Dr. Frank's What's-it

I found the main character's views on cats to be incredibly problematic...

There is a problem with the way people read novels now, most obvious in Amazon reviews, in which readers consistently confuse whether or not a novel is good with whether or not they “like” the characters. Generally, readers imagine that if they don’t like the characters in a novel, it is a bad book.

To make matters worse, whether or not they like the characters is usually based on whether or not the characters behave nicely.

-- David Baddiel, on judging John Updike.

Posted by Dr. Frank at May 10, 2014 09:47 PM