Meme: Top Ten Favorite Heroines

Yay! I have finally managed to post a Top Ten Tuesday meme on time...

This was a tough one, but here goes, in no particular order:

My top ten favourite literary heroines:

Anne Eliot from Persuasion by Jane Austen. She’s a quiet, uncomplaining and unappreciated but incredibly kind-hearted, patient and loving woman who finally learns that sometimes we need to trust our own feelings and not listen to others. Of all Austen’s heroines she is the one I like the best.
Minerva Dobbs from Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. A woman who doesn’t hesitate to say what she thinks.
Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery. I was a bit like her as a girl, which is why I think I like her so much. I don’t like her so much after she marries, which is why I specify in which books I like her best.
Miss Marple, from the books by Agatha Christie. She’s a sharp and inquisitive old bat who knows human nature in and out and uses that knowledge for good.
Celie from The Color Purple. An incredibly strong and resilient but also human and fallible heroine who survived terrible treatment and came out even stronger in the end.
Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg from the Discworld books (Witches sub-series) by Terry Pratchett. I put them in as a unit because they are a team and wouldn’t be much fun without each other’s tempering influences. Granny would never describe herself as a heroine, whereas Nanny would proudly do so but only if it got her a free drink.
Susan Sto Helit from the Discworld books (Death sub-series) by Terry Pratchett. Sharply intelligent and brave, resilient and determined to make it on her own merit. Perhaps a little too obsessed with being normal when she clearly isn’t and never will be.
Flore Poste from Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Determined, self-assured and accomplished, I would love to have her on my side in any situation, even if she is a bit managing at times.
Sophia Stanton-Lacy from The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer. An accomploshed and clever heroine who has a solution for everything.
Léonie de Saint-Vire from These old Shades by Georgette Heyer. A lovely, loyal, kick-ass spitfire I would love to have for a friend. Married to my favourite bad-boy hero.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog