This week at Taller Books, we’re wondering about Desert Island Books. If you were marooned on a desert island, which three YA books would you take with you?
This is such a difficult question! It would be hard to choose ten books to pack in a desert island bag – but three?
My choices
If I had to pick my three books right now, I think I’d go for A Sky Painted Gold by Laura Wood, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, and This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada. That way I’d have a quirky YA romance, a historical LGBT adventure, and a futuristic YA dystopia to choose from – along with some fantastic strong characters to keep me company on my island.
But then again … maybe I should grab The Hunger Games trilogy instead. Or the Divergent trilogy. Who better to inspire me to survive on the island than Katniss or Tris?
Or maybe I should go old-school, and take the first three of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books, and escape into a world of magic and dragons with Archmage Ged.
It’s impossible. I can’t choose.
Your turn!
What about you? What would you take? Use the comments to tell us which books you couldn’t live without!
We’d love to hear your recommendations, but please remember to keep them YA appropriate. Please be patient – comments are moderated, and may take some time to appear.
From my YA reading (a small proportion of my total reading) I’ve had a quick look back and highly rated:
Avians by Timothy Gwyn – debuet novel by a talent to watch out for. Very well balanced novel – Technically this is probably SF, but it’s much more character driven, with little technology at all, setting a bit steampunky, without the faux victoria, or the steam. SF crossover fantasy or something. About glider pilots (female because they’re lighter) living in a mountain top community. Great adventure.
Uprooted by Novak – not dragons, reworking of fairy tales incredibly well done, the evil wizard and the forest captures young girls, but the least pretty chooses another way.
City of Bones – by Cassandra Clare. The finish of the trilogy doesn’t quite live up to the joy in this the opening of sequence – YA urban sihde fantasy. Very well handled and balanced angels and religion by the side of vampires and werewolves.
Ari Marmell’s Widdershins books are great female-protagonist Renaissance-esque fantasy and really easy to get lost in. http://mouseferatu.com/index.php/product/novels/02-widdershins/
I’m not sure if Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth counts as YA, but I reread it every few years and ams stilled enthralled by it.
I’m pretty sure Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man counts as YA and I’ve just reread it for the first time in about five years and it gets richer every time.
I love The Phantom Tollbooth! I should really read it again. And Widdershins looks good, too. So many books to choose from!