My Giveaway + Announcements

*My first foray into an Author Interview with Andrew Xia Fukuda is up! (Should I do more?)
*My first manga review for Natsume Yuujinchou V.1 - please let me know what you think

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Blog Updates! + Discussion Post: On Minor Characters

Sooooo, I have done some cleanup on this blog. For one thing, I actually TAGGED everything for once! And I made pages!

About the Blog and I is where you should go if you want to know more about this blog and myself.
What I Read gives a list of the types of stories I like/dislike. Am slightly amused that my dislike list looks longer than than my likes... ^^;;;
Review by Title in which all my reviews in this book blog are listed and linked to.

Now all I need to do is make a Contact Page (the email is galnovelty AT gmail DOT com if anyone wishes to speak to me about anything) and maybe a Links Page so that people know where to find me and organizing my Challenge post...

Speaking of which - Anyone want to help explain to me how to make those contact form thingers? I'd normally bug Ninefly for all my tech-y blogging needs, but she's currently busy traipsing around the grasslands of Mainland China, the minx. *IS NOT JEALOUS, NOT AT ALL*

And please feel free to tell me what other pages you think I should consider putting up, etc.

+

My Minor Character Problem

Folks, I have a confession to make. I have a problem. One that my RL friends like to make fun of me for doing all the time. See, I have this habit of falling in love with the Minor Character. Which is okay if I still like the main story but then, I would sometimes like the Minor Characters more than the main characters. And then, they die. Or disappear. And they make me sad.

They also make me incapable of talking about the books properly.

Let's use the Time Traveller's Wife example.

FRIEND A: So have you read that really good book Time Traveller's Wife?
ME: OH GAWD THAT BOOK I WAS SO SAD. IT WAS A TRAGEDY. A TRAVESTY.
FRIEND A: Well, I suppose the romance was a bit on the tragic level -
ME: SHE DIED.
FRIEND A: ... What? Claire didn't die!
ME: NOT HER. Ingrid.
FRIEND A: Ingrid who?
ME: The girlfriend who loved him and said fuck you to the whole destiny crap and we had to see her die OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND IT WAS SO SAD.
Friend A: Oh I kind of remember something like that - wait a minute, Yuan, SHE APPEARED FOR LIKE, TWO PAGES.
ME: *sniffs* The most tragic two pages of my life.

Even the most optimistic of situations, liking the side minor character is a frustrating experience. You'd read the whole book, but you are left feeling unsatisfied because that book wasn't the story you WANTED to read. Like John Green's An Abundance of Katherines. I don't care how many times our MC got dumped and his stupid math theorem! I JUST WANT HASSAN GOING AROUND BEING A LOVABLE LOSER AND MAKING STAR TREK REFERENCES AND WATCH JUDGE JUDY FOREVER.

You'd think a good solution would be to pick out a favourite character who's one of the main leads (usually the MC or the Love Interest in YA is a pretty good shot) as a favourite character, BUT THEN, A BOOK LIKE WHITE CAT COMES ALONG.

ME: So I read this book called White Cat wherein I actually liked the love interest for once AND THEN I WAS SCREWED.
FRIEND Y: Why? What happened? What's this character's name?
ME: LILA. OH, DEAR, DEAR LILA.
FRIEND Y: *reads WC summary* Yuan... it says in the very summary that Lila is dead. How the hell did you think picking out her as a favourite character would be a good idea?
ME: Sometimes, I hate myself. *sobs* LILAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I can't help it! Something about these characters just draw me in and I've always read my books with character love as the foremost priority. And then I would read this books and be all crushed and no one has sympathy for my loss. *wallows* And I also can't even give proper reviews for these books because ALL I WANT TO DO IS SPEND THAT TIME TALKING ABOUT THAT MINOR CHARACTER, and talking about things that isn't really relevant to the main story is not good review-ing material.

Surely I'm not the only one afflicted with this problem? Tell me about your minor character loves. Or, if you always like the main characters and do not understand my problem, tell me how silly I'm being and show me ways to get over this problem of mine. Or just talk to me about characters you like in general!

3 comments:

Jenny said...

Bahahaha, I spat out my water all over my book when I read your thing about Ingrid. That would indeed be excessively tragic!

I sometimes find I dislike the protagonists in books I'm reading, but I don't usually fixate on minor characters and wish they were the focus of the story. Hassan from Abundance of Katherines being an exception - so true! He was far more interesting than Colin!

Jodie said...

I like secondary characters so I do not have quite the same problem as you (I could not for the life of me remember Ingrid - sorry, sure it is tragic hehe)but often I feel like there should be alternating series where everyone gets a book to themselves. This would make all the series excessively long, everyone else would hate it and I would be in heaven one book out of eight.

MissA said...

LOL like Bill! I need to get my hands on Abudance of Katherines because everyone talks about Hassan and how amazing he is.

I'm reading Rampant by Diana Peterfreund and while I like all the characters, I'm getting tired of the chosen-blonde-one, I want to learn more about the other unicorn hunters like Zelda, Grace, and Valerija (she has lots of weapons!). Maybe try reading Whale Talk by Chris Cruthcer. All the secondary characters are fantastic, but the main character steals the show. I love him.

I like the new pages!

BTW, I gave you an award, maybe it will make you feel better :P http://blackteensread2.blogspot.com/2010/06/waiting-on-wednesday-what-momma-left-me.html