(no subject)

[rymenhild]

I've posted ten books and series of books that I love. Your job is to guess my favorite character from each book. Please note: I don't actually have to like a character for him or her to be my favorite. I merely have to be fascinated by the character. When you guess correctly, I'll write a few sentences on why the character is my favorite.

1. Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising Sequence: shati, ayelle and obopolsk were right to choose the prickly, arrogant, strange Welsh farmboy named Bran Davies. I love Bran for his biting sense of humour and for his taste in colourless sweaters. Beneath the prickly surface, Bran has a vast store of love and anger for his family and friends. He also has a core of inner strength that is at once the power of the High and Wild Magic and the merely human strength of a brave, stubborn mortal boy.

2. Madeleine L'Engle, the Chronos books (i.e. the ones about the Murry-O'Keefe family)

3. Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials: carasfriendmatt pointed out that since my favorite character wasn't exactly Lyra, I must have chosen Pantalaimon. Pullman's daemons, part embodied souls and part Jiminy Crickets, are perhaps his finest creations. Pantalaimon himself is, of course, as brave, intelligent and loyal as Lyra, although he has just slightly more common sense than she does. I love Pantalaimon's swift changes from form to form; his motions are just as quick and unknowingly graceful as Lyra's thoughts.

4. Stephen King, The Dark Tower: shati got this one too. Don't be deceived by Susannah Dean's gender, her skin color, her wheelchair or her past history with nonviolent activism -- this woman is a gunslinger born. Fear her.

5. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

6. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: Again, shati and ayelle have guessed correctly. (Actually, I think ayelle knew already, due to a birthday party and a plastic Viking helmet.) Eowyn, Lady of Rohan, who is also Dernhelm, Rider of Rohan, has fascinated me since I was a very young child with a copy of the record from the Rankin-Bass animated Lord of the Rings. I can still hear her in my head: "No mortal man am I. You look upon a woman!" Any woman who can defeat the Witch King with a sword earns large numbers of points when I keep score.

7. JK Rowling, Harry Potter: As obopolsk suggested (as one of two options; that's probably cheating, oh well), Remus Lupin, creative teacher, intelligent mentor, and incidental werewolf is my favorite character.

8. Patricia McKillip, The Riddlemaster of Hed: godlyperspectiv and dredpiratejenny were right. I can't actually say very much about Deth on this journal, as cryptoquip had only read halfway into Heir of Sea and Fire last I looked, but I love the way Deth's serene exterior conceals an extremely complex and interesting character.

9. Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: raindrenched suggested that my favorite character in the Lemony Snicket books was Lemony Snicket himself. So he is. Expert in masks, disguises and concealments, and skilled in appearing unrecognizably in photographs (see icon), Lemony Snicket is constantly hiding himself in plain sight. I love the doleful epigraphs regarding the tragic history of Lemony and his lost Beatrice, and the sudden, cryptic digressions throughout the books that provide almost all the information we get about Snicket.

10. Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: All right, this one's not fair. I couldn't choose. What is Guildenstern without Rosencrantz, or Rosencrantz without Guildenstern? When paired, they are detectives and court fools, jesters and philosophers. They go together like Abbot and Costello.

Comments

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm now having second thoughts on Madeleine L'Engle. The three possibilities:

1) Emily (No, it couldn't be her after all, she's from the Austin's family series)
2) Max
3) Katherine (she is not by rights in either the Murray-O'Keefe or Austin series, so I'm going to say she doesn't count.)

Max it is!

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

Or Max's partner, who is, after all, more academic and possibly more put-together. But if she is a more appealing character, she is also probably a less interesting character. So I'll stick with Max after all. Even though I always preferred Max's partner myself.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

As we discussed on AIM, you have successfully gotten nothing except the half-credit on Guildenstern. This clearly means this meme is harder than I thought it was.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

I lay claim to Chaucer, though, because the pilgrim I guessed was my first guess.

I'm very carefully not writing my answer down here, though, so that someone else can have the fun of guessing it.