Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011) isn’t billed as YA fiction, but it fits solidly in that genre, and it’s much better than The Hunger Games. Set in a dystopian future (think Neal Stephenson lite), it offers a satisfying plotline and a moral that is inoffensively didactic. The novel’s selling point is its cornucopia of 1980’s nostalgia; although amusing, it’s mainly window dressing — the cultural touchpoints of any era could easily be swapped in. (With that said, admitted geeks of a certain age will love this novel – you know who you are.) Recommended as a very good beach or hammock read.