Unsurprisingly, Veronica Roth, the author behind the bestselling young adult dystopian saga "Divergent," loved to read the genre she is now so cut out in writing. The novelist has already gorged on a tower of YA books and here are some of those titles fans of the writer would like to check out for themselves as well.
1. "1984" by George Orwell
The literary political fiction is definitely one of Roth's favorites and it, in fact, influenced her much-loved "Divergent" saga. Set in the war-ridden Airstrip One, the book features a world presided over by the Inner Party, whose idea of leading is manipulating the public and surveying the place 24/7.
"I found that '1984' helped me quite a bit to shape the fear landscapes - that whole rat mask thing, it really tapped into a kind of primal terror that I tried to access when I was writing about Tris and the birds in her first fear simulation," the author told Parade.
2. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
It comes as no surprise that the prolific YA reader such as Roth loved Rowling's all-time favorite tale about a young boy living under a cupboard, whose life completely changes after learning his destiny of become a wizard.
"Harry Potter is the best thing," Roth said during a fangirl moment in an interview with USA Today.
3. "The Hunger Games" Series by Suzanne Collins
It would be odd if Roth did not read and love the story of Katniss Everdeen's fire and bravery. As per Bustle, Roth's "Divergent" series is often compared to Collins' saga. In the same USA Today interview, she declared herself a fan of the saga.
4. "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
More than a favorite, Roth credits the sci-fi classic as one of the books that influenced her. The multi-award winning book follows 13-year-old Meg Murry, whose father is a forensic scientist, goes missing in the midst of his work on a mysterious project called tesseract.
During an interview with YALSA, Roth revealed that the sci-fi book originally published in 1963 is one of her favorite books.
5. "The Giver" by Lois Lowry
Speaking of favorite books, Roth also has a thing for the Newberry Medal-winning young adult fiction dystopian classic. The author always says that it is also among the books that influence her as a young adult author. She first read the 1993 sci-fi fixture when she was in fifth grade.
"The Giver was my first taste of what was possible for me as a writer," Roth wrote on her blog. "I could write about a disturbing world that did not yet exist. So: The Giver is important to me," she went on to say.