If you missed the previous post, “Books for Guys, Part 1″, go back and read the explanation on just what this is all about. It will make more sense that way.

Part 2 of “Books for Guys” includes an older book, and a brand new one. The two are linked, even though the new book is not simply a remake of the old one.

The Catcher In The Rye by J. D. Salinger.
I know, I know, this is a book that teachers are always force feeding to high school students. Give it a try anyway. If you have not read this book, you won’t get many of the jokes or sarcasm in the next book I am reviewing today, and they are good! You don’t want to miss that.

You should also read this book because it is one of the books that has what I think of as an “expiration date”. Read this book when you are between the ages of 13 and 17, (and still a student living at home with parents), and you will find Holden Caufield to be interesting, funny, and possibly even a deep thinker. Read this book later on in life, say, when you are done with college, and you will instead find Holden to be pretentious, obnoxious, and a loser. I have read this book twice, once as a high school student, and just recently as a 30-something non-student. Sadly, even though I liked Holden the first time around, I found myself just wanting to smack him upside the head as I read the book now. So, do yourself a favor, and read this book while you are still within the ages of peak enjoyment.

In case anyone reading this blog really doesn’t know what The Catcher In the Rye is all about, let me explain. Holden is about 16, and goes to a prep school. Well, he went to a prep school. He has managed to get himself kicked out of this school too. Instead of waiting the three days he has left before Christmas break, Holden decides to leave early. He goes on a three day adventure. He thinks about life in general: the things that really bother him about people, the things he likes, the many things he doesn’t understand. Holden is trying to figure out what it is that he wants to be doing with his life, while hiding out from his parents, who are eventually going to realize that he’s been kicked out of yet another school.

The book takes place somewhere in the 1950’s, I think. Some things remain the same for teens today, like Holden agonizing about calling a girl he likes on the phone, or Holden trying to sort out all his thoughts about sex, or his hatred of “phony” people. Holden’s general feeling that school is a joke and that most adults don’t have any idea what they are talking about is something all teens feel at one time or another.

The things that are different are huge. For example, Holden is only 16 years old. But, because of the time period the book takes place in, he can buy his own cigarettes, walk into bars and nightclubs, order alcoholic drinks, even get a hotel room all on his own with hardly anyone even asking for I.D. He is also in a world where cell phones have not yet been invented. So he has to use public phones to call girls, and has no way of knowing who will answer the phone. It could be the girl he is trying to call, or her parents, or whoever. Makes things that much more stressful.

One Good Thing: Once you read this book, you will be able to understand the multitude of references to this book that appear in other books and in movies. It pops up in a lot of places.

One Not So Good Thing: Holden uses slang from the 1950’s. He says things like “phony” instead of “fake”. He calls things or people “crumby” instead of saying “this sucks” or “you suck”. And, my favorite, he says “giving her the time” instead of saying “f*cks”, “screws”, “does”, “taps”, or simply “has sex with”. It can get kind of annoying.

King Dork by Frank Portman
Ok, once you have read The Catcher In the Rye, you are ready for this book. Just by looking at the cover, you can already tell that this book will refer back to the other book. The cover shows the cover of The Catcher In the Rye with the title scratched out and “King Dork” scratched on there instead.

I was amazed at how good this book turned out to be! It is not simply a remake, it’s an original. It’s smart, and sarcastic, and extremely funny in parts. Guys will dig this book.

Tom, whose nickname is “Chi-Moe”,(which means something disturbing on many levels and is explained in the book), is starting his sophmore year of high school. he has one good friend, and the two of them spend lots of time listening to music and trying to get a band started. Tom is an outcast. He’s one of those guys who gets picked on constantly, beat up by the guys who are part of the “psychotic normal” students, shunned or ignored by the girls. There is a lot of description about what school is like if you are someone like Tom. It’s gotten way more violent and vicious than when Holden was in school. Tom also points out how school has been “dumbed down” so much that most assignments involve copying pages from various books. Tom is bored, frustrated, and mostly alone. Tom is in teenage hell.

Right at the beginning of the book, Tom is assigned to read The Catcher In the Rye, a book he hates. He makes lots of sarcastic comments about this book, and the adults who love it. If you hated The Catcher In the Rye, you will relate to what Tom has to say about it. One day, Tom forgets his copy of the book at school, goes searching through his house to find another copy, and locates a copy his father used when he was a teen.

This is where the complexity starts. Tom’s father died years ago, and it’s not very clear exactly what happened. Tom finds a code in the book, and spends a lot of time trying to figure it out, in an effort to get to know his dad and what he was like when he was Tom’s age. The solving of one puzzle leads to another, and yet another. Unbelievable things start to happen. You just have to read this book!

One Good Thing: This book is just plain cool! Tom tells it like it is, and it’s one of those books where the smart guys will get the humor, and the not so smart guys will miss it entirely. Also, Tom and his friend keep changing the names of the band and their album names, etc., and its very creative. There is a list in the back of all the band names, album names, etc. There is an index in the back that at first appears to be just a glossary, similar to the one you find in the back of textbooks, but, don’t just skip over it! It’s really funny! I also enjoyed the little drawings that appear in the book. They look exactly like something a high school student with average drawing skills would draw in their notebooks.

One Not So Good Thing: The book is called King Dork, which, I imagine, could make someone a target for ridicule if caught carrying the book around school. Take the dust jacket off, and you will be fine.

Ok, this concludes “Books for Guys, Part 2″. Right now, I’m not sure when Part 3 will appear, or if there will even be a Part 3.

