The funny thing is, I read books with characters in them who don't share any characteristics with me at all. Let's take the John Rain books by Barry Eisler (superb, BTW) as an example. John Rain is a master assassin, half-Japanese, with a love of culture, jazz, and ultra-expensive whiskey. He lives in Tokyo (or Brazil or Paris, depending). I'm none of these things. Nothing in common. I don't even really know very much about the locales he writes about or the martial arts techniques he describes. Yet I manage to become deeply involved in the story and very invested in the characters. Chuck would have you think that's impossible. It's very possible, Chuck, you're just not a good enough writer to pull it off.