....changed my life for sure. (One study done awhile back, Atlas Shrugged was listed 2nd only to the Bible for books that changed your life.)

A book I read recently that was simply a wonderful gothic mystery (a la Wuthering Heights, burned out mansion...the whole bit) was The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Sutterfield. I keep waiting for her 2nd, but so far, none coming.

At that age, I was into other mystery books....loved reading Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie...Mary Higgins Clark is fun for a few books, esp if they take place in an area where you live or have visited, but after awhile they become too similar.

I think I was 14 when I read GWTW...

Rebecca and other Daphne du Maurier books sound good.

I also read Tess of the D'Urbervilles back then, which had a bang up ending, but seemed a slow slog to get there.

I also read the entire series of Horation Hornblower books which I thoroughly enjoyed for the action adventures genre.

And then were my dark phases, where In Cold Blood and Helter Skelter and other real life murder things were consumed. I'm over that phase for good.

I never read "On The Road" but that might be an interesting one as they have just released a movie.

At that age, my daughter loved The Notebook. Also Gone with the Wind. And also re-reading the Harry Potter books.

The Princess Bride by S Morgenstern, Shogun, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Much Ado about Nothing, Calvin and Hobbes, the Good Earth, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman

My favorite book was The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I don't know if it was a popular book, but the story had a large impact on me as I read how different things were in another country and time; and how the young woman in the book dealt with each challenge.

I think I read and re-read Gone with the Wind every six months through high school. I wore off the cover!

My 19 yo recently checked out all the Harry Potter books to re-read over her Christmas break.

At that age, I read all of the Victoria Holt books. All set in Eng. They look like it but are not bodice rippers.

Thank you all for these suggestions! So many great books I had forgotten about--I also loved The Good Earth and Daphne du Maurier at that age. I read Shogun and the Thorn Birds a few years later and those were such treats, too. I love long stories....

Also, I am tickled pink to see that I am not the only one who read the bodice rippers along with suspense like Victoria Holt and Mary Higgins Clark. I remember Holt's "Spring of the Tiger" and Taylor Caldwell's "Glory and the Lightning" as favorites I read more than once.

I love the responses--feel free to share more. Never too many books!

I wasn't 17 when I read these (since it was so long ago) but thought of a few others that might be good for her...they are old enough she probably hasn't read them.

Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Anything by Barbara Kingsolver, but especially Poisonwood Bible, Pigs in Heaven and the Bean Trees
Handmaid's Tale
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Joy Luck Club
Clan of the Cave Bear
Like Water for Chocolate
Beet Queen
Ellen Foster

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

Madame Bovery, Crime and Punishment, Great Gatsby and Tale of Two Cities.

I did not read these at 17 (I preferred the bodice rippers then and still read some now) but these are profound books:

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces. This is a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth that had me thinking about it for some time afterwards. Very well done.

The Women's War by Alexandre Dumas. For a Dumas novel, it is rather short (as compared to say The Three Musketeers) but it carried me through a wide range of emotions. There is a tragic romance element to it that kind of hits you in the gut in the end but it also takes a very critical look at the wars are often started by those in power and how it affects the "little people" who get caught up in it. I definitely recommend this.

Oh, can't forget The Hobbit.
Olychick...Th Clan of the Cave Bear series is excellent.

Annie, I was another who counted The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged among the influential books read in my teens, along with most everything else by Russian author Ayn Rand. I didn't find the books on my own, however; they were selections in the Modern Novel class at my boarding school that was run on an Objectivist philosophy. I was an adult in my late twenties before I finally worked out the profound inconsistencies and ethical problems with her basic premises, particularly in how they diverged from Aristotle (her avowed primary philosophical influence).

Outside of philosophy, my reading at age 17 and 18 comprised many Southern writers, including Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, John Kennedy O'Toole, William Faulkner, Walker Percy, Zelda Fitzgerald, etc.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey.

Pretty much everything Jane Austen wrote.

I remember reading Clan of the Cave Bear, loved that book!

