Meme: Top ten favorite couples in literature

Funny how the brain works. Yesterday I completed a post on something else to post today, because I had only managed to think of 3 couples I liked enough to put on the list, but this morning I had a list of 12 ready in my head when I sat down at the computer, without having given it a conscious thought. Here is the originating post, and here are my 10 entries:

Elizabet Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The ultimate romantic couple.
Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley, from Emma by Jane Austen. Great chemistry and a good example of friends falling in love.
Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier, from Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey. This is more for what they could have had than for what they actually had, but they were perfect for each other.
Min Dobbs and Cal Morrissey from Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. For their fast, funny and furious repartee and undeniable chemistry.
Nina Askew and Alex Moore from Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie. A perfect fit. And Fred makes three.
Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane from the books by Dorothy L. Sayers (Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night and onwards). Such a wonderful long courtship. She really made him jump through hoops.
Eve and Roarke from the In Death books by J.D. Robb. An interesting, sizzling relationship that keeps developing new angles.
“Cesario” and Olivia, from Twelfth Night, or What you will by William Shakespeare. Technically not a couple, but the chemistry was undeniable.
Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. The perfect hate-turns-to-love couple, and the dialogue is fantastic.
Jules Cassidy and Robin Chadwick from three Troubleshooters books by Suzanne Brockmann (Hot Target, Force of Nature, All Through the Night). The books are over-the-top thrillers and the romance is tense, since one half of the pair is still in the closet for most of the first two books, but you want them to get together from the moment they lay eyes on each other.

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...

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

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