I had trouble with Alice Hoffman's Ice Queen because I found the lead character annoying, self centered, and I was impatient with her. I finished the book but I didn't really enjoy it or her.

I'm trying to think of enjoyable books with unlikeable characters.

I did a post on Galveston and The Egyptologist, which I read one after the other. And it struck me that they were both about unlikable characters, but I still liked the books.

Well, American Psycho is probably one of those. The torture porn was way beyond my comfort level. But the book overall was well worth reading. I don't know that it would have worked without it. Though I do think it could have been a lot less meticulous and indulgent.

I don't know how you write that book without being extremely meticulous, you know? It wouldn't work if it were done in broader strokes.

Yeah, you're probably right. The the status-jostling, label-whoring, everything etc was addressed in the same manner and so the flow from one to the other was so disturbingly natural.

How important is it to you to like the characters in a book in order to like the book?

I need to have something to hold on to. Sometimes it's seeing a detestable character get what's coming to them.

I'm not sure this quite counts, but sometimes it's the supporting characters. The first Thomas Covenant trilogy, for example. Covenant himself was a nasty piece of work. But I kept rooting for The Land and its residents.

I rarely like characters in books. I focus on plot. TV, in contrast, annoys me intensely if I dislike characters. With a few possible exceptions: Sawyer in Lost, House - but then, these are the characters we're meant to love to hate. I can't stand things like Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty where I just end up wanting to run on set with a roll of tape, a ball of string, the key to the stationery cupboard, and all the characters from My Two Dads.

Do Nothing But Read Day - now that's a holiday in which I can fully participate!

I can read about almost anyone as long as I understand them. I love Vanity Fair and all the characters in it because they're believable. Becky Sharp does about one positive thing in the whole book - but she makes sense and everything she does makes sense (for her). And since the world she's in is so stupid I ended up rooting for her to conquer it.

It's only when I read something like Zoe Heller's The Believers - where very few of the characters seem like real people and their actions make very little sense - that I truly end up disliking them.

For those considering eBook readers: most of the reviews I've read about the Nook so far are rather raking it over the coals. The read-in-the-store feature isn't implemented yet and even when it is most publishers won't do it. The lend-a-book feature also doesn't work for most books, and can only be used one time anyway. There is no way to use the built-in wifi for anything other than downloading books, which is mildly pointless since the cell phone radio can already download War and Peace in 2 minutes or so (while the Kindle still has a functional, if minimal, web browser). And the entire interface is apparently extremely slow, both the touch screen and the eInk screen (which, oddly, refreshes more than twice as slowly as the Kindle's screen despite being the same display from the same company).

They all say there is potential there, but that it is in no way ready for prime time right now.

I'm a little worried that Apple is going to create a device (tablet) that incorporates both a reflective and LCD display (or one of these: [link] , which does both) and will immediately dominate the market. Which normally would be fine, but such a device would almost certainly need a subscription from a cell phone provider to do non-wifi wireless, unlike the Kindle/Nook. I have no interest in paying ANOTHER $30 a month for such a service, so I hope the Kindle model manages to stay around even in such a case.