On a lighter note, I clearly need to read The Lord Peter Wimsey books. And on an entirely different note, I finally got The Secret History. I am waiting for the most perfect time to read it, I don’t want to read it so soon on the heels of The Goldfinch.

Aw, I never thought about how DLS must have felt sad in that particular way. And now I am sad.

But I have to admit there are a lot of books I can’t get into because I don’t like the protagonist – and by that I mean that there’s just not enough sympathy between my mind and the protagonist’s mind for me to get invested in the book. It’s not exactly a matter of disapproving of individual actions, or of not wanting to hang out with the protagonist. It’s something more complicated than that. And sometimes my dislike of a character is so intense that it makes me feel ill to read the book – Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, for instance, is a brilliant book, but the parents are such monsters, and the book is focused so closely on them, that I simply can’t read it.

So I think I’m okay, in a way, with not liking a book because you don’t like the characters – it’s just that “like” strikes me as not quite the right word.

I love the Burns column, thank you. I’ve spent years now telling my kids (and my kids’ friends) that Legos are for people who like Legos, and so on. My purple princess ninja legomaniac MLPaddict child is fine just the way she is, princess and all, thank you.

I just wanted to dart out of lurkdom to ask for a like button. Pretty-like. Not petulant-like.

kthxbai.