At 14, I was reading a lot of Harlequin romances, checking out various nonfiction from the library (mostly history), and Stephen King. A year later is when I got into SF/fantasy (Tolkien, Heinlein, Clarke, etc.).

Skulduggery Pleasant, on the other hand, is delightful. I am loving 12-year-old Stephanie, with her guts and joie de vivre (...which I can't spell). And Skulduggery himself is cracking. So far Tanith has had only one chapter, but I was entirely enamoured of her. I do hope that she isn't evil/doesn't get killed off in an untimely fashion.

Oh my god, I *love* Tanith! "Come and have a go....if you think you're hard enough." Eeeeeeee!!!!

And Skulduggery himself cracks my shit up. He's totally Remington Steele. If, you know, Remington Steele was a skeleton. And of course I love Stephanie -- how could I *not* love a character who's THAT kickass AND shares my name?

Fay, you know there's a second one, right?

I do feel a sort of car crash curiosity. Much like with LK Hamilton, actually.

The newest Anita Blake caught my eye the other day, and I just had to read the book flap -- it's something about Anita having to go home with Jason (to his parents' home, or some other extended-family thing). Of course his family doesn't know he's a were-whatever, and so Anita is his beard.

(Although how can she be his beard if she's actually fucking him?)

(I guess she's his Beard of Normality?)

Anyway, I rolled my eyes forever and then put the book back on the shelf.

At 14, I was finally coming out of my Piers Anthony & Anne MacCaffrey phase, majorly into Stephen King, reading The Autobiography of Malcom X and various other bios/autobios of civil rights leaders. Also, a lot of MAD Magazine.

14? Let's see. I think that was around the time I discovered Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of Horses. And then when The Mammoth Hunters came out, I totally preferred Ranec to Jondalar. If I'd been online then, I bet it would've been my first shipper war. Those books were great for adolescent me because they were full of sex but flew under my mom's radar because of the lack of bodice ripper covers.

Hm, what else? I gobbled up Sunfire YA historical romances, and also my hometown library's huge collection of Georgette Heyer. And Regency romances in general, because they were the adult romances I could bring home from the library or bookstore without my mom pitching a fit. Kinda funny that that time period is now my era, given what first sparked my interest!

Barb, can you explain this wrt Time Traveler's Wife ? I know you didn't like it the way I did, but I'm not sure what you mean here.

Amy, do you mean with the rule-breaking or authorial intrusion part?

If it's about the rule-breaking, I really felt as if she spent all this time early in the novel beating into our heads the rules of her self-created universe and the mechanics behind Henry's time travel, which was annoying, but okay, I can get it. She really, really wanted to make sure we mere mortals understood it. Things like Henry not being able to interfere with his future or his past. Makes sense, right? But then,

She has Henry interfering. Like when his older self teaches his younger self how to steal clothes and pick pocket-- to me, that was a blatant rule breaking with a convenient deus ex sidebar. I know there are people how have argued that he was able to interfere because he was supposed to, so it doesn't count, but I don't know, it rubbed me the wrong way, possibly because she had spent so much time setting it up that he couldn't. Same for when his only six-months-older self is sexually experimenting with his younger self because yanno, awkward adolescence and all that and what girl would mess with them at that age and hey, look! how convenient. But again, it seemed to be there expressly for the purpose of having the Big Misunderstanding with his father, thereby creating even more emotional distance.

Those are only two examples I can remember, since it's been forever since I read the book, but it was in part, because of those instances, that I got the distinct impression that Niffenegger was sitting just behind me, pointing over my shoulder, exclaiming, "Look! Isn't that clever! Wasn't that a cunning turn of phrase?" Which means I was probably reading WAY too much into things, but I was seriously annoyed. Probably also contributed to the fact that I felt absolutely no chemistry between Henry and Claire, which is also irrational, since it puts me in the distinct minority.

I suspect, however, that the movie version is bound to take care of a lot of these things. I'm actually quite anxious to see it, since I really did love the idea of the book and really wanted to love it.

Yes! I saw Book 2 sitting there promisingly on the shelf as I snatched up Book 1 this afternoon - yay!

What was I reading when I was 14? Er...I think probably David Eddings still (although that might have been more a 12/13 thing? Can't remember, really), and Piers Anthony, and Anne McCaffrey...er...probably Mercedes Lackey? Robert Heinlein? The early Weiss and Hickman trilogies? Oh, also MM Kay and Mary Stewart would have been around 15/16, I think. And Georgette Heyer probably around then, once I'd finished working my way through Austen. And numerous dodgy sword'n'sorcery girl-in-a-man's-world crapfests with magical swords and talking cats etc etc.

Yeah, I'm sure I'd have been all over Twilight if it had been around when I was 14.

how can she be his beard if she's actually fucking him

Jason finally got her into bed?

edit: for a given value of "finally" and "got her", of course.

Yeah, I'm sure I'd have been all over Twilight if it had been around when I was 14.

See, I suspect I wouldn't have, because I was mostly reading horror novels. I would have completely sympathized with Bella's wanting to become a vampire, but otherwise I would have thought she was useless, and I would probably have been very eye-rolly about the wussy sparkly vampires that didn't eat anyone. And then gone back to my copy of Salem's Lot.

I want to make all the Twilight fangirls go and read something by the Brontes for their brooding hero fix, and then have them mainline at least the first 3 sesasons of Buffy.

I love this idea.

I can see that my junior high self would have thought it was the best thing ever.

This would have been true for me as well.

At 14 I was dimly aware of Stoker's Dracula, starting to read Stephen King, and already fully steeped in YA and kid novels about small plucky bands of good guys (and the token good girl, which irritated me no end) fighting against some secret monumental evil. And oh, how I grooved on those tales, and, like Buffy, I liked my evil Evil. The emo woes of sparkly vampires and their mortal Mary Sues would have just enraged me.

(Er, uh, yeah, I also groove on Angel and Spike. But they're pointedly exceptions to the rule, not revocations of it. And at least they're exceptions who still love the hunt and the kill and all; they're like the Hungry Tiger in Oz, who's gone all good and will never permit himself to eat a baby but who will never bullshit himself or anyone else by pretending that babies aren't in fact the most delicious things ever and that he doesn't crave them every minute.)

Cleolinda's recaps are so delightful, in a gleefully mean nuh-uh! you're-shitting-me! sort of way.