Tune in to find out, same Bat time, same Bat channel!

I work in a bookstore. I have lost track of how many times someone, usually a harried looking mom, dashes up to me and begs me to find her a book that her teenage son will actually read.

It’s usually a son between the ages of 14 and 16. I guess by the time the son is 17, either he has managed to find his own way in the wonderful world of reading, or, if not, then the mom has finally given up on trying to show him where the path starts.

If the son is still in Junior High School, or not quite there yet, (so, between the ages of 10 and 13), there are tons of books to choose from right in the “Kids” section. The moms can find it. Often it’s books they remember reading when they were around that age. The boys are still at an age where it might be interesting to them to check out what Mom suggests, and also at an age when reading, while no longer considered to be “cool”, might not yet make them a target for ridicule if they are caught doing it in public.

Things change once your teen hits High School. He’s no longer a boy, he’s not yet a man, he’s a “guy”. He’s more resistant to reading anything at all, especially if Mom is the one suggesting it. Mom doesn’t usually know much about the books in this new “Teen” or “Young Adult” section of the bookstore, and her guy will not read the books that are allocated to the “Kids” section.

Usually, Mom is not quite ready to have her teen randomly reading things from the regular Fiction section at this point. To add to these difficulties, the guy usually is not a big reader. It’s not his favorite activity, or even in his top ten favorite things to do.

It’s not easy to find stuff that “guys” will read. So, the next few Bookwyrm U.S. entries are going to be dedicated to “Books for Guys”. It doesn’t mean that I think the following books will only be enjoyed by male teenagers. I like the books I’m about to recommend, and I am neither male nor teenage. What I mean is that here are a few books where the main character is a guy, who is telling his story in a way that other guys will get.

So, here we go with Part One of “Books for Guys”.

Holes by Louis Sachar
Stanley is on a bus, on his way to camp. It’s not the kind of camp where you go swimming, make crafts, and sing around campfires. It’s the kind of camp that might be referred to as “work release” or “community service”. At this camp, you dig holes. You do this every day, and it is the only activity you do.

Stanley isn’t actually a juvenile delinquent. He is a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a family curse of bad luck. Things are not looking good for Stanley.

This book is much more than just another tale of “poor me”, or an After School Special story of “what happens when you make bad choices”. There is a mystery going on. What exactly is it they are digging for? What does the Warden hope to find? Little clues are given along the way.

In addition to this, there are little short pieces about some of Stanley’s ancestors. They seem a bit out of place, like a commercial breaking up a televised movie, at first. But, by the middle of the book, all the separate pieces start to come together. The book is way more uplifting and positive than I ever thought a book about a kid sentenced to digging holes in the hot desert sun would ever be.

One good thing: There is a movie made about this book, so, guys who don’t usually like to read might decide to read this book if they liked the movie.

One not so good thing: I found this book in the Kids section of the bookstore, not the Teen or Young Adult section. Might make a guy hesitant to carry this book around with him as he finishes reading it.

The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Reuven is a mostly typical teen, growing up in Brooklyn, right around the time W.W.II is getting going. He listens to the radio, and plays baseball. What isn’t so typical about Reuven is that his mom is dead, (he is being raised by his father, with the help of a maid), and he wants to become a rabbi when he grows up. Reuven goes to a school where the entire student population is made up of Orthodox Jews, just like Reuven and his father.

Down the street lives Danny, who is the same age as Reuven, and also Jewish. The have never met, because Danny and his family are Hasidic Jews, and the two groups do not mix. Danny’s father is the rabbi leader of the Hasidic Jews in the neighborhood, and Danny is expected to take his father’s place someday. That is simply the way things are to be. No one even considers that Danny might want a different life than is expected of him.

One day, Danny and Reuven are on opposing teams in what turns out to be a passionately violent baseball game. Reuven ends up in the hospital, after being injured by Danny. These two boys seem destined to hate each other, but, oddly enough, become friends. After a while, they are each other’s best friend. It is a struggle to stay that way though, because they come from two very different worlds. How long can they really hang out with each other before it becomes a big problem for the rest of the neighborhood?

If that’s not enough going on, there’s also the war, which unfolds in pieces. All the characters are affected in profound and devastating ways. It takes something that is usually presented in school as a list of boring facts about events that happened way before you were born and makes it interesting, terrifying, a story, instead just something you took notes on in History Class one day. I don’t usually like reading about wars, but found this fascinating.

There is also quite a bit about Jewish history woven into the main story line. I am not Jewish, and knew absolutely nothing about any of this before reading this book. Most of it was an interesting story all by itself.

The main reason I selected this book as part of the “Books for Guys” is that my brother liked it when he was in High School. He’s not Jewish, isn’t at all interested in history, and doesn’t particularly care for baseball. Most of the books he enjoyed at the time were either written by J.R.R. Tolkien, or Douglas Adams. Those two writers are very different from Potok. Still, my brother was the one who recommended I read this book in the first place. He liked it that much. I’m still not entirely certain what it was specifically about this book he dug. If I had to guess, I think what he really liked was the complexity. It’s a deep book.

One Good Thing: Guys who like history, especially W.W.II will enjoy this book. And, oddly enough, so will guys who like baseball. There’s a ton of description of baseball games in this book!

One Not So Good Thing: The complexities of this book may intimidate guys who aren’t looking for something deep to dive into. Also, this book may be hard to connect with for some guys, because it does not take place in “today”.

All right, that wraps it up for “Books for Guys, Part One”. Stay tuned for Part Two!