Have you read any of Dashner’s The 13th Reality series? If so, how does it compare to The Maze Runner? I’ve only read the first, but it made me want to check out more of Dashner’s work.

Wm,

…

That’s frightening.

…

And strangely inspirational.

Oh no, Davey’s been here before — plugged Heaven Know Why before too — and every time he does it mopves higher up my list. It’s just so expensive…. I need to start ILLing like Laura.

Adam! You’re going to spoil those books for me! *wink*

Marny–I hadn’t heard of those first two authors; more good suggestions.

AMV commenters are the best!

I haven’t read Leven Thumps or Fablehaven, but my kids like the latter better.

I’ve been meaning to get to Alcatraz. My wife and I like to read that kind of book out loud to each other. Kind of silly, perhaps, but fun. I used to try to keep on top of the books for this age range (for various reasons), but I’m departing from that a lot lately.

Andrew,

I like Leven Thumps better than Fablehaven for the most part. The conclusion to the former in particular is better because it has more thoughtfulness, less preachyness, and less plain weirdness. I found the most recent offering from Mull imaginative but fairly hard to get through.

Skye’s habit of starting chapters off on random tangents and bringing them back around to the story in decreasingly logical ways gets really old after a the first two books, but his storytelling – I think – is superior to Mull’s. Mull merely tells you about a story, which takes away from just about everything. Plus the infusions of gospel teaching are often so direct that it becomes distracting. Skye has that problem noticeably less often.

I actually like Skyle’s Pillage better than any of the Leven Thumps volumes. For its audience, it’s a fairly good contemplation of greed. I don’t remember if I read that one this year or last, though.

As a side note, another promising youth fantasy series is Henry Neff’s The Tapestry, which consists of two books so far: The Hound of Rowan and The Second Siege. While he’s not Mormon (that I know of), I think his books are among the better ones to come in Rowling’s wake that have happened to cross my path. The first has a bit too much Potter in it for my taste, but the concept is there and the second really expands things nicely. Heff’s background as a history teacher brings a lot to his tales that is missing from others’.

“Love Chains,” by Margaret Blair Young
Beautiful short stories. Amazing writing. Loved it so much.

“Nothing Very Important,” by Bela Petsco.
It was good, but not great. Something I’d recommend to folks with a special interest in Mormon literature and art, but otherwise I’d say there’s better stuff in the world to read.

Plain and Precious Parts of “The Fob Bible,” by lots of cool kids
Loved it. Some amazing stuff. I particularly enjoyed the story of Abraham and Isaac, but everything was interesting, well-written, and worthwhile. I really want to get my hands on a copy of the whole thing, ’cause so far I’m loving it.

“Under the Cottonwoods & Other Mormon Stories,” by Douglas Thayer
Great. Thayer is an incredibly great writer, and these stories are all beautiful and moving and real. It’s hard for me to say whether I liked this one or Margaret Blair Young’s collection of short stories better this year–both are outstanding.

“Harvest”
Amazing poetry anthology. Some beautiful, beautiful poems in here.

“Little Happy Secrets,” by Melissa Leilani Larsen (I also saw her “Standing Still Standing,” which I didn’t like nearly as much, but had some good things in it)
Great play. The audio version up for free download online is even better than the very, very good New Play Project production that was produced back in March.

Several plays by Eric Samuelsen, including “Peculiarities” (I think the others were all as-yet-unproduced, but all were great)
Eric Samuelsen is awesome, and I superlove practically everything I’ve read of his.

“On Second Thought,” by Robison Wells
It had sort of a Dave Barry sense of humor for me–the sort of writing that’s trying constantly to be clever and funny, and rarely succeeds at inducing more than a smile. It wasn’t really my thing, though it was an entertaining enough read, and I’m sure there are those who’d love it.

I re-read “Heaven Knows Why,” by Samuel Taylor, with my wife. She’d never read it, and we both loved it–it’s as great as ever, and one of my very favorite books. An absolute comedic gem.

I also took part/am taking part in staged readings of six plays developed in the BYU WDA workshop (including one by me), all of which have some interesting and promising material (though I think all of them could still use some more work), and have seen/written/workshopped/been involved in the production of a number of short plays through New Play Project, have seen some good movies, and read some good stuff in the recent “Mormon Artist” contest issue. I’m sure there’s some more stuff I forgot to mention (I read some great Eugene England essays), but whatever.