I know he’s only 12, but if you think he can handle it, how about some gripping, manly stuff? I know Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer can be pretty grim (and is non-fiction), but it isn’t any more depressing than most of the classics mentioned. (I absolutely LOVE Great Expectations, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it at twelve, even though I was a voracious reader at an advanced reading level. I doubt that I would have seen the humor in it at all, and that’s my favorite part now. And Catcher in the Rye? Maybe I’m just a cretin, but I STILL don’t see what all the fuss is about.)
What is our son into, besides (presumably) fantasy and SF? If he is the thoughtful type, and has patience with old fashioned language, he might enjoy a reprint of “Ragged Dick” by Horatio Alger. Yes, I know it’s a weird suggestion, but I think it’s fun to read for a variety of reasons: Dick’s sense of humor, the discovery that there were moralistic Juvenile Series “way back then,” and for showing that, as the saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” If he enjoys history, by any chance, he may really get into learning about the life of the NYC street boy of the 1800s. It’s a long shot, probably, but I’ll keep on stumping for Alger books until I find a fellow fan, even if I have to create one myself!
I’m female, but I truly loved Alistair McLean’s manly books (The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, etc.,) way back when I was twelve, so I would second the vote for stuff like Tom Clancy, who I guess is the present day equivalent. (Are McLean’s books still available? Some of them were crap, but some of them were really great. I’m sure your son wouldn’t understand the WW2 and Cold War background, but then, I didn’t understand any of that stuff either, and I LOVED the books anyway.)
God, I AM showing my age. Let me think about this some more, and see if I can’t come up with something less than a million years old.
Oh, wait – does he enjoy mysteries? Biographies? There are a lot of good possibilities out there in those categories, I suspect. (Oh, wait – I just re-read upthread a bit. I second the vote for Nero Wolfe. )