Harry Potter is a good suggestion, a lot of people will have read those. Perhaps Twilight also.
I suppose the problem wiith your age group is that they're not very likely to read at all (same goes for my age group and I'm 4 years older).
Reading isn't really a skill as such, just read what you think you'll enjoy. I read various things of different genres - today I finished a Stephen King horror novel, then started reading a German novel and then took out a history book; The only one of those that'll be popular is the Stephen King one (but even then it's not the most famous) but that shouldn't matter when choosing a book.