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Thanks for the recommendations, everyone. There are a lot of good ones here to try. I guess I should have pointed out that my son is a bit immature for his age, and is completely against reading anything that may be set in another time period or may even remotely be seen as a classic. (He's in this rebellious, "I'm a teen and that stuff is NOT cool" stage right now.) Trust me, I've tried.
While I grew up reading (and loving) a lot of these stories listed above, he views them like homework, not escapism. He also has a mild austisic spectrum disorder, which is a factor both in his reading choices and my inability to reason with him that there are lots of great stories that were written before Y2K.
His main interest lies in stories set in today's era or slightly ahead, but not distant science fiction. So that rules out historical fiction. And Shakespere? He can't wrap his head around the language (I'll admit that while I enjoy Shakespear in a class enviroment or in theater, but not reading for fun.)
It's really hard for me to find books for him. I'm a reader, but if I show too much interest in a book, he's likely not to read it, especially if I have actually READ the book. I almost never got him to read Harry Potter, which he LOVED, because I recommended them so strongly. Lesson learned. I find most of the books written for kids these days, about kids these days, are pretty insipid. If they get his nose in a book and off the x-box, though, I'm up for it.
Ironically, we like a lot of the same movies, but I can't convince him he'd enjoy the same books I do. So I'm trying to stick with modern fantasy/alternate reality stories about teens. I've been thinking about maybe Patterson's Maximum Ride series, but need to check into them some more.
I'll run some of these books you have suggested by him and see if he's up for them. Thanks everyone. Feel free to post more if you think of any.
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