Young Adult | featured news

Five years after the housing bust, the U.S. economy is showing signs of finally bottoming out. Americans are on the move again after putting their lives on hold and staying put. More young adults are leaving their parents' homes to take a chance with college or the job market, while once-sharp declines in births are leveling off and poverty is slowing.

Every day brings news of more and more projects hanging onto Fifty Shades of Grey‘s coattails (or cat o’nine tails). You can’t blame any of the bandwagon-jumpers, though. E L James’ S&M trilogy is quickly joining the likes of Twilight and The Hunger Games in terms of sales, and Amazon UK has reported that the books have become the best-selling books in the website’s 14-year history, overtaking the Harry Potter series in just four months.

Bibles in nightstands are a familiar amenity for hotel guests, but travelers seeking to read their favorite verse at one establishment will be in for a big surprise. The Damson Dene Hotel, which touts itself as the perfect destination for a “peaceful break away from it all” in England’s picturesque Lake District, is making quite a noise for replacing the Bible with “Fifty Shades of Grey” in its 40 guest rooms.

The percentage of young adults earning a college degree has increased slightly but still remains far below the level needed to reach the president's goal of having the U.S. rank first worldwide in college graduates....

Irene Fernandez lost her job with Spain's postal service five months ago, a victim of government spending cuts. Since then, she's been getting by on spending money from her mother and the $530 a month she earns grooming dogs for neighbors.

To attract younger people, fine restaurants dispense with pristine, quiet formality, revamp their menus, update their decor and extend their hours. Water Grill, with its attentive servers, white tablecloths and hushed formality, was long a stalwart of L.A.'s old-guard restaurant scene.

A weak labor market has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

The pleasure of reading endures in the digital age, a USC Dornsife/L.A. Times poll shows. Six in 10 people say they like to read 'a lot,' and young adults read about as much as many of their elders. Reading habits may be fundamentally changing, but a new survey shows that the printed word remains fundamental.

The perfect alignment of the gift-giving season and anticipation for The Hunger Games movie is boosting sales for Suzanne Collins' popular young-adult trilogy. The first book, The Hunger Games, reaches No. 1 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list for the first time (its previous peak was No. 2, on Sept. 29). Catching Fire is No. 7, Mockingjay is No. 8, and the boxed set is No. 27. "As strongly as The Hunger Games trilogy has been selling all year, it's been amazing to see how many new readers continue to discover the books every day through word-of-mouth recommendations, holiday gifts, and the incredible buzz for the upcoming movie," says Scholastic's Ellie Berger. The movie, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, opens March 23.

This week at the movies, we've got a brilliant detective (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law), secret agents (Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, starring Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg), singing rodents (Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, starring Jason Lee and David Cross), and a prodigal daughter (Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt). What do the critics have to say?