Who is your favourite character?

Do you have a favourite fictional character? I thought this would be an easy question to answer but there are so many choices.
The Independent newspaper celebrated World Book Day by asking 100 authors to nominate the characters who give them the greatest reading pleasure. This has resulted in a somewhat random, almost bizarre list. (That's because I hadn't heard of some of them).
Quite a few classics were chosen. No fewer than 3 characters from Dickens's Great Expectations - Miss Havisham, Joe Gargery, and Pip. Several of the Jane Austen heroines but not Mr. Darcy.
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda was selected by Maggie O'Farrell , with the lovely comment In a literary family tree, Daniel Deronda would be a cousin of another of my favourite characters, Hamlet. They are both intelligent, brooding, fatherless young men at odds with the world. Hamlet got a nod from Howard Jacobsen also. Daniel Deronda is certainly a favourite of mine alongside Eliot's unsung tragic heroine Maggie Tulliver in The mill on the floss.
The eponymous characters get a mention - Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary and Tom Jones.
Characters of children's literature were not forgotten. Anne Of Green Gables, Tintin and Paddington Bear all had devotees.
There were some unobvious nominations. Sally Beauman chose Mrs Norris as the most profound, subtle portrait of the banality of evil. The ironically wicked portrait of her in Mansfield Park has always been my favourite element of the book. There were votes also for Billy Bunter and Dr. Watson
I found it quite difficult to decide who my choice would be. I have a sneaking fancy for some of the detective heroes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Adam Dalgliesh and Sherlock Holmes in all his incantations.
Another library staff member immediately nominated another detective - Phryne Fisher - for pure pleasure.
But in the final analysis who can go past Pooh Bear, or Eeyore in the immortal Winnie-the Pooh?

Tell us who your favourite characters are and why.
And you can find the whole list here

Still Alice

Alice, a highly respected Harvard University psychology professor, begins to notice lapses in her memory. Initially she puts these incidences down to overwork, stress and menopause. With mounting dread and disbelief, Alice is eventually diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease – she is only 50 years of age. The story is written from Alice’s perspective as her memory deteriorates. Her husband and children (who have a 50% chance of inheriting the disease) have different reactions and coping mechanisms. The relationship between Alice and her youngest daughter is particularly moving.
The author, Lisa Genova, is herself a neuroscientist so there is great credibility to this story.
This is a remarkable book. Reserve it in our catalogue.
Highly recommended by Anita

Diversions

When you are not reading,you are possibly idling away hours on the internet.
A couple of good book sites to check out:
The Book Depository
These people are committed to giving customers the best possible experience of book buying online, with availability on nearly two million titles within 48 hours and free worldwide delivery. For Australia this means priority airmail in 7 to 14 days. The site includes reviews, interviews, coming soon and a blog.

And have you heard of the Open Library? The goal of this site is one web page for every book ever published. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and is funded in part by a grant from the California State Library. Everyone can participate in this project, whether you're a programmer who wants to build on top of this data, a librarian who wants to add records of digitized books to a catalog, or a lover of books who wants to make sure his/her favorites are well represented. This is where you can track down those elusive titles that you can't quite remember.

Women behind the man

The Women by T.Coraghessan Boyle is one of the most interesting current American writers, and I’ve enjoyed everything he has written. Boyle says he is enjoys writing about “20^th Century egomaniacs”, and so far he has dealt with Alfred Kinsey in The Inner Circle and Dr Harvey Kellogg in "The Road to Wellville".

In a different vein, “Drop City” tells the story of a counterculture commune in California which, after run-ins with the law, moves to Alaska but finds life very different there, among the hunters and hard men of the back woods. It’s also very funny.

“The Women” is about the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and the women who loved him. He was certainly one of Boyle’s “egomaniacs”, a driven and supremely self confident artist and creative figure, and the house he build for himself, “Taliesin” is somehow a personality as big as Wright’s own.

There is something of the commune about the way life ran at Taliesin, with Wright’s students milking cows and washing up for their keep; and as with a commune an Alpha personality held it all together. The women in his life were all very unusual characters but all were in awe of him as a creative genius, and their lives with him were as much about an artist and his disciple as they were about a man and a woman.

Sometimes the fact that the book is written in reverse chronology makes it a bit difficult to follow as you’re not sure who knew what about whom, but it’s still a fascinating story.