When I was a little older, a freshman in college I fell in love with Italo Calvino (esp A Baron in the Trees) and Tom Robbins (I've read most if not all-- but I read Jitterbug Perfume and Still Life with a Woodpecker then) and John Irving (was mesmerized by a very early book-- Setting Free the Bears).

I also read a number of classics that hadn't been required for school. I was a science major in college and had placed out of all english classes so I found all of my authors/titles in the library and QPBC.

Any Rand has probably influenced many a teen and certainly influenced me at around 15 or so before I had more experience in the world. I loved reading about WWII at that age, but the experiences of people during that war would be less relevant to today's teens, I imagine. I wonder if she might like to read The Greatest Generation (sorry that I don't know how to underline or italicize on iPad).

I recently read Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian...his first young adult novel. It is a WONDERFUL book. The description at Amazon does not do it justice at all and I think a girl would completely enjoy it, too. I LOVE that guy.

I loved to read and still do. Back then:
Everything by Pearl S. Buck
Everything by Victoria Holt
Lord of the Flies
The Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
Jane Ayre
Everything by Jane Austen
Everything by Daphne du Maurier
I also read (and wrote) a lot of poetry back then and had books of poems by everyone from Robert Frost to Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg and Rod McKuen.

Thought of a couple more: Neuromancer by Gibson, Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and I also loved the Education of Little Tree. (but there is some controversy about the author which kind of ruins it for me, but it's still a great story)

At 17 I loved Victoria Holt, Jane Austen and Gone With the Wind. I seem to have been in good company. :)

I was also reading all of the Anne of Green Gables series, the Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Secret Garden, and the Trixie Belden series.

My all time favorite book at 17 was "Beauty" by Robin McKinley. I read it over and over again.

To step out of the box a little, I loved the historical fiction written by Leon Uris. "Exodus" was one of my favorites.

Here is a link that might be useful: Exodus by Leon Uris

I read Cry the Beloved Country when I was 15.. it hit me on many emotional levels and it is the reason I requested South Africa in my student exchange program. Not only did I live in South Africa for a number of months, but I had afternoon tea with Alan Paton, the author.

Maybe try some graphic novels?
Stuck Rubber Baby
Maus 1 and 2 by Art Spiegelman
The Sandman and also the Books of Magic series by Neil Gaiman
Griffin and Sabine series

Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I loved the V.C Andrews Dollanganger Series, Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. These are not literary master pieces but at nineteen I loved them. The first book came out 1978 and is supposedly based on a true story. There is some smut in the books. The books were banned in some high schools due to incest that happened between the two eldest children when they were imprisoned in the Attic.
Other than that "happening" I do not think the series would be one I would rule out for a seventeen year old. As a young adult I found the books so good as to be disrupting to daily life.

Oh, my, you ladies are great. And I love being reminded of what I was reading "way back then", too.

Sarahmakes6, I also loved "Beauty", and have read it more than once. Great reminder.

Funkyart, thanks for the idea @ Cry the Beloved Country--that sounds like it is right up her alley and I am ashamed to say I have not read it.

jterrilynn--I read those VC Andrews books and remember not being able to put the first one down!So creepy!

Gone with the Wind, Jane Eyre, The Good Earth, and olychick, I love two books you mentioned- Marjorie Morningstar (I think I've read it three times)and A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I also loved a book called "The House Without Windows" about a girl who runs away from home and lives out in nature. I looked it up on Amazon once and found out that it's out of print and worth a lot of money. (I don't have it anymore).

I read Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The Hobbit... Chasing after a two year old by then so reading was a true luxury.

I cried and cried while reading Uncle Tom's Cabin when I was 17. It's still one of my all time favorite books. I also really enjoyed The Virgin Suicides. The book is much better than the movie. Just thought I'd throw those two out there :)

At that I age I was into Hermann Hesse's and Kurt Vonnegut's books.

Since she likes non-fiction, I will recommend "The Road from Coorain" by Jill Ker Conway and "Origins" by Richard Leakey. I gave each of my nieces a selection of feminist books when they turned 18 but it wouldn't have hurt them to have read them earlier. ;-)

The Book Thief is unforgettable and awesome. So is The Art of Racing in the Rain.

