My little sister just got a copy [of Hunger Games] and offered to lend it to me; is it worth reading?
It depends on what you mean by "worth reading". As an adult I doubt it will change your life or give you new insights to anything (depending on your sister's age, it might give her new insights), but it is pretty entertaining.
I really enjoyed reading it, but that shouldn't mean much to you personally, since you don't know if you agree with my tastes in general or not. So if it helps, other YA I also enjoy: Neil Gaiman, His Dark Materials, Discworld
Popular YA I dislike: Narnia, Eragon, never been a huge LoTR or Dragonlance fan.
So if you agree with my likes/dislikes, I would say the probability of you also liking Hunger Games is pretty high.
Amazon has the first book rated at 4.5 stars, and the last book at 3.5 stars. I would actually say that the third book is where a lot of the lessons come in, and people rate it lower because it's not the happy ending they want: (This isn't hugely spoiler-ific, but I rot13'd it just in case you want absolutely no expectations going in. )
Gur znva punenpgref ner genhzngvmrq naq fhssrevat sebz CGFQ, jr svaq bhg gur "tbbq thlf" va gur jne pna or whfg nf urvabhf nf gubfr gurl'er svtugvat, naq gur cebgntbavfg cerggl zhpu tvirf hc nyy nhgbabzl va ure yvsr.
Some ideas- The winners make history, power of the media to control and tame masses, bystander effect, even the "good side" can be bad, think for yourself, authority isn't always right.
Our YA tastes are fairly similar, but I actually meant, from a LW sort of standpoint, will I find any good quotes or lessons, any interesting problems or dilemmas, that sort of thing? From the sound of your 'Some ideas', it sounds fairly ordinary liberalism (in the old Enlightenment and 1984 sense).
Follow-up To: On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists
Related on OB: Formative Youth
Eliezer suspects he may have chosen an altruistic life because of Thundercats.
Nominull thinks his path to truth-seeking might have been lit by Asimov's Robot stories.
PhilGoetz suggests that Ender's Game has warped the psyches of many intelligent people.
For good or ill, we seem to agree that fiction strongly influences the way we grow up, and the people we come to be.
So for those of us with the tremendous task of bringing new sentience into the world, it seems sensible to spend some time thinking about what fictions our charges will be exposed to.
The natural counter-part to this question is, of course, are there any particular fictions, or types of fiction, to which we should avoid exposing our children?
Again, this is a pattern we see more commonly in the religious community -- and the rest of us tend to look on and laugh at the prudery on display. Still, the general idea doesn't seem to be something we can reject out of hand. So far as we can tell, all (currently existing) minds are vulnerable to being hacked, young minds more than others. If we determine that a particular piece of fiction, or a particular kind of fiction, tends to reliably and destructively hack vulnerable minds, that seems a disproportionate consequence for pulling the wrong book off the shelf.
So, what books, what films, what stories would you say affected your childhood for the better? What stories do you wish you had encountered earlier? If there are any members of the Bardic Conspiracy present, what sorts of stories should we start telling? Finally, what stories (if any) should young minds not encounter until they have developed some additional robustness?
ETA: If there are particular stories which you think the (adult) members of the community would benefit from, please feel free to share these as well.
ETA2: My wildly optimistic best-case scenario for this post would be someone actually writing a rationalist children's story in the comments thread.
ETA3: On second thought, this edit has become its own post.