Introverted Reader Features

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.I was going to write one of my regular Character Connections this week, but Abby Normal, from Christopher Moore's Vampire Love Story Trilogy (Series order: Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck, and Bite Me) insisted on writing about herself. Fair warning--her language is a little *ahem* colorful.  Anyway, please welcome Abby Normal to the blog! That's Abigail Von Normal, Emergency Back-up Mistress of the Greater Bay Area Night, to you, bitches.  Pay attention, 'cuz there will be a test. 'Kayso, what can I tell you about my baneful existence? My bff Jared, that disgusting lover of rodents (and I totally mean lover in the most revolting way, but he's amazing at helping me choose my black eye makeup), says I'm perky at heart but I'm totally lost in a dark pit of despair. I mean, the mother unit just took away my fave pair of Skankenstein® boots! Life is not worth living. But my manga-haired love monkey, Foo Dog, totally…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. Not how I picture Big Jim, but exactly how he feels at first Big Jim Rennie is a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad" character from Stephen King's Under the Dome. I hated him within about 3/4 of a page of meeting him.  I could gag just thinking about him. Big Jim is a used car salesman with political aspirations. He actually is a politician in the tiny town of Chester's Mill, Maine. He's an alderman or mayor, or something important like that. The very basic premise of Under the Dome is that this tiny town is suddenly enclosed in a big, see-through dome. They're cut off from the rest of the world. As a leader, Big Jim should be organizing his people, tallying his supplies, caring for the sick and wounded. You know, all that stuff that comes along with real leadership. But Big Jim immediately starts figuring his odds. What can he get out of…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. Vincent Price in the 1964 movie adaptation I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is a classic of the horror genre for a reason. For me, that reason is Robert Neville. He is the last real man living in a world that has been decimated by a disease that turns everyone into a vampire. Even animals have been hit by the disease. I'm going to cheat a little here and paste my review. Robert Neville is this novella for me, and my entire review is about his character. I would definitely call I Am Legend a horror book, but not exactly for the reason that I expected. There are the vampires, and there are a couple of intense scenes with them, but that wasn't what made the book scary to me. It was more about the absolute aloneness that Neville experiences. He truly is the last man in the world. How would you deal with that? Would you…

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can't be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. It's the first Thursday in October and I am excited!  I don't know why; I don't deal well with intense horror.  Oh, I can read me some Stephen King and Dean Koontz and (mostly) sleep well afterward, but you won't catch me watching any Saw movies.  *shudder*  I don't know if I would ever sleep again after watching one of those. Anyway, I'm excited to bring you a character from a classic horror novel! Victor Frankenstein.  Oh my gosh, I loathed him. From my review (which I am inordinately fond of): "A more self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-explicatory character I hope to never meet." Start spouting excuses for your bad behavior and you have lost me completely. And Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one long excuse, from both the creator and the monster. Victor is super-intelligent, but he gets crazy-obsessed with life and death. So he decides to combat death. And he wins. Nowhere along the way does he stop…

We all have characters we love. Let's spotlight these fantastic creations! Whether you want to be friends with them or you have a full-blown crush on them, you know you love them and want everyone else to love them too! Most of you will probably post about how much you love each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write a love letter to Captain Wentworth. Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Draw a picture of yourself in Jamie's arms. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.First of all, you guys might be interested in a guest post author Robin Spano wrote for me on Tuesday. In it, she wrote about making a character seem real.  Go on over and see what goes on behind the scenes of a book! The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz is probably not a book for everyone. It bounces between narrators, back and forth in time, and can be emotionally difficult to read. But what I loved the most about it was one of the narrators, Yunior. Look at the title of the book. You already know it's not going to be a light-hearted comedy. But, man, Yunior has a way with words. Being a Southerner who hasn't set foot in the Northeast, I have no idea how young Dominican men in--New Jersey or New York? I can't remember--speak. But the patter of Yunior's words just feels right. As I put it in my review, "He's a fast-talking,…

We all have characters we love. Let's spotlight these fantastic creations! Whether you want to be friends with them or you have a full-blown crush on them, you know you love them and want everyone else to love them too! Most of you will probably post about how much you love each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write a love letter to Captain Wentworth. Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Draw a picture of yourself in Jamie's arms. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.Oh my gosh. I have been a little disappointed with Carlos Ruiz Zafón's work since reading The Shadow of the Wind, but I think that's because he raised the bar so impossibly high with that book. His language (and that of the translator) is gorgeous, and this is a beautiful, Gothic book.   It is a bibliophile's book.  And then there's Fermín. Oh, Fermín! You shattered my heart so many times! Fermín is not perfect by any means. His arrival into the book is less than fortuitous, to say the least. The Spanish Civil War has left him a wreck. But Daniel Sempere and his father see something worth salvaging in the old soldier. They are so right. He's funny, he's loyal, he's chivalrous, he's everything you could want in a companion. He laughs, he cries, he loves, he mourns, he faces his fears and he comes out stronger.  See why I'm in love with this man?  I'm afraid that if I start…

We all have characters we love. Let's spotlight these fantastic creations! Whether you want to be friends with them or you have a full-blown crush on them, you know you love them and want everyone else to love them too! Most of you will probably post about how much you love each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write a love letter to Captain Wentworth. Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Draw a picture of yourself in Jamie's arms. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. It's time for another character I love to hate!  I should probably have saved this for October, but I have to write what my little muse tells me to. Annie Wilkes from Stephen King's Misery gets my vote for his scariest villain.  I haven't read It, so that clown might eventually take the crown, but right now it's Annie. What makes Annie so scary is that she's so real. She's a reader (!) who obsesses over author Paul Sheldon. I know we all say we're obsessed with this or that author or book, but Annie's for real. She is Paul Sheldon's "Number 1 Fan." *shiver* So when she has a chance to have Paul all to herself, she grasps it with both hands. But people in the flesh can never live up to the idealized dream versions of them, so psychotic Annie starts to have problems with Paul and punish him accordingly. Whatever kind of psych problem she has, she cycles…

We all have characters we love. Let's spotlight these fantastic creations! Whether you want to be friends with them or you have a full-blown crush on them, you know you love them and want everyone else to love them too! Most of you will probably post about how much you love each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write a love letter to Captain Wentworth. Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Draw a picture of yourself in Jamie's arms. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. Kathrynn Stockett's bestselling book, The Help is a bestseller for a reason. Tackling the issue of race in 1960s Mississippi, it's an important book. But it wouldn't be quite so special without the three characters at the heart of the story. I loved them all, but Minny is a standout. Minny is a helluva fine cook, yet she has trouble keeping a job. She's had something like 19 jobs in as many years. But she just can't keep her mouth shut. If she sees something going on that she doesn't like, or if her employers say something that offends her, she lets everyone know it. This is still the Jim Crow South. A black woman has to bury her real feelings way down deep and meekly accept whatever is dished out if she wants to keep her job. Minny just can't do it, and you have to admire her for it. One minor character calls her "every Southern white woman's nightmare,"…