Jo

Best summary ever:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

marcolo - Good one. I find Ayn Rand plodding and predictable - you know you're getting The Lesson.

I've tried reading Atlas Shrugged twice, but that was about 20 years ago. My BFF loved the book. Maybe if I get the book in the new larger size paperbacks (I love them!) I can finally get into it.

Danielleg, we are in the process of temporarily storing some books and I came across Uncle Tom's Cabin, and set it aside to read.

Olliesmom, I named my cat Ayla after reading Clan of the Cave Bear. :)

I really enjoyed the Martian Chronicles too....

Whaddaya know, somebody else reads Kung Fu Monkey!

oakley, the Fountainhead was far more approachable than Atlas Shrugged.

I used to enjoy the old detective classics too like Dashiell Hammett's stuff, and more recently I'm a regular consumer of Sue Grafton's alphabet books and Janet Evanovich's numbers series. DH and I listen to Evanovich on CD whenever we take a long driving trip as they are so mixed with mystery and humor...they're a lot of fun. Make the trip significantly shorter.

I just remembered another book I loved at that age, which I just re-read and immensely enjoyed in the last year: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers.

In my twenties, I loved Anne LaBastilles Woodswoman series.

Any and all works by Tolkien, Jane Austen, Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Dickens, Shakespeare. Also "On the Beach", "Watership Down", "War and Peace", "Moby Dick" and "1984".

sis3, while I agree with some of your recommendations, I can't imagine a slog through moby dick as something a 17 year old girl will want to do.....

Also, the older books are available on line for free via the gutenberg project....or via the Harvard Classics series....

Annie, I've got to agree. I enjoyed some of Moby Dick, but didn't find it to be a page-turner. In fact, I preferred the Wishbone version my kids had when they were younger (hanging my head in disgrace!).

As many of you ladies who have suggested Austen, I have to say that both my DDs had Austen assigned in Lit class and hated it. Broke my heart, because I loved them and read them again and again as an undergrad. I don't know why, but my girls don't even like the movie versions.

I thought for sure that Du Maurier would succeed where Austen had failed with DD2, only to find that she didn't care for Rebecca or Jamaica Inn, either. I can't fathom it.

I was passionate about Nectar in a Sieve and Things Fall Apart as a young adult, and neither of my girls cared for them, even though they read non-fiction on the same topics greedily.

As happy as I am when one of my girls loves a book that I loved, too, it makes me sad when they don't. I spent so many happy hours with British novels and by and large, they flop with my daughters. I won't give up trying, though!

Yes, I have to admit I was not adhering to leafy's original request for recommendations for her daughter's 17th but simply attempting to remember what I was reading at her age, over 40 years ago. I confess that Moby Dick was not my favorite book then, probably Lord of the Rings was.
I must pay more attention to the original post!
Good luck with finding a good read for your daughter.

Ayn Rand did feature in my late teens as did Gabriel Garcia Marquez (love in the time of Cholera & also the whole little women series by Louisa May Alcott. I also loved loved Tolkien and Nevile Shute (a town like Alice).

But one novel that I absolutely loved and was such a satisfying read was A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

Another Nevile Schute that I read around that time was On the Beach.

Vikram Seth is a wonderful author, although of course I read his books at a much older age.

I wish I had read the Wishbone version of Moby Dick, lol! I much preferred Ahab's Wife: Or The Stargazer, a much "lesser" novel written by Sena Naslund and based on the thinnest of mentions in the Dick.

I too struggled with Pride and Prejudice and I think it was because I was too young when I read it and didn't "get" it. Also that 19th century language can be tough to wade through. I "read" The Scarlet Letter as a book on tape while commuting, and I'd find my mind zoning out for awhile, tuning back in awhile later only to find I'd hadn't missed a thing!

Kswl +1 on Vikram Seth, I love 'A Suitable Boy'. Ive read it several times and kind of feel like I have an extended Indian family.

And gwlolo too +1!

This post was edited by kiki_thinking on Mon, Jan 7, 13 at 22:24

I was just reminded on another thread....The Keys of the Kingdom by AJ Cronin.

The Microbe Hunters

Cress Delahanty (Jessamyn West)