From Afghanistan to Australia

The rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif
Najaf Mazari
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Living a middle class Melbourne life can make it difficult to really understand the background and ‎experiences of so many of our refugees and I borrowed this book to learn more about this. I had read ‎‎"The Kite Runner" and "A thousand splendid suns" which gave me insight into the Taliban regime, but ‎this book is a true and personal account of a young man who had survived several regimes in ‎Afghanistan and eventually escaped to avoid being killed by the Talibans. What a terrifying existence to ‎be continually under attack by one enemy or another. ‎
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Najaf started work at the age of twelve, first as a welder and then a rugmaker's apprentice. Life was hard ‎enough without constant warfare around him and his family. To escape he had to leave his wife, child, ‎mother and remaining siblings behind, travel on ill equipped boats through foreign lands always with the ‎threat of not getting past each leg of the journey. He arrived in a strange country, was placed in the ‎Woomera detention centre and not sure of his future for many months. Eventually he was released into a ‎foreign community with only his rugmaking skills and a wonderful personality to make good.‎
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Along the way he met many people who helped and was able to build a life here in Melbourne which ‎eventually led to his family joining him and Australian citizenship.‎
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This book was so insightful. Like so many people in his situation, Najaf has had to leave behind his ‎beloved heritage and his family, undertake a treacherous journey, deal with Woomera and then depend ‎on making good in Australia. It made me stop and think long and hard about the journey of refugees. It ‎also made me appreciate our democratic society where such constant and violent upheaval just doesn't ‎exist. It must make people like Najaf wonder about all the fuss recently made over alleged favours for car ‎dealers!
Recommended by Jan.‎

On the Edge

Sometimes I have found it best to skim through or, let’s be honest, skip completely the first few pages ‎or even chapters of a book to get to the best bits. If, like me, your eyes glaze over at the thought of ‎reading details of car specifications, torque and horsepower then skip the first part of On the Edge by ‎Richard and Mindy Hammond and start reading from Chapter 7. Mindy’s story of how she and her ‎family coped with fear and uncertainty in the aftermath of Richard Hammond's high speed car accident ‎is moving and compelling. The family dealt with the crisis under an intense media and public spotlight, ‎driven by genuine concern for a popular media personality. Richard and Mindy share their feelings and ‎frustrations openly with the reader. A surprisingly good read and, if you like fast cars and adrenaline ‎highs, you can even have the bonus of reading the first few chapters!‎

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely loud and incredibly close
Jonathan Safran Foer
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If you enjoyed reading "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time" this book is in a similar vein, ‎with an endearing and precocious 9 year old as the main character. Oskar has lost his father in 9/11 and ‎carries the sad secret of hearing his last messages on their answer phone. Not long after the death of his ‎father, he discovers a key with the name "Black" attached to it and he begins a search of all the ‎neighbourhoods in New York to discover the owner. Along the way he meets many people and their ‎stories become intertwined with his life and his need to sort out his future without a father. He is ‎supported by an incredibly wise mother and a grandmother with quite an amazing unfolding history. ‎
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Of course you need suspend reality for a large part of the book, but it is such an interesting, sad, quirky ‎and engrossing read that it stays with you long after the last page‎

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith.

I was at a bookstore when I first noticed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in the New Fiction section. At first I thought Penguin Classics had just re-released it with a new introduction, but then I looked closer and much to my childish amusement saw Elizabeth Bennet was an undead mutant. And that is exactly where this book aims at selling: people with a particularly kitsch and childish sense of humour.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the rebellious work of a young man that, presumably, was forced to read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in high school. I suspect it will offend readers of the classic – which is the main thing driving sales and the reason I desperately wanted to read it.

Naturally, as all parodies go, it is at first amusing, but soon becomes tiresomely predictable. It is not as frequent with the laughs as most parodies go, nor is it as sharp in wit. If anything, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will make you want to read it alongside Pride and Prejudice, because you will want to compare the addition of a few witticisms, zombies, ninjas and violence with the original. The fact is that this parody is amusing but ultimately unsatisfying. What the zombies add comes at the expense of a comprehensible and interesting storyline. If anything, I found the whole while reading it I just wanted to go over to the Jane Austen original to follow the plot – the zombies can always be included in my imagination.

Perhaps ‘Pride and Prejudice for Adolescent Boys’ would have been a more accurate title.
Review by Stewart.