I think the majority (though it's a simple majority) of books I've read recently are YA. I'm currently reading Carrie Ryan's newest book, called The Dead-Tossed Waves, which isn't a sequel to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but is a companion book (set in the same world, some of the same characters, but not a true sequel). Zombies abound.
I also have Justine Larbalestier's Liar waiting to be read.
One non-YA book I recently finished was The Magicians, which was...okay. It owes a lot to Harry Potter and Narnia, in that those series and the concepts/worlds they established are so well-known that, for instance, The Magicians can just compress 6 years of a school of magic into 300 pages, and it more or less works, because thanks to Harry Potter, the reader already has the idea of what a school of magic is like.
It felt kind of rushed, but it's not bad.
I liked
The Magicians
quite a bit.
To me it was a more realist mash-up of HP and Narnia, with a more adult, contemporary feeling to it. I love that it actually references HP directly.
Speaking of YA, I just started
Hunger Games
and recently read
Thirteen Reasons Why
(a mystery thriller about suicide if that makes any sense), which I highly recommend.
I also have
The Book Thief
on hold at the library.
I really liked The Book Thief. The characters had a lot of depth and you didn't want to let go of the book at the end.
I also recently finished The Thirteenth Tale which is a "a very English ghost story" and had a nice twist.
Currently wending my way through John Joseph Adams' sci-fi anthology Federations. For those who like Lois McMasters Bujold, her story "Aftermaths" (which is wonderful) is in that one. Lots of old friends in there - Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card (one from Ender's universe), George R. R. Martin, Harry Turtledove...
I loved
Thirteen Reasons Why
even if the narrator of the story SHOULD have just put on her big girl pants and gotten over it.
I keep meaning to read Hunger Games. I suppose I should just put it on hold at the library. I just re-read the Attolia series (The Thief, The Queen of/King of), since I was informed there's a new book in the series coming out (which I HAVE put on hold...but am like, 100th in line for).
I was surprised how quickly I got
The Hunger Games
off of hold, which means I'm reading it at the same time as
Lord of the Flies,
one of my should-reads. An interesting juxtaposition to say the least.
I loved both
The Hunger Games
and
Thirteen Reasons Why,
although the latter is more for the writing and the execution and the former is for the conflict and characterization. I need to get the sequel to
Hunger.
I need to get the sequel to Hunger.
It's pretty good. The third book comes out in August.
Third and final, right? Maybe I'll try to read the first two in time to read the third when it comes out.
I'm reading
Soulless
right now, and the second book comes out in a couple weeks.
I'm reading some early George R.R. Martin short stories in
Dreamsongs: Volume 1.
Most of them are pretty good. It was funny to read his REALLY early works (as in, written while in high school) that were only published in comic fanzines. He was such a huge dork!