The Bookish Seven Deadly Sins

I've been tagged to do the Seven Deadly Sins Questionnaire (created by BookishlyMalyza) by the wonderful Micheline from Lunar Rainbows and because I love bookish questions - here are my answers :) Thanks for the tag, hun!

1. Greed. What's your most inexpensive book? What's your most expensive one?
Hm... cheapest are probably my books from the 'Bücherbrocki' which is kind of liked a used books store. Paperbacks are only two bucks there, no matter how big or small they are.
If you count ebooks though, it'd be one of my Amazon freebies or deals for 99 cents.
As for the most expensive book I own, I think I paid most (or, well, my mum gave it to me for graduation) for my hardcover edition of The Lord of the Rings, illustrated by Alan Lee. It's beautiful :) I also have an edition of Swinburne poems from 1917. I bought in cheaply on ebay, but then had to have it restored for over 80 bucks because the front cover fell clean off as soon as I opened it >_<

2. Wrath. What author do you have a love-hate relationship with?
This is so hard! I know there is someone, I just know! I'm looking at my shelves and I just can't figure it out. Hm. Maybe Sarah Rees Brennan, but just a little. I mostly love love love her, but she has a way of ending books that is just plain cruel. Or Jane Austen. I know she's a good writer but god, most of her characters are just so aggravating! It always takes me forever to get into one of her books because I can't find a single person that I like. Which I know is not how I should look at books as an academic reader but it's just infuriating because she writes about the most horrible people and so many of her protagonists are either doormats (Anne, Fanny) or think they know it all (Emma).

3. Gluttony. What book have you devoured over and over again with no shame.
I don't have time to re-read as much as I used to, but I've read Der Kreis der Dämmerung bei Ralf Isau about 3 times when I was a teen. Another frequent re-read were books by Wolfgang Hohlbein (German YA fantasy, mostly from the 80s and 90s): Der Greif, Spiegelzeit, Dreizehn... I think some of them have been translated to English. I've also read many of especially the first few Harry Potter books several times, as well as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
These days though, I'm mostly a re-reader of poetry because you don't spend days on it and I find it calming to come back to my favorites. The ones I've read most are probably The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and the poems in Stephen Crane's Black Riders and Other Lines (I always mean to re-read just a specific one and end up going through the whole book). I also love Ode to a Nightingale by Keats.

4. Sloth. What book have you neglected reading due to laziness?
Well. About three years ago I bought a huge omnibus of Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy. All three books in one. But it has well over 1000 pages and it's HUGE and basically impossible to transport. And since I tend to read on the bus/train... somehow I just never read it. Even though I've wanted to for 10 years, since I first spotted Lirael at a local book store.

5. Pride. What book do you talk about most in order to sound like an intellectual reader?
Well. If I wanted to show off or maybe purposefully make another person leave I'd talk about Ulysses by James Joyce. Or The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot.
As for Classics I really enjoyed: Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Tristram Shandy, Frankenstein, Mrs Dalloway, and The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (though that one was very disturbing).

6. Lust. What attributes do you find attractive in male or female characters?
Male: I tend to go for the lean types rather than the bulky ones. Dark hair. Green or blue eyes. Snark and mischief mixed with vulnerability and a sense of humor. If he's creative or good with a sword, that's a plus. I can go for both a villainous or a morally upright guy, but no fake bad boys please.

Female: I love fierce girls or women who can stand up for themselves, be it because they are badass fighters or good with words. Loyalty and compassion are also important. I like protagonists that are mostly self-reliant but also not too proud to ask for help when they need it.

7. Envy. What book would you most like to receive as a gift?
Um. Any book on my TBR that I don't own yet? But a 19th century edition of Paradise Lost by Milton or the above-mentioned poetry volume by Stephen Crane would be wonderful. You know, old, rare books. Perhaps with engravings. I also like it when the previous owners have written into them - little notes, their name on the title page, or a dedication if the book has been a gift.


This took me waaaay longer to write than I thought it would! Okay, time to tag some people! If you've already done it then I'm sorry, no time to check. Perhaps leave me a link to your post?

Kelly from Effortlessly Reading

Jen from The Starry-Eyed Revue

Kayce from Fighting Dreamer

Anya from On Starships and Dragon Wings

Jen from Tangled in Books

Caro from The Book Rogue

 

Discussion: Do characters/MCs need to be relatable?

As the title says: do you need to be able to relate to a character or like them in order to enjoy a book and form a connection to it?
This is a question I ask myself quite often and that arose a few days ago because I was reading Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers. Regina, the protagonist, is someone I both feel sympathy for (she is first almost raped and then ridiculed, outcast and bullied by her former friends) and despise (she used to bully a lot of other people at her school and since I've been a victim of bullying myself, that makes it hard to like her).

However, I think that tension makes her an even more interesting protagonist. I can connect to her and the story, even though I've never been even close to her actual situation or in the kind of toxic girl-group relationship she is stuck in. I enjoyed the tension between these two sides of her and her struggle against herself and her peers.

So in general I think being able to relate to a character is not all that important to me. I don't even have to like them. It just has to be an interesting, complex character. For instance, I don't think many people like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but that doesn't mean he isn't interesting or that the book is bad. In some cases I find myself reading the book to a great part because of the villain (or maybe-villain).

Still, I often read in reviews that people liked a book/character because they could relate to him/her, or that they didn't like a book because they couldn't connect with/relate to/like the protagonist. I think there's also a pressure on authors to write this type of character, and sometimes I feel like it shows. For instance, the character is introduced/constructed in such a way that I feel like the author wanted him/her to be as similar to the anticipated reader as possible so they'd like him/her. If it's that transparent, it actually makes me dislike the character. It somehow feels insincere and  like I'm being sucked up to.

Maybe the fundamental question is what you're reading for. Do you want to find characters with traits that are similar to you, want to find someone who is 'like' you? Or do you want to disappear into a story populated with people who are completely different from yourself? I tend to find difference/otherness/strangeness more interesting than similarity/sameness. But that's just me, and it's not absolutely always the case. I guess in the end it comes down to the quality of the writing.

What's your opinion? Do characters need to be relatable? Likeable? Morally upstanding? Is that necessary for you to connect to the story? Or are there other elements that are more important to you in a book? I'd really like to know :)