"Guy" Books for Teen Readers in High School

Check out these great "Guy" reads recommended for Teens, available at the Warren Township Library in the Somerset County Library system. There also is a "Guy Reads" list for middle school readers.

Try one of the following books for readers in high school:

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson - Having just finished a summer of community service for tagging his school, former geek Tyler Miller starts his senior year with a new pumped up body and bad boy image but quickly learns there's more to being a man than just physical strength and a bad reputation.

This humorous, compelling first-person narrative traces how Tyler's newfound happiness as a gutsy tough-guy soon turns to agony; he starts to wish that he could go back to being "invisible."

Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis - Deeply involved in his cold and manipulative mother's (Sarge) shady business dealings in Flint, Michigan, fourteen-year-old Luther keeps a sense of humor while running the Happy Neighbor Group Home for Men, all the while dreaming of going to college and becoming a philosopher.

Happiness and independence seem out of Luther's reach until he devises a way to "buck" the Sarge the same way she has "bucked" the system.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green - Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try and find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships.

Godless by Pete Hautman - sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion, the Chutengodians, to worship  the "Ten-legged God"  - the town's water tower. They discover that what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own.

Publishers Weekly called this book "provocative."

Dunk by David Lubar -  From the first moment soon-to-be-11th-grader Chad hears the boardwalk clown hurling insults, the teen is mesmerized. The "bozo," whose witty barbs lure passersby at an amusement park dunk tank on the New Jersey shore, represents all that Chad is not. The boy adds working as a bozo to his list of goals for the summer, along with seeing a certain girl again-for what he hopes will be "the greatest summer of his life." But plans go awry when a rival beats him to the romance punch, his best friend is struck with a life-threatening illness, and Chad has run-ins not only with the police but also with the bozo himself, a troubled man who sublets a room in Chad's house.

Traitor by Andrew McNab - Danny Watts, an orphan who lives in a hostel in southeast London, always wanted to be a soldier. However, the traitorous past of his grandfather is preventing this, so he vows to find the old man and make him suffer. As he tries to track down his grandfather, whom he's never met, someone is tracking Danny.


This is the first book in the Watts Family Adventures.