New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 25

Day 25: The Character to Whom You Most Relate

Gianna:

Today we are finding our literary mirrors, the characters we most identify with...or the closest thing possible. 

Jo March - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I have several brothers and exactly zero sisters, and as a young girl I had very little interest in dolls, makeup, pretty dresses, or anything “girly.” I could, however, throw a football as well as the boys on my street, and I was a damn good baseball player. I enjoyed building forts, climbing trees and jumping off of very high things. My goal was to become a stunt person (I am sure I went around and said stuntman, but you get the point). As I got older, my mother’s patience with my lack of girly interests grew and she would either be chasing me around the house with an eyebrow tweezers or let me know, in the nicest of ways, that “a little lipstick would really help.”

Jo March understood me, and I understood her. She enjoyed a boisterous joke, a competitive footrace, and a healthy disinterest in boys. But things change; Jo got married and I have at long last tried to get these god-forsaken eyebrows in check. 

"If Wearing hair up means becoming a lady, I'll wear it down until I'm 100 years old." Jo March in Little Women

...No.

Liz:

Dang. I have no idea. I mean, I already declared that Lizbeth Salander and I were one and the same, but it seems too easy to rest on those laurels. Let's turn to the internet for an assist, shall we?

I took this Literary Character Quiz, and ended up with Wendy Darling from Peter Pan. Apparently I'm mothering to lost boys and caring and this really couldn't be further from how I see myself. 

I like the book part anyway.

So then I took this quiz, and it says I'm Hermione from Harry Potter. So I'm smart and witty and rational and don't let people mess with me. On the other hand, though, I've already stated that I have not read the Harry Potter books, and I'm also not going to fall in love with a redhead. 

It turns out there are a lot of these quizzes on the internet. Let's try again with this one. Really? George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life? That just happens to be one of my least favorite movies ever. I give up.

I liked Leslie from The Bridge to Terebithia because she played in the woods and died (spoiler?). I liked Turtle from The Westing Game because she was smarter than everyone else and fairly obnoxious about it (and then she won the game--spoiler?). Gianna compared me to Flavia de Luce from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie because she was actively hoping to poison her siblings. Those are good enough.  

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 16

Day 16: Favorite Female Character

Liz:

Hey look! I get to go first today! Gianna's love connection attempts to find me a soul mate will have to wait at least a paragraph or two. (I've convinced friends to play board games with me for the first time in six months and need to finish my half of the post before Gianna's ready.) 

Today's topic is our favorite female character, and this one's easy for me. I'm going to reveal here for the first time that Stieg Larsson modeled his protagonist from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo after me.  Naturally I love myself.  Shall we look at the evidence?

Liz....beth.

1. Lizbeth Salander. It even sounds like Elizabeth Sullivan.
2. Lizbeth has a twin sister named Camilla. I have a twin sister named Kathryn.
3. Lizbeth is brilliant.  I know, this one's obvious.
4. Lizbeth is socially awkward and tends to behave outside the bounds of social norms. I once gave a presentation to nuns in which I discussed Harry Hole.
5. We have rage issues.
6. We are both single. Daniel Craig may or may not have been our true love.
7. Lizbeth has a dragon tattoo. The dragon is my Chinese Zodiac sign.
8. Lizbeth's heritage is dark, the daughter of a Russian mobster and prostitute. I grew up in East Texas.
9. Gianna is in love with Lizbeth. Gianna is in love with me.

I feel such relief. The truth shall set you free and all that. Please don't send me fan letters, though. I want to maintain my privacy. 

Gianna:

I try not to read books with female protagonists, so this category will be tough.  Okay the first few that come to mind, and I know Liz is going to totally make fun of mine, but she only makes fun of me because she has a not so secret crush on me. Also, I have not seen Liz’s picks yet, but twenty bucks says she picks Mrs. Dalloway. [wow....how wrong was I?]

Okay, you are a punk if you don’t love every single female character in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. Ruth, Idgie, Evelyn, Mrs. Threadgoode, and of course ‘secrets in the sauce’ Sipsey.

I love Lillian from one of my favorite novels, Away by Amy Bloom. I think Lillian is the kind of woman (or man, really) that I aspire to. She’s smart and fearless. She escapes Russia after the murder of her entire family, including her daughter. While in New York she meets a woman who claims Lillian’s daughter is still alive in Russia. Lillian is able to “negotiate” transportation all the way to Alaska, but with no other option she must walk the rest of the way along the Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. 

The last two thoughts in my head about awesome ladies are; Jo, from  Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and pretty much any woman that Margaret Atwood writes. If you have to ask why you’re in trouble.