Top Ten

This is a meme hosted by Random Ramblings.  Since I love all things listy, thought I'd give it a shot.  This week's theme is Top Ten Fictional Characters...While it's open to any media, I'm going to stick on the literary end.  These are in no particular order, since I can't really rank them.  They are all so different, it would be like trying to rank my kids...

1.  Jo March,Little Women:  For any woman over the age of 30 I probably don't have to explain this choice at all.  Younger readers, if you think that early American fiction isn't for you, think again and read this book!

2.  Alex Delaware, from Jonathan Kellerman's series:  I read many, many mysteries and love most of the main characters, but there is something about Alex that is comforting, and I really care about what happens to him as though he was a real person out there somewhere.

3.  Harry Potter,Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:  I realize that he is the main character in seven books, but this is the one where I liked him the best.  Young, uncomplicated, before he got all dark and twisty, as Meredith Gray would say.  Plus, let's face it, he may have been realistically surly in a teenage sense in Order of the Phoenix, but sometimes I wanted to tell him to man up and quit his cryin'!

4.  Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn:  I think I like her for the same reason I like Jo March.  She was a girl struggling to find her way through the social and cultural rules of her time.  Whereas Jo was trying to find life and love on her own terms, Francie was trying to find a way to help her family survive in New York City around the turn of the century.

5.  Lisbeth Salandar,The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:  I always like complicated female characters, and Lisbeth certainly fits the bill.  There's something cathartic about reading a revenge fantasy like the scene with her "guardian" in this novel, even if you would never condone it in real life.

6.August Boatwright, The Secret Life of Bees:  I almost wished I too had to run away from home so I could go to Tiburon, South Carolina and be taken care of by August and her sisters.  I loved her movie self as well, played admirably by Queen Latifah.

7.  Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:  Yes, even Edmund, who comes through in the end.  Oh how I cried when Peter and Susan got too old to go back to Narnia!

8.  Hannibal Lechter, Silence of the Lambs:  Was there ever a so deliciously evil character written before or since.  Frankly he was the only reason I read Hannibal.  It certainly wasn't for the barely plausible plot.

9.  Myron Bolitar and Win Locke-Horn, Harlan Coben's Bolitar series:  Maybe it's the basketball, maybe it's the completely strange relationship these two have, maybe it's just that these are top-notch mysteries that are formulaic without being predictable, but I love reading about Myron and Win!

10.  Marietta Cook, Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots:  If you haven't read this book by Susan Straight you are really missing out on a truly insightful look into what a small town southern girl has to do to make it in the big city.