TOP TEN TUESDAY | CHARACTERS AND AUTHORS I WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH

This week’s topic is literary crushes, which I don’t really do. I’m not much for romance and don’t really have much interest in falling for people who don’t exist. It’ll just further frustrate me to deal with real people. So instead this week I’m sharing some of the characters and authors I’d love to meet.

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I’d love to meet both Aziraphale and Crawley. Aziraphale because he owns a bookstore and has been alive forever so probably has read every book ever published and would be aces at giving me perfect bookscriptions (book prescriptions, I don’t care that that’s not a real word it should be). Crawley because he would just be fun to go drinking with. I’ve always wanted to meet Matilda, mostly when I was a child because I really really wanted to meet another kid who loved books as much as I did. Trevor Noah seems like someone who would be great to hang out with. He’s smart, and funny, obviously, but I also suspect he’s got a pretty good perspective having experienced some… interesting things in his life. I also want to meet his mom, because she is a total badass. I would love to meet Tracey thorn because I have nothing but respect for the woman. She’s one of those famous people who really seems like just a normal person. Being famous is just a job to her, and is far less important than making music or art and even less important than her family. She’s an amazing writer and whip smart, too.

            

I adore Helene Hanff. She’s tough, smart, independent and fucking hilarious. She has the sharp-edged kind of humour I most appreciate and I feel like we would have been great friends. I’d like to meet both Alan Bennett and the Queen as written by him in this book. I suspect both would be among the few to understand my utter devotion to books, and as much as I have very little else in common with them, that would be more than enough. Jenny Lawson is my favourite person I haven’t met. She has gotten me through more than one tough period in my life, and I’m sure she will again. She manages to completely capture what it’s like to be ill and mentally ill and a parent, but also to somehow be super funny about it. When life feels perilously close to breaking me, she’s where I turn. Mark Watney is an easy answer because he’s both smart and funny. Also resilient and good in a crisis, and let’s face it, I’m like a walking one of those most of the time, so he’d be good to have around.

               

Here’s a childhood flashback. As a kid I devoured Trixie Belden books. Weirdly, I keep discovering other people who felt the same even though the books were already out of print by the time I discovered them more than thirty years ago. I’ve always wanted to meet Trixie. I’ve always kind of wanted to be Trixie, if I’m honest. Reading and listening to Desmond Cole is pretty amazing. He is eloquent, intelligent, informed and absolutely unwilling to pretend things are different than they are to make his audience comfortable. So much respect. Akala is similar – he has spent his life learning about his history and sharing what he has learned. He has endless patience for explaining things that shouldn’t need explanation and doing so in measured tones. And finally, I’d love to befriend the protagonist from Ellmann’s epic novel. She seems a lot like me, really. I think we’d get along.

What about you guys? Are there any characters or authors you’d love to meet and hang out with? Were you a Trixie Belden fan when you were a kid?

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.