MAY CHATS

"Our humans use this all the time. Go ahead and say whatever you'd like while we see if we can get this thing to work."

May 2021 Americana Challenge posted

https://www.librarything.com/topic/331853

We have a Bank Holiday Monday coming up in the UK, tomorrow, and guess what? We're forecast for rain. ☔️
It's amazing how often we get rain on our Bank Holidays! 😀

>3 Sergeirocks: I know that you could always count on it raining in Ireland, so I'm not surprised that England would have the same. You're all stuck out there in the same ocean:) I see that meerkats do have umbrellas so you should be okay.

>4 Carol420: ☺️

Currently, really heavy rain.

>5 Sergeirocks: Better get a bigger umbrella and maybe a boat or a life preserver:)

I'm working the polls tomorrow from 6:00a.m until about 10:30 or 11:00pm...May 4 so I won't be around until Wednesday.

Wishing all the mothers in the U.S.... Australia & Canada a very HAPPY MOTHER's DAY tomorrow...and all the mothers in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales a HAPPY MOTHER"S DAY on May 14.

Hi all! I get regular emails from CrimeReads.com with articles, and I thought that you all might be interested in this one. It's about cozy mysteries, and includes recommendations.

I posted this in the Cozy Mystery group already, but I thought there might be people here who would be interested who might not be part of that group. Sorry if this redundant for a lot you.

Millenial Cozies: A New Generation Discovers the Joys of the Cozy Mystery

I just read another article from CrimeReads, this time about the taboo of killing dogs in mystery fiction. The article posits a possible reason for the way readers react to that sort of thing, and I'd love to know what you guys think. I'm not sure myself, just yet.

Every Mystery Writer Knows You Can Kill Anyone but the Dog

>10 Julie_in_the_Library: Hi Julie. I hate reading about any animal...dog, cat or otherwise being killed for the sake of watching it die. I have stopped reading books that started out offering a really good story because the author for some reason saw fit to needlessly kill off a pet or a stray. I also hate stories that feature dog fights or that any animal is mistreated. I also feel the same way about children so I'm not just a "bunny hugger". I really can't think of anyway the death of a dog or cat would add anything purposeful to a storyline. I have owned and been owned by several dogs and cats. People...I believe...are generally turned off by this type of writing because of the helplessness of these creatures. They have no voice to express or beg for mercy even they understood what they were asking for. I spent 28 years of my life working in the education department of a Zoo trying to educate the public to the reasons to respect nature and ALL it's creatures...so I can certainly be counted among those that will not tolerate animal murder in my reading material...no matter which author writes it. I guess my question would be why any author would even wish to kill the dog to start with?

>11 Carol420: Obviously individual reader preferences are a thing. I tend not to read really bloody or violent stuff, myself.

But it's also true, as the article notes, that not killing the dog, so to speak, seems to be a universal rule in mystery, regardless of subgenre. Readers who don't mind, who even seek out, the more violent, hard-boiled or police procedural side of mystery fiction will still, nearly universally, reject the killing of a dog or other pet.

You can publish a book about murdered children, and make the bestseller list. But a murdered dog is going too far.

It's an observed phenomenon in mystery fiction, and it's worth looking at how or why that is, because logically, it makes no sense.

The author of the article comes up with a theory - that killing a pet in a mystery novel is gratuitous in a way that killing a human victim isn't - but I'm not sure yet if I buy it. I see the argument, and it makes sense to me, but I think there might also be more going on.

Maybe because we know we're reading a murder mystery, we unconsciously dehumanize the characters in our a heads, a little, keep them at a degree of separation we don't animal characters, because we know that all humans are possible victims?

I'm not sure. It's a tricky question.

>12 Julie_in_the_Library: I read thousands of murder mysteries. Some really brutal...I don't care for the "cozy" genre. I wonder if the readers attitudes may be influenced by authors like Dean Koontz that have devoted time and effort to showing his beautiful retrievers, (Trixie), both in personal appearances and in some of his stories and Spencer Quinn with his Chet and Bernie series. These may have given the dog a slightly elevated place in mysteries. It's going to always come down to that not everyone is going to like the same things and that is especially true in our literature. You're right. It's a tricky question.

>13 Carol420: My mom can handle the UNICEF commercials that show the children, but has to turn the channel from the Sarah McLachlan animal ASPCA commercials. For some reason, animal abuse hits her more viscerally than suffering children. And she's not the only one I've noticed that about.

The human brain is weird and mysterious.

>14 Julie_in_the_Library: Oh no...your mother has company...ME. I hate those commercials. I do hope that any money that is being sent is being used for those animals, You never know what lengths people will go to these days.

I mean, the ASPCA is pretty reputable, as far as I know. More than UNICEF, anyway, but I digress...

There is the old trope in movies and TV of "kick the dog".

I remember reading an old Hollywood memoir that the author talked about how the test audience for a movie didn't know which of the two male leads to root for; so the author add a scene near the beginning had the "villain" literally kick the heroine's dog when it crossed his path. Problem solved. It was now completely clear who needed to lose.

>17 nx74defiant: I know which one I'd root for.

May 21



Happy Birthday, Bette. Hope you day is wonderful!

>10 Julie_in_the_Library: Any killing, hurting, or deaths of animals or children and I immediately stop reading and throw away the book. I don't care how much I paid for it.

>20 Raspberrymocha: Have you ever thought about why those things bother you, but not the deaths of adults? I'm not criticizing, I'm just curious, because a lot of people feel that way - I'm not entirely sure that I don't feel that way, since I've never come across animal death in a book that I can remember - and obviously logic isn't what's behind it. I wonder what is?