Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books Book

I know without a doubt that I would have loved the Weetzie Bat books if I'd read them in high school or college when I was an alterna-chick who scoured thrift stores for cool vintage clothes and went to underground clubs every night with gorgeous gay boys who loved me, but not the way I loved them. Back then, I might have sworn Francesca Lia Block had based her contemporary fairy tales on the everyday lives of my friends and me.

But I tried to read these books a couple of years ago, and found all the characters (and by extension, Block herself) irritating in their aggressively whimsical hipness. I literally threw this book across the room when I was about 60% of the way through it. I read a lot of young adult fiction (need to put more of it on my list, I'm realizing), so I'm accustomed to stuff written primarily for adolescent readers, but I just could not stand this collection.

I did like Dangerous Angels, Block's book about the midlife crisis Weetzie has when her girls are all grown up and she feels estranged from Secret Agent Lover Man. But even then I thought it was a little too self-congratulatory: "I may have grown kids now, but I'm still soooo much hipper and more artistic than all other middle-aged women!"