I need to digress briefly from The Sparkly Vampires And the People Who Love to Mock Them to express (once again) my writerly crush on Nathanel West:

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Tod liked to hear him talk. He was master of an involved comic rhetoric that permitted him to express his moral indignation and still keep his reputation for worldliness and wit.

Tod fed him another lead. "I don't care how much cellophane she wraps it in," he said, "nautch joints are depressing, like all places for deposit, banks, mail boxes, tombs, vending machines."

"Love as a vending machine, eh? Not bad. You insert a coin and press home the lever. There's some mechanical activity inside the bowels of the device. You receive a small sweet, frown at yourself in the dirty mirror, adjust your hat, take a firm grip on your umbrella and walk away trying to look as if nothing had happened. It's good, but it's not for pictures."

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I need to work that (very Coen Brothers-esque) line into my conversation: "It's good, but it's not for pictures."

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

OMG, you've just brought the Oz books back in a rush! Fabulous!

Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely ultimately won the big one.

Splendid! I liked it a lot - certainly WAY more than Twilight. Was patting the hardback sequel fondly only this afternoon, and promising it that I would buy one of its little paperback brethren as soon as they showed up on the shelf.

Honestly, it would be easier to list the people/creatures/whatever that she *hasn't* had sex with.

Let's see, no women, because I'm sure she thinks that's icky . . .

At fourteen I was reading mostly Harlequin Romances and whatever other romances I could find on mom's bookshelf that I wasn't supposed to be reading.

At 14 I think I was starting at one end of the Andre Norton shelf in the library and digging in.

At 14, I was probably still in my mystery kick, reading Mary Higgins Clark and E.W. Hildick, with a dash of fantasy like Edward Eager and E. Nesbit.

14 is about 9th grade, right? That would put it right smack at the height of my Heinlein phase.

I couldn't tell you what I was reading at 14 -- I was still very indiscriminate. I suspect I would have like Twilight quite a bit, but at that age I had much more patience for reading along hoping something might happen. I brought home the second book from the library, but I never read it. may never read it.

At 14 I was still in mysteries - Christie, Marsh, Sayers. And slumming in Enid Blyton's boarding school novels. I think I read LOTR that year. And Sassy magazine.

At 14 I was also still in mysteries. Also Once and Future King and a lot of Richard Brautigan and Vonnegut.