SMBC Comics Forum

Was listening to the radio, going to steal their topic of discussions. Basically answer the question based on your opinion and explain why (briefly for the love of god!).

Todays topic: Of the books you have read who are the top five most memorable male characters?

Winston Smith - 1984
Severus Snape - Harry Potter Series
Frodo Baggins - Lord of the Rings Series

Eh five is too hard for me at this time of night. Also there is a theme there, and it's not fantasy fiction strangely.

Lazarus Long
Michael Valentine Smith
Jubal Harshaw
Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis
John Ezra Dahlquist

They're all from various Heinlein stories.

Hamlet
Fred Prefect
Bilbo Baggins
Harry Potter



...Jesus

Merlin -- That Hideous Strength (Lewis)
Charlie Asher -- A Dirty Job (Moore)
Crowley -- Good Omens (Pratchett/Gaiman) (Honourable mention: Every other male in the book, pretty much)
Slartibartfast -- HHGTG (Adams) (Ford Prefect was pretty froody, too)
Rant Casey -- Rant (Palahniuk)

Macbeth
Atticus Finch
Queequeg
Mr. Norrell (Of Jonathan Strange and)
I dunno Dumbledore maybe?

I'm a really big fan of the narrator/subject of Sartre's Nausea, Antoine Roquentin. Not only because I totally empathised with the sense of malaise he described, but also because Sartre (rather subtly) paints him to be a fat, overmuscled writer with a decadent lifestyle. Jean-Baptiste Clamence from Camus' The Fall is another good one, albeit for different reasons.

Todays topic: Of the books you have read who are the top five most memorable female characters?


1) Elizabeth Bennet - Pride and Prejudice - Because she is vivacious and fun and completely entertaining in her stubbornness.
2) Bridget Jones - Bridget Jones Diary - Even though it's the same character (theoretically). So for the same reasons. Bridget is also far superior in the book to how she is portrayed in the movie.
3) Catherine - Wuthering Heights - I hated her for all my worth, found nothing worthy in her character and was glad she died. But she was very very memorable.
4) Viola - Twelfth Night - I like her.
5) Daine - Wolf Speaker - More than anything because this was the book that got me into fantasy stories, and one can never forget a book as influential on themselves as this was on me.


(I want to say Miss Marple, but I honestly have never read any of her books)

Kimra wrote:Todays topic: Of the books you have read who are the top five most memorable female characters?

Hmmm... Scanning my shelves, I come up with:

Molly from Neuromancer - She kicks ass over and over again, and if I could get mirrorshade implants installed over my eyes, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld books - She's prideful, yes, generally curmudgeonly and wound pretty tight, but I love reading her stories.
Sister Creep from Swan Song - Crazy NYC homeless lady who becomes an agent of God after a global thermonuclear war. She's tough as nails.
Death from Sandman - Kind of a gimme, but I've always loved her. The big sister who knows you better than anyone else, and loves you anyway.
Valentine Wiggin from Ender's Game - She's so nice and so sweet and so very dangerous. But she knows how dangerous she can be....

Since I'm responding late I'm doing both genders.
Men(In no particular order)-
1. Croaker, from the black company by Glenn Cook.
2. Morgan from the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher, he starts off as a pretty minor character but by his final book I think he's someone everyone at least feels for strongly.
3. Vanyel Ashkervon from The Last Herald Mage by Mercedes Lackey, at least partially cause these books were so much part of my child hood though I'm sure then any actual merit.
4. Vladimir Taltosh from the Taltosh series by Steven Brust. One of my favorite characters of all time, and one of the more human/foible filled main characters I've enjoyed.
5. Meursault from the Stranger by Albert Camus. By far my favorite 'classic' I connected to this character more then is probably healthy.

