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.

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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