Welcome to the Australasian Christian Writers Tuesday Book Chat. This is where we encourage book lovers to answer our bookish question of the week.
Today’s question is:
Are there particular occupations or hobbies that you don’t enjoy reading about in christian fiction?
We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please join in the conversation by commenting on this post or on the blog post shared in our Australasian Christian Writers Facebook Group.
Let’s chat!
I guess for me I am not fond of books with movie stars, especially the spoilt, self entitled stars. Part of the reason is I can’t relate to the life style. Another I struggle to relate to are artists. If the story talks about art I am totally lost. As for hobbies I would have to say I am not a fan of golf, or horse racing and motor racing. (I admit it I googled hobbies).
Your turn.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please join in the conversation in a comment on this post or in a comment on the blog post shared in our Australasian Christian Writers Facebook Group
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I roll my eyes at the billionaire boyfriend novels where the guy is a rancher or anything else where he more or less does “normal” work. The number of billionaires is very limited, and they are almost all at least middle aged and spent many years building up a business from something small or medium into something enormous. If they are young (30s), they inherited it. Even the multi-million-a-year sport stars don’t become billionaires while still young.
I guess someone involved in illegal activity using the internet or a drug lord could become a billionaire while still young, but they won’t be leads in CF stories.
A young entrepreneur can become a millionaire (I have 3 friends who did by starting tech companies), but billionaire? Nah, and they worked 80+ hours a week building their companies to get into millionaire zone. No time for dating a “normal” woman as if they were ordinary guys.
I agree there are many millionaires and often the younger ones are due to IT companies. Billionaires are less common. For billionaires to be ranchers or on the farm they would need to have very large ranches and as you said inherited it. I guess many us us don’t think about the plausibility of some status. Unless the characters are humble its not the sort of story I am interested in more so cos I don’t relate at all to it. I know some people who are independently but you would never know it. They are careful with money but do a lot of things behind the scenes. One I know of you would never know how much they had cos they were so careful of money and keeping track of every penny spent. But if someone was in need they would either offer to help or would secretly donate to help the person. This person has since passed away and its interesting finding out how many people she either helped or offered to help (including myself at one stage). She never boasted and did it in quiet. This sort of millionaire or billionaire is the type I would like to read about.
The amount of available, handsome, single (Christian) billionaires is on par with Regency era dukes or princes (of any era).
True. I think it depends more on the story sometimes than the occupation. A good writer and story will real us in despite not normally liking hobby, occupation genre, era etc.
There aren’t any I would completely avoid, though I guess there are some topics I might not be as interested in as others. But it depends how the occupation is used. It should be intrinsic to the plot. So if someone is an accountant, I would expect that he or she is going to uncover something in the books that will catch the crook or undermine the relationship. But there are some occupations that are really overdone and it would be good to see a wider variety. I’m not so keen on the stereotypes (e.g. the man is the CEO of the company and the woman is the secretary). Show me something different.
I would agree with that. I know I have read books that feature sports I don’t like and have been good stories. As a Coach in say GridIron or Basketball, Baseball could be in a different sport and its how the story revolves. The same with a professional sports person it would depend how the sports person was portrayed. Its the same with hobbies. There are some I think are boring but a novel can bring them to life or show them in a different way. I remember early one when Scrapbooking was just taking on an author wrote a series featuring different siblings with scrapbooking nights as an anchor for the books. The first was great but then I just couldn’t get into a couple but the Scrapbooking part was good just the other drama wasn’t me.