Ten Bookish Characters

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's theme is "bookish characters." Here are ten characters from books that are themselves associated with books in some way!

1. A.J. Fikry (from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)

2. Alma Singer (from The History of Love)

3. Francie Nolan (from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)

4. Hazel Grace Lancaster (from The Fault in Our Stars)

5. Hermione Granger (from the Harry Potter series)

6. Lazlo Strange (from Strange the Dreamer)

7. Liesel Meminger (from The Book Thief)

8. Luigi Lemoncello (from Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library)

9. Matilda Wormwood (from Matilda)

10. Meggie Folchart (from the Inkworld series)

Which other bookish characters can you think of?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, and The Case of the Missing Museum Archives
Five years ago I was reading: Appointment with Death
Ten years ago I was reading: The Blue Parakeet

Ten Dynamic Duos from Literature

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is "dynamic duos." Without further definition, I sought out pairs from literature who were not (canon) romantic and who worked together or both carried the story in some way, not a prominent main character and a far-distant secondary character. This meant that I ended up with a lot of characters from children's literature, but I did manage to find some from other books as well!

1. Aziraphale and Crowley (from Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett)
Though an angel and a demon should be sworn enemies, thousands of years kicking around the same planet together have created an unlikely bond that they must draw upon to try to stop the end of the world.

2. Beezus and Ramona (from the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary)
These sisters have a challenging relationship, but it's their entertaining back-and-forth that moves the story along.

3. Charlotte and Wilbur (from Charlotte's Web by E.B. White)
With Charlotte's brains and Wilbur's willingness to learn, this spider and this pig are able to accomplish quite a bit!

4. Frog and Toad (from the Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel)
Raking leaves, going swimming, climbing mountains, eating cookies — these two best friends are always up to something!

5. Gerald and Piggie (from the Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems)
The unshakeable friendship between Gerald and Piggie helps them navigate all of the ups and downs of life.

6. Jessi and Mallory (from the Babysitters' Club series by Ann M. Martin)
Each of the babysitters in the club got the spotlight from book to book, but when it came to babysitting, these two were inseparable. Literally — as the youngest members of the club, they were only allowed to babysit as a pair (or so I remember).

7. Julie and Maddie (from Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein)
Though their time together on the page is short, these two young women — World War II pilot and spy — accomplish amazing things working together.

8. Kizzy and Jenks (from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers)
Among the various members of Wayfarer's crew, the ship's engineers function the most like a pair, two friends who act like siblings, who know each other's quirks and are there for each other when needed.

9. Poirot and Hastings (from the Hercule Poirot series by Agatha Christie)
Though not cited as often as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, in this pair you also have a brilliant detective and his faithful sidekick who documents everything. And Hastings, in his bumbling ignorance, sometimes inadvertantly provides the clue that ties everything together for Poirot.

10. Zoey and Sassafras (from the Zoey and Sassafras series by Asia Citro)
Zoey and her cat Sassafras work as a team to help the magical creatures of their nearby forest with their problems by setting up scientific experiments to find solutions!

Who are your favorite dynamic duos?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: A Closed and Common Orbit, Mr. Popper's Penguins, and How to Be an Antiracist
Five years ago I was reading: The Brothers Karamazov and The Nightingale
Ten years ago I was reading: Stumbling on Happiness

Ten Things People Do More Often in Books Than in Real Life

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

It's a freebie week! I've compiled a top ten list of things that book people seem to do way more than actual people do.

1. Not know they're holding their breath
"I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding." Really? You weren't breathing through that entire page and your body wasn't like, "Hello, give me some air!"?

2. Bite their lip until they taste blood
These book characters all seem to be walking around with split lips! You were so nervous/scared/whatever that you literally bit so hard you drew blood? And then the "metallic/salty/bitter taste of blood" just filled your whole mouth? Yuck.

3. Bite the inside of their cheek
Usually when I hear people talk about biting their cheeks, it's something they do accidentally while eating, but people in books do it constantly, either as a nervous tic or to keep from laughing or for some other reason.

