I’m sure as a meme this has been done before, but for the life of me I couldn’t find a link to someone’s existing list. The few sites I did find were all geared towards grade school kids. Granted, I didn’t try very hard to narrow my search, but what the hell, it’s early and I’m still working in my first cup of coffee. Besides, we’re all still coming off at holiday weekend (yes, I know it’s Wednesday), so why strain our brains too much.
Here we go. Choose five characters from five books (name both the character and the book). Love ‘em, hate ‘em, I don’t care, but you have to want to sit down and have a conversation with them. Why’d you sit down with them in the first place and how would the conversation go (if it went at all). Have fun with it.
1. Biff from Christopher Moore’s Lamb: Love that man. We’d meet for breakfast and within the first five minutes he would have my shooting coffee out my nose due to some wise crack or another. He’d offer to heal it, but unfortunately that was Josh’s thing, so instead he’ll inform me he has the gift of tongues. I’d propose marriage, only to find out that he’s hung up on this chick named Mary. We’d commiserate over the fact that biblical love triangles are so hard to handle. In the end he’d head back to Mary and I would be left considering the ethics of cloning.
2. Inspector Lynley and DC Travers from Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley mysteries: Used to love them, now I’m just all depressed. We’d meet over a pint to discuss some sort of serious counseling because while I get the whole stiff upper lip, bad-things-have-happened-to-us-but-we’ve-soldiered-on thing, you guys are killing me. Killing me! Find something, anything to find a little happiness in. Anything. But make it small, and do it daily. And get some anti-depressants. I’ve had to take a three year break from reading y’all and it sounds like things only got worse while I was gone.
3. Takeo and Kaede from Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori trilogy. We probably wouldn’t be able to talk (language barrier and all, let’s not even take a look at the time continuance problem), but I would love to have tea with these people. Hot sips while watching the herons. Zen me out.
4. Dexter from Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series: my favorite serial killer. Since I harbor no serial killer tendencies (that I’m aware of) I’d probably be safe meeting Dexter at a bodega for a sandwich and coffee. We’d talk blood spatter and science and I’d ignore the fact that he’s jokes didn’t quite fit the situation (even if they were funny) and that his Hawaiian shirt was making me dizzy because the man knows his business. Hopefully I would never find out why.
5. Anonymous Lawyer from Jeremy Blackman’s Anonymous Lawyer: mostly just to find out if he sounds like he does in his blog entries. I’m sure he would be pompous and such, so Anonymous Niece would have to be there as my in. Plus I would love to see how he acted around her outside of the email realm where she is the master and he is the student. This would all take place at a nice restaurant and be charged to some client’s tab, of course.
Hmm. Not as interesting as I thought it might be. Oh well, have fun with it. Make it your own. Who would you meet if you had the chance?
6 comments:
Ok,this is a fun idea,let me see:
Marianne Dashwood,Sense & Sensibility:
In many ways,I'm very much like her so I think the two of us would have a great chat over tea,swapping stories about our passionate younger sisters:)
T.S Garp,The World According to Garp:Both of our mothers are nurses,so again we'd have something in common. Also,it would be great to have him describe one of his works-in-progress or rant about political extremists.
Dracula: Yes, one of Anne Rice's vamps would be more of a conversationalist but why not meet the O.G. of vampires if you had the chance?
Anita Blake,Vampire Hunter series:Hey,if Dracula gets out of hand,I 'd need someone who could handle him! Hopefully, the pre-Ardeur Anita would show up,otherwise,things would get way too interesting.
Aunt Betsey Trotwood,David Copperfield: She's one of my favorite female Dickens characters and the type of spunky gal I aspire to be. Not to mention that if Anita wasn't able to fight off Drac,Aunt Betsey certainly would wipe the floor with him:)
Anita Blake: So I could smack her upside the head and tell her exactly what I think of her behavior lately.
Agent Pendergast from Child and Lincoln's books: I would loooove to talk to him. He just seems to know everything. I would love to pick his brain
Scarecrow from Reilly's series: Not sure why, but I'd like to meet him to.
I can't think of two more at the moment, but I'm sure I will.
Ellen Cherry Charles from "Skinny Legs and All" -- an interesting imagination, a passion for art, awareness of the goddess all around, and interesting life experiences.
Sara from "A Little Princess" -- sure, she's kinda a goody two shoes in the book, but I would like to talk to a Sara now my age, looking back and sure of her place in the world.
Viva la Sangria!
1) Howard Roark from "The Fountainhead." His ability to only accept his own counsel always intrigued (and frightened) me. I had so many things I wanted to know.
2) Hannibal Lector from "The Red Dragon." My own tip-of-the-hat to a serial killer--although he was less interesting to me the further the series went along. I preferred him with a bit more mystery.
3) Babe from "Crimes of the Heart." I know; I know. I'm cheating here. Strictly speaking, it's a play, not a book. But I just love Babe and her sense of enlightenment when she realizes that her mother hung her cat before committing suicide because "she didn't want to die alone." Babe was such a mix of sensuality and innocence.
I've just realized that I have a real fondness for anti-establishment types. I need to think of some people who don't flaunt authority.
4) Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey in almost any Dorothy Sayers' novel. I just like both of them so much. And they dress conventionally even if nothing else they do is ordinary.
I still haven't come up with anyone who doesn't buck the establishment.
5) Henry Drummond from "Inherit the Wind." Another freaking play. But what I actually want here is to talk to Clarence Darrow, and this is a sneaky way to do it by picking a character based on him. Wouldn't you just love to see what a great lawyer would think of some of the constitutional issues we're wrestling with?
In the course of doing a five-minute blog comment, I've decided I need serious therapy. Not only did I keep picking people who ignore the conventions, but I cheated on the rules of the meme. This is diagnostically relevant.
I would have responded to this earlier in the week but it's been one of those weeks! Here goes:
1) Professor James Asher and Ysidro Simon from Barbara Hambly's "Those Who Hunt the Night" and "Traveling with the Dead". I'd love to talk to Asher about serving in [i]Her Majesty's service[/i]and Ysidro about what it's like to be a vampire and all he history he's seen.
2)Anabelle St. George from Edith Wharton's "The Buccaneers". I would talk to her about English society and try to talk her out of some of her choices in men.
3) Jilly Coppercorn, Joe Crazy Dog, Geordie Riddle, or any of Charles de Lint's characters from Newford. I could talk myths, art, music, and about the otherworld with any of them.
4)Professor Remus J. Lupin from the Harry Potter books. We could talk about the perils of being a werewolf and just living in the wizarding world.
5)Benjamin January of Barbara Hambly's Freeman of Color mystery series. I would talk to him about 1830s New Orleans and Creole society.
1. Any of the characters from Anne Tyler's "The Accidental Tourist." Eccentric, proper, and crosswired, this is the family I feel like I should've been from, but wasn't.
2. I'd like to observe, but be very careful around Henry Holyoak Lightfoot, the main character in "The Fool's Progress" by Edward Abbey. Henry manages to shoot a refrigerator, roar off in a truck with his dog on a journey across the US, tell us his life story, and make to his boyhood home in Appalachia to die with his family.
3. I'd like to go to a party with Holly Golightly from Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.
4. To listen to the sounds of the piano from the neighbor down the hill, and see the sunsets in Mexico with a quiet friend like Susanna Ames in Consider This Señora by Harriet Doerr.
5. I'd like to be a kid and hang out with Aram, in William Saroyan's book, "My Name is Aran."
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