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Nothing, put them in the library, give them the resources they need and let them discover for themselves. why should we drive kids towards our own desires? what about what they want? show them the path but only after they tell you where they want to go.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, particularly: "Mort" and "Reaper Man"; "Guards! Guards!", "Men at Arms", and "The Night Watch"; "Wyrd Sisters", "Witches Abroad" and "Lords and Ladies"; and "Small Gods" and "Pyramids". The first two are about Death, the second three about Samuel Vimes, the third group about Granny Weatherwax, and the last two are stand-alones. All the books are worth reading, but those are some of…
Some fun books I remember were "A wrinkle in Time" and "stranger from the Depths" both aimed at teens but quite good. Around 16 "zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Dorris Lessing wrote some great books- I would start with: "Mara and Dann An Adventure "
Everything by Asimov and Heinlein and the Dune series by Herbert. Also "Watership Down"
I wish when I was 14 I was exposed to more contemporary literature, instead of great classics. And I have no regrets about missing out on math books—most of my friends went to math camp for that kind of knowledge. I'd recommend David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her; The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis; Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I wis…
More than that: as a guiding principle, read stuff by people who aren't like you. The OP's list has exactly zero female authors in it. It's hard to grow personally when you aren't confronting and coming to terms with radically different experiences, and yet that's what books do best: they confront you.
Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game is a physiological science fiction story about a future world where an economic simulation determines who will run the planet, and the book features the live of one individual that won the competition every year for decades via integrating math, music, eastern and western philosophies to create a harmonic economic view. The book is…
This summary kind of mischaracterizes the book, though. Far from "running the planet," Castalia, the society within which the Game thrives, rather pointedly does not concern itself with "worldly" matters, being singularly focused on the life of the mind. The Game itself is a reflection of this attitude, consisting of symbols put together to represent cross-linking through various intellectual fields, such as music, mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences.[1] It is the main character, Joseph Knecht, who has risen to become Magister Ludi (master of the Game), who sees Castalia's detachment from the outside world as a danger and a potential threat to its existence, and who ultimately leaves his high post to become the tutor for the son of a friend of his from school who is a "man of the world." Knecht's perspective comes from his rather unique background, not just his friendship with the outsider, but his studies of history (a very non-Castalian field of study) with a prominent historian during a "tour of duty" at a monastery. It's a very deep book, and one which you'll probably find new insights in every time you read it.
On the subject of recommendations that bridge science fiction and philosophy, might I also suggest C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy ( Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength )? It's another work that works on several levels. That Hideous Strength, in particular, is almost entirely a fictional expression of the arguments Lewis presented in The Abolition of Man. There's also a fair amount of attention devoted to linguistics; the books' central character, Prof. Elwin Ransom, was based on J.R.R. Tolkien. And yes, there's a certain amount of Christian philosophy in there, but on a higher intellectual level than The Chronicles of Narnia. A bright 14-year-old would probably enjoy it.
[1] Joseph Knecht's first annual ceremonial Game as Magister Ludi was based on the dimensions and structure of a traditional Chinese house, i.e., the principles of feng shui in Chinese philosophy. It was routinely cited thereafter as "The Chinese House Game."
Maths maths maths. Come on, it's a nice skill but not very practical by itself. How about an intro to IOS/android programming?
I don't know if it's equally true in all parts of the world, but where I live being good at maths opens the door to pretty much any job, including the most prestigious ones.
It basically starts with a "code" of two friends talking to each other between houses at night via blinking flashlights, and gradually builds up from there to a full, if somewhat barebones, microprocessor, logic gate by logic gate. And it does so in a way that teenage me was able to follow.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card The story of a genius child training to battle an alien species. Not only very entertaining but also critically acclaimed. It won the Hugo and Nebula and has been on several military leadership reading lists. [0] I loved it as a teenager and recently reread it and still loved it. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game#Critical_respons...
The history is only as good as was known at the time each book was published, of course, but it's better than you'll learn in school, where my classes seemed to go over the same parts of 1800s American history every year and gave no indication Asia existed.
Plus it's got sex and drugs.