4. Smile with half their mouth
The pages of YA romances are filled with hot guys who are apparently experiencing an epidemic of Bell's palsy or else only know how to smirk at people, because they all have the same tendency to smile with half their mouths or are described as having a "lopsided smile." Seriously, where are the guys who just have a nice, typical smile? The kind that uses both sides of their mouth??

5. Not realize that the person screaming is them
I get that our beloved book characters go through some traumatic stuff, and so maybe that explains this phenomenon, but I feel like most of the time people know if they're screaming. And yet book characters are constantly experiencing something terrifying/shocking and then hearing a scream and only belatedly realizing it's coming from their own mouth.

6. Not realize they've been speaking their thoughts aloud
Look, I talk to myself out loud all day, but trust me, I'm very aware that I'm doing it. When I worked in an office and they put the summer intern desk in my office, I would warn the intern each summer that I may think out loud while they're in there. I have yet to have an experience where I thought I was having a conversation in my head and then suddenly realized that all of those thoughts had come out of my mouth without me noticing that I was speaking. But apparently many book characters have a hard time distinguishing between silent thinking and out-loud thinking and are shocked when they realize they've been talking!

7. Respond to someone as if in answer to that person's exact thoughts
On the flip side to #6, many times someone is actually thinking their thoughts silently to themselves in their head, and then some other character responds as if they heard those thoughts out loud. I have definitely had people guess my feelings from my facial expression, and sometimes people may anticipate what I want to say in response to them, but I haven't had the experience of, say, sitting silently in a car with someone and thinking a thought and then getting a coherent, out-loud response from the other person as if they'd heard an exact sentence in my brain. In books, though? Happens all the time.

8. Zone out so long that they don't realize someone's talking to them
This is a favorite technique of amateur memoirists who don't realize that you can just give the reader backstory without having to build a whole scene where you stand there staring off into space and remembering how you got to that moment until someone waves their hand in front of your face and asks if you're listening and you "snap back to the present." I certainly get lost in my thoughts at times, but it's usually because I'm worrying about something, not reflecting in narrative detail on all of my life choices up to that point.

9. Get pregnant the first time they have sex with someone
Except for romances — where you're most likely to get sex scenes for the sake of sex scenes — if a character with a uterus has sex with someone, then I'm going to estimate 80% of the time they end up pregnant. Especially if their lover dies or leaves forever afterwards. If first-time sex resulted in pregnancy in real life as often as it does in books, there would be a lot more pregnancies!

10. Have a best friend of a different gender (and both be straight)
With almost all of the people I know in real life who have an actual platonic best friend of another gender, at least one of the people in the friendship is not attracted to their friend's gender. But with all these friends-to-lovers YA romances, you'd think it was extremely common for straight people's very best friend to be someone of another gender. Oftentimes this is explained by them being neighbors or their moms being best friends or their friendship going back to elementary school, but when I was in high school, my best friend was not someone I'd known my whole life and it definitely wasn't a guy. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying it happens all the time in books!

What else would you put on this list?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: A Promised Land and Strangers from a Different Shore
Five years ago I was reading: Lolita, Middlesex, and Murder on the Orient Express
Ten years ago I was reading: I Am the Messenger

Ten Characters I'd Love An Update On

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This was a fun thought exercise. I'm not generally a fan of writers adding sequels for books that don't need them (especially since it often requires creating conflict where there was previously resolution and hope), but here we can just imagine all of these characters as real people and wonder what they'd be up to since the story ended!

1. Alba DeTamble (from The Time Traveler's Wife)
We only get a brief glimpse of Alba in this book, where she seems to be a pretty well-adjusted kid for having a time-traveling disorder. How does that affect her as she grows up and attempts to navigate long-term relationships?

2. Alex Claremont-Diaz (from Red, White & Royal Blue)
We leave Alex on a happy ending (it's a romance, after all), but he still has most of adulthood ahead of him and a whole international situation to navigate in the public eye. What is that like for him?

3. Alice Love (from What Alice Forgot)
Is Alice able to take the lessons from her period of amnesia and prevent any distance from creeping into her marriage again? How does this experience affect her parenting?

