SEPTEMBER CHATS

What's on your mind today?

Hi...don't want anyone to worry when I'm not on here 24/7. Our son and his husband are coming in today and will be here until Wednesday, so I won't have a lot of time until they leave. I'll check in as often as possible.

Hi Carol! I'm just now catching up on LT so I certainly understand that life sometimes happens. Hope your family is having a great visit and thank you for keeping this thread going. It's been a touchstone during an unexpectedly busy August.

>3 threadnsong: We had a really great time with the son & son-in-law. Life does have a habit of just happening no matter if we want or need it to:) I was starting to be concerned about you. Glad that you were just busy and not sick.

>4 Carol420: Awww, thanks! I picked up an extra gig in August, so there were *3* performances I had to prepare for. LT is part of my "weekend time" and with weekends spent either performing or rehearsing, those weekends quickly filled up.

Last weekend was DragonCon; it was fun, though crowded, and a whole lotta newbies discovering this fun geek-inspired weekend. Where else can you find homemade robots from the "Star Wars" franchise in one hotel, a solar telescope on the roof of another hotel, and panels on Dissociative Identity Disorder and their tie-in to the new Marvel mini-series "Moon Knight"??

Catching up as much as I can today and looking forward to reading some more great reviews!

Quick question I would love some thoughts on, my dear friend Carol420 suggested I ask it here as well. So here goes: How important is it for you to like the characters in a book you're reading in order to enjoy said book? I asked this based on some comments I have seen in many reviews. Because for me personally, I just want the character well written and believable. For example, Gone Girl. I couldn't find a single character to like but I found the story so engaging and well written that I loved the book. So what say you?

>6 ColinMichaelFelix: I thought some more about my answer in The Mystery & Suspense section and read some of my previous reviews including the one I just wrote for Pack of Lies which I'm about the post here as well...and I realized that I am much more "character driven" than I thought I was. I am also very "author driven". I would have read this first book in this series because (1. I loved the two main characters in a series that this author finished 2 years ago, and I had read they were going to have a part in this one, and 2) I would read anything that this author chose to write. I have about a dozen or so authors that i would read their stuff just because it was written by them. One day I'm going to be disappointed...but so far so good. You've probably already checked the Mystery & Suspense site but Threadsong, and Sergei have posted comments to your question there.

>6 ColinMichaelFelix: it's an interesting concept for sure, and I wonder sometimes how that feels to the author when they realize the story they are writing needs a character with an unlikeable personality to make the story work. the authors are the ones stuck spending hours in their thoughts with this "person" and I don't envy them that!

i don't really expect to LIKE characters in stories, as much as I hope to meet ones that advance the plot and are believable. some storylines wouldn't work with all nice people in them :)

>8 Darth-Heather: Very intriguing angle which I hadn't thought of, but yes what a conundrum for them. Me personally as I mentioned, quite story driven. I always say, just keep me interested.

>6 ColinMichaelFelix: I don't necessarily have to like a character, but I do have to find something intriguing about one of the characters. If I'm not engaged with any of the characters, it takes me forever to read the book.

On Saturday 1st we will be starting the first of our Group Reads, which got put on hold due to COvID.

This will be for book 9 in the Robert Hunter Series, Gallery of the Dead. We had previously read the others in the series. This is the schedule :

Saturday 1st October : One - Twenty-Two
Sunday 2nd October : Twenty-Three - Thirty-Nine
Monday 3rd October : Forty - Fifty-Seven
Tuesday 4th October : Fifty-Eight - Seventy-Nine
Wednesday 5th October : Eighty - One Hundred and Four

This is the link to the group where the discussion will take place :
https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/23817/Book-Discussion-The-Gallery-of-the-De....

All welcome to join even if you weren’t there for the previous ones. New questions will be posted each day on that day’s section.

>6 ColinMichaelFelix: Hi Colin - what an interesting question and spot on with your observation. I also read Gone Girl and I found myself gradually disliking the characters as I read along. Sneaky, conniving, and oh-so-real. At first I pitied them, given how their lives were upended by their job losses, but as the story progressed, they were just icky.

But I couldn't put the book down! It was masterfully written and was so full of intrigue and suspense that those overcame the horridness of the characters.

So my response would be that I don't *have* to like the characters as long as the plot/writing style buoy up them (their?) not being people I would want to be in the same room with. Or the same coffee shop. Or the same bookstore.