Women!
1. Mary from the Puppet Masters by Heinlein, at least partially because I don't want to let Ed down with no heinlein characters being listed and because she's always stuck out in my mind from the normal tall, beautiful, hyper intelligent red heads Heinlein normally painted his women as. (She still is, she's just the one I like best)
2. Cheri from the Green Daughter by Anne Logston(Part of the shadow series). This whole series just had a strong impact on me as a child, and this character particularly for how well she deals with being raped, losing her husband and giving birth to a pair of mutants.
3. Anita Blake, from the horrors of Laurrel K. Hamilton. As much as I hate what the series, and character, became she was still an interesting character at the start and one that I tend to think back on, if only to wish some kind of redemption for.
4. Rachel Marinna Morgan/Ivy from Kim Harrison's work; Ivy more then Rachel is a very interesting take on a classic trope. It's the interaction of the two that really create some memorable scenes and a world in general that I'd highly recommend.
5. Muffy Barbarian Swords Person. 'nuff Said.

Here is my list of most memorable male characters:
1. Harry Potter
2. Lin-Shantaram
3. Ray Smith (Dharma Bums)
4. Martin Eden
5. Dorian Gray
What about animals thread?

May reading will be always a pleasure for you!

I love that this thread got necro-ed because I was actually just remembering it in the last week or so.
Mostly because I'm about half-way through Voyage to Venus and am really looking forward to reading That Hideous Strength again, particularly for Merlin. He's just such a remarkable character. He is given little time and attention, no dialogue, and somehow I just wanted to re-read every page he appears on because he's so damned intriguing.

The rest of my list is kind of a time capsule. Telling more of what I was reading at that point. I think it has been 5 years, give or take, since I've read any of those books.
I mean Crowley, Slartibartfast, and Rant are all still notable characters, but I'm not sure whether I would've included them if I had made a new list without seeing the old one. And I loved A Dirty Job, but I simply don't remember it enough to know whether Asher would still rank.

Today I would probably put Tyrion Lannister on the list. I'd be tempted to put a few other GOT characters up as well, but most of those are based on what I think/hope will happen rather than what has happened. The Hound being the best example. If his story plays out as I think it might, he will rank very high indeed. Jon Snow, too.
I'd also be very tempted to include Finnick O'dair. I didn't love the books by any means, but that character is great.* But that one is also fresh in my memory (from the movies, granted) so it does have a bit of bias.
Leto Atreides would also be worthy of consideration.



*It's really too bad they butchered the character in the movies. Not because of the actor. He played Finnick really well. But Finnick was both an interesting character and his backstory was tied up with the corruption/secrecy of Snow's government. So when they took Finnick's on-air testimony and spliced it into a montage of action shots, both his and Snow's backstory were closer to background noise.

And yet you didn't add a new topic. (I had completely forgotten this thread ever existed.)

Top Five Favourite Novels, anyone?

I don't have any favourite novels, but I do have a list of books that have made a lasting impression on me, even if it wasn't positive:

1. Ready Player One ~~Ernest Cline
2. Ulysses ~~James Joyce
3. Goosebumps #4: Say Cheese and Die! ~~R.L. Stine
4. Knowledge of Angels ~~Jill Paton Walsh
5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time ~~Mark Haddon
6. House of Leaves ~~Mark Z. Danielewski

That's six, because I'm a maverick who plays by my own rules. A loose cannon, if you will. A lone wolf. A renegade cop. A robot renegade cop.

Actually I have eleven that I posted on my Facebook wall a year or so ago. I just hawked that list and cut out a few. Here's the rest:

• The Count of Monte Cristo ~~Alexandre Dumas
• The Player of Games ~~Iain M. Banks
• Different Seasons ~~Stephen King
• Foucault's Pendulum ~~Umberto Eco
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ~~Ken Kesey

I'm going to add Will Self's Umbrella to that list, too. Which makes 12 of my not-favourite novels as a reply to the question "what are your five favourite novels?"

Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
Night Watch - Pratchett
Schismatrix - Sterling
East of Eden - Steinbeck

And I don't really have a fifth. Maybe A Canticle for Liebowitz. But probably not. There a bunches of books I've read multiple times, but more often because they are fun or just a good story. So basically they are just entertainment. They don't really make enough of an impression on me to be a favorite.