4. Blue Sargent (from The Raven Cycle series)
This universe has continued with the Dreamer Trilogy, but Blue gets barely a mention now that we're following Ronan. How is she navigating adulthood, and what do her family relationships look like now? How much is the supernatural still part of her day-to-day?

5. Claudia Kincaid (from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler)
Claudia is a precocious, clever kid when she concocts a plan to live in a museum and solve a mystery in this book. How have those skills served her as she's grown up?

6 & 7. Crowley and Aziraphale (from Good Omens)
The TV series kindled in me a new love for these characters from a book I read over a decade ago. Given all they've been through together, what happens next for these two?

8. Dimple Shah (from When Dimple Met Rishi)
I'll admit, I know there's a short story about Dimple and Rishi that has come out since the original book, but I haven't read it, so this is on me! However, I think the story mostly focuses on their relationship, and I'm interested to know about Dimple's continued experience in programming. How does she navigate being a woman of color in web development at Stanford? What is her career after college?

9. Matilda Wormwood (from Matilda)
This is one where I'm glad there was never an actual sequel (because that poor girl went through enough already!), but I'd love just a glimpse of her adult life, where I imagine her having strong boundaries and a loving community and basically building the life she wants for herself.

10. Starr Carter (from The Hate U Give)
Starr has to make some difficult and brave decisions in this book, and we see some of the immediate consequences of that, but what does her life look like five or ten years out? Which relationships has she maintained? Has she continued to be an outspoken activist, or has that part of her life taken a backseat to all of her other ambitions for now?

Which characters would you like an update on?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: The House of the Spirits and The Body in the Library
Five years ago I was reading: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, Middlesex, and The Girls
Ten years ago I was reading: Sundays in America

Ten Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve More Love

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week we're talking about great characters who aren't the main characters of their books. This is what I came up with, but I know there are many more I just didn't think of!

1. Abby Suso (from the Creekwood series)
Abby is a major character in the Creekwood books, but she's never gotten her own book. She goes through a lot over the course of the series — moving to a brand-new place, making new friends, dealing with a stalker-ish classmate, and exploring her own sexuality.

2. Ellen Claremont (from Red, White & Royal Blue)
Her story isn't the focus of the book, but let's stop and appreciate all that President Claremont has to deal with as the first female president of the United States, not to mention one whose son causes multiple international incidents!

3. Dylan (from I'll Meet You There)
Working in education consulting, one point I heard made during my first year at my current organization was that we tend to talk about kids in rural areas as if the goal is to educate them so they can leave. But what about educating the ones who want to stay and remain part of their local community? Unlike the novel's main character, Dylan is genuinely happy to stay in her hometown with her baby and doesn't want to be lumped into everything her friends are trying to escape. Props to her for not letting someone else dictate what happiness should entail for her.

4. Jack Boughton (from Gilead)
I don't want to say too much because it involves a plot twist, but Jack is misunderstood for much of the book and brings out the main character's shadow side, only to prove to be more complex and human than expected by the end.

5. Marcela (from Don Quixote)
One of my favorite scenes in this lengthy classic involves Marcela, who is initially portrayed as a cruel temptress who drove a man to kill himself for love for her. But when we finally meet her, she delivers an excellent defense of what would today be called "friendzoning," saying it isn't her fault if men fall in love with her and that doesn't mean she's obligated to love them back, and if they want to be ridiculous about it that's on them. Not what I expected to find in this work from the early 17th century!

6. Matthew Lynch (from The Raven Cycle series and Dreamer Trilogy)
Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a secret about the incorrigibly sweet youngest Lynch brother that comes out during the course of these series that would be incredibly hard to live with, so let's all spare a thought for Matthew. (And also I haven't read Mister Impossible yet but I'm looking forward to it, so don't spoil any further developments!)

7. Mr. Bennet (from Pride and Prejudice)
I tend to be in the minority for how much I enjoy Mr. Bennet as a character, but I appreciate the way he stays grounded amid his wife's constant anxiety and how he cares more about Elizabeth's happiness as a person than her value as a marriageable young woman.

