Where Is Your Bookmark? (09/01/2015)

I am reading two books at the moment: Fredrik Backman's tale of a girl tasked by her dead grandmother to deliver letters of apology to various people her grandmother has wronged, which is aptly titled, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry; and also Lilith Saintcrow's The Demon's Librarian, about your typical demon hunting librarian. Because all librarians hunt demons on their down time, right?

First Paragraph of My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman:

Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero. That's just how it is.

Anyone who doesn't agree needs their head examined.

Teaser at 4% (Elsa and her grandmother are waiting at the police station): 

"I didn't want you to remember this day because of the scarf. So I thought instead you could remember it as the day your Granny broke into a zoo--"

First Paragraph of The Demon's Librarian by Lilith Saintcrow:

She ended up knee-deep in slick rotting garbage with one hell of a shiner and a stitch gripping her side, holding a glowing-blue knife while something with tentacles thrashed toward her in the foul stinking water.

How the bloody blue hell do I get into these situations?

Teaser at 5% (after a patron demands The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn be removed from the library): 

"Mrs. Pembroke, not a week goes by without you coming to my office or bothering my staff about something you feel is indecent. If this library is such a sinkhole of filth and corruption, why don't you patronize the parish library on Twelfth Street? I'm sure they will have texts more to your taste."

What do you think? Would you keep reading?  

These are two very different books, and both are the second books I have read by their respective authors.

What are you reading at the moment?  Is it anything you would recommend?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely ladies at Broke and Bookish.

This week's  Top Ten Tuesday theme is Ten Characters You Just Didn't Click With, and yet, for many of the books in which these characters appear, I liked (loved, in some cases) them still! That says a lot, wouldn't you say? To be fair, some of these characters are supposed to be unlikable--or at least, not easy to like.

1.

Melanie Middleton from Karen White's Tradd Street series. I like so much about this series, especially the setting and the writing, but I just can't seem to completely warm to Melanie the way I wish I could. There's just something about her that annoys me.

2.

Mike Chapman from Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper series. He's one of the top secondary characters and cleary the main character adores him.  Then why don't I? Still, I do enjoy this series quite a bit.  And sometimes I find myself liking Mike. At least for a brief moment, and then I'm back to being annoyed by him.

3.

I loved the novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, and in some ways, I could identify with Eva Khatchadourian, the narrator of the story, but she was not exactly an easy character to like.  I felt empathy for her. And sorry for her too. I don't think she and I would have ever been friends though if she'd been a real person.

4.

Thomas Covenant is an anti-hero. He is part of a fantasy series by Stephen R. Donaldson' of which I have read the first book, Lord Foul's Bane.  Generally, I have no problems with anti-heroes, but Thomas did something unforgivable early on in the book that made it impossible for me to warm to him on any level. I can look past or forgive a character for a lot of things, but not what he did.

5.

Owen Meany from John Irvings' A Prayer for Owen Meany. I wanted to like him--so many people do--but I found him more annoying than anything else. This is one of those books I did not care for when all was said and done.  And part of it was because of Owen's character.

6.

For this one, I am cheating. Humbert Humbert of Lolita fame. I am so glad I finally took the plunge and read Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. This is one of those books I ended up loving, in spite of or because of how much I was disgusted by the character of Humbert. There is nothing redeemable about the man.

7.

Walcott from Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson. Walcott, a secondary character, is Shandi's best friend. Shandi being one of the two main characters in the novel. I didn't care for him much at all, finding him annoying (annoying seems to be the key to hurting a character clickability with me).

8.

Anna from The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  I cannot say any of characters in the novel particularly won me over, but I at least had sympathy for Rachel and Megan. I never warmed to Anna though. She wasn't a very nice woman.

9.

Dr. Annick Swenson from Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. Beautiful writing and a compelling novel, I enjoyed Sate of Wonder quite a bit.  I never did warm to the main character, Dr. Annick Swensen, though. She is gruff in manner and spends more time pontificating than she does listening.

10.

Rachel from Sharon Bolton's Little Black Lies. It would seem as if Rachel would be the easier character in the novel for me to relate to given my history of depression (mine took on a different form, admittedly).  And yet, I found her the most difficult to connect with in the novel. In fact, at times I found myself actually disliking her. She rubbed me the wrong way.

Are there any particular characters you didn't click with that stand out in your mind? Did that make or break the book for you?

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