8. Polgara (from The Belgariad and Malloreon series)
Polgara does, thankfully, get her own prequel in this universe, but she's still a secondary character in the two main series. She's awesome and nearly unflappable and incredibly clever, and I'm glad she gets a little slice of happiness after making sacrifices for centuries for the sake of the world.

9. Susan Pevensie (from The Chronicles of Narnia series)
Susan is the proverbial black sheep of the Pevensie kids, the one who misses out on the final adventure because she's become too "worldly" to go back to Narnia. But so what? People have diverse interests and need to explore their identity as they grow, and if Susan is interested in "nylons and lipstick and invitations" at the moment, good for her. After the events of the last book, she likely gets a shake-up in her priorities anyway.

10. Zuzana (from Daughter of Smoke & Bone)
The main character's best friend, Zuzana is a spitfire of a girl who has little patience for things that she doesn't like but deep loyalty for her friends. She's funny and brave and has some of the best lines in the book.

Who are some other great secondary/minor characters?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Everyday Antiracism, Still Life, and Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Five years ago I was reading: The Big Four and A Prayer for Owen Meany
Ten years ago I was reading: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Ten Characters I Would Follow on Social Media

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This is a fun topic this week! Which fictional characters would you want to follow on social media?

1. Abby Suso (from the Creekwood series)
Even though I probably relate to Leah the most, she's so introspective and insecure that it's hard to imagine her having a thriving social media account. Abby, though, is opinionated, funny, and smart, and she's willing to speak her mind even if she's still trying to find her own way in the world, which I think is a great combination for a thought-provoking social media feed.

2. April May (from An Absolutely Remarkable Thing)
Maybe this is cheating a little bit because we get to see some of April's actual Twitter feed in the book! Even though we know what she's showing on social media is a brand, only representing one aspect of her, what she does post is inspirational and encourages everyone to have hope and to love their neighbors (plus, whose social media isn't curated?).

3. Blue Sargent (from the Raven Cycle series)
Blue is witness to a lot of supernatural weirdness, but she herself manages to stay pretty grounded. That blend of a mature worldview with stories about things so strange they're hard to believe reminds me of what I like so much about Ask a Manager!

4. Cassandra Mortmain (from I Capture the Castle)
Cassandra may be hesitant to make bold moves in her own life, but she is an excellent observer of those around her and has quite a way with words, so she would be sure to share fascinating stories well told.

5. Dimple Shah (from When Dimple Met Rishi)
I'd love to follow Dimple to see what her experience post-high school is like. How does she navigate being a woman of color in web development at Stanford? What is her career after college? She's thoughtful, self-reflective, and driven, and it would be great to hear her thoughts!

6. Hermione Granger (from the Harry Potter series)
I imagine Hermione sharing the kinds of thought-provoking, challenging articles that the people I learn the most from on social media often share. She would also do extensive research on any current event or political issue and present the most thorough, nuanced takes on it. Sign me up!

7. Ifemelu (from Americanah)
I was kind of meh about Ifemelu's personal relationships in this book, but I loved her blog posts! I'd be content to just hear more of her insights on life in America — and life in Nigeria — without all the ups and downs of her love life.

8. Rosemary Cooke (from We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves)
Rosemary has a lot of interesting thoughts about memory, family, and life in general. She also has some unusual stories from her own life! She'd be a great one to follow.

9. Starr Carter (from The Hate U Give)
This book is all about Starr finding her voice and using it to bring attention to what matters, particularly on matters of racial justice. I'm sure I'd learn a lot from following her!

10. Valancy Stirling (from The Blue Castle)
Valancy stops censoring herself and learns to live life on her own terms. Her social media account would undoubtedly include beautiful nature photos and reminders to enjoy the little things that bring you pleasure and not let anyone else tell you how to live your life.

Whose social media would you like to follow?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: The Thirteenth Tale and The Shadow of the Wind
Five years ago I was reading: The Shadow Cabinet, Ella Enchanted, and Station Eleven
Ten years ago I was reading: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court