Who Is The Most Romantic??

I had to post about this because it is so closely related to my “Fictional Characters” series.  I really want to live in England because not only is it totally awesome, but they do fun things like take polls of the most romantic characters in literature!  Do we do fun stuff like that here and I just miss it?

So here are the results of the poll:

1. Edward Rochester of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
2. Richard Sharpe of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series.
3. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
4. Heathcliff of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
5. Rhett Butler of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind
6. Mark Darcy, of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary
7. Captain Corelli of Louis de Berniere’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
8. Henry DeTamble of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife
9. Gabriel Oak of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd
10. Rupert Campbell Black of Jilly Cooper’s The Rutshire Chronicle

Now as you know, I am a HUGE fan of Mr. Rochester………..but I am not sure if he could be described as “romantic.”  I found this poll on Entertainment Weekly, and I totally agree with Tina that there were times when Mr. Rochester was not all that nice to Jane and definitely not romantic.  I still adore him, but I don’t think he would be my #1 choice for this poll.

Mark Darcy

I think it is funny that Mr. Darcy is on here twice.  I would argue that Mr. Darcy of Bridget Jones fame is very romantic, and Fitzwilliam does do some pretty wonderful stuff for Elizabeth and her family, but is it romantic???  Also, I thought The Time Traveler’s Wife was an awful bore, so I would definitely strike him from the list.  And wasn’t that Sharpe guy a total womanizer???  I’ve only seen one of the movies, but that was the impression that I got.  And embarrassingly enough, I haven’t read any of the other books.  *hanging my head in shame*

Fitzwilliam Darcy

Here are some of the things I would add to the list.  I am not sure if my choices would be considered coming from “literature” but, well, tough.

I would put both Boris and Michael from The Princess Diaries series on the list.  I would also put Boris ABOVE Michael on the list.  WHAT?  I know that is a pretty blasphemous statement, but if you really think about it, Boris is kind of the ultimate romantic guy, which is why he ended up with the ultimate romance-seeking gal, Tina.  And he plays the violin, which, in my opinion, is the most romantic thing ever.  But don’t worry, I still love Michael the best.

Michael, Just Cuz I Can

I would also grudgingly put Mr. Edward Cullen on the list.  As emotionally manipulative and scarily possessive as he is, you gotta admit that he is a pretty romantic type of guy.  And, I have no doubt that if the poll was done in America he would come in first (at least with the 10-35 crowd, cuz that’s who seems to be reading it at the library).

I would also have to include Zach from Impossible by Nancy Werlin.  I adored this book and Zach really stuck with me.  He was a great romantic guy-next-door-friend-of-the-family character.  If only people like that actually did live next door the world would be a much better place.

Strangely enough, I would also put The Count of Monte Cristo on this list.  He is not really a romantic guy per se, but the whole time I was reading the book his character just had this mysterious confident aura that I find very, very sexy.  Wait, is sexy the same as romantic?  Did I just totally contradict what I wrote earlier??  Oh well, I don’t care, The Count of Monte Cristo has a romantic feel to me so I say it would make the list.

I almost forgot to add Peeta!!!!  Peeta from The Hunger Games is soooooooo romantic!  He manages to say and do the most romantic things in the most terrible of situations.  Can you imagine how sweet he would be if you were able to live a normal life with him???

So, what do you think?  Can you believe that Rochester beat out both Darcys??  This poll did give me some nice titles to add to my to be read list.

Jen

P.S.  In the EW post, she mentions that one of her co-workers suggested Logan from the Baby-Sitters Club.  Heehee!  But didn’t he actually join the club, which is a pretty romantic thing for a high school boy to do.

Just A Few Quick Recommendations

I’m sorry that I haven’t posted in so long…I’ve been going back and forth to Iowa and working all the time so it feels like I haven’t had a moment to spare.  I have been reading like crazy lately, but there haven’t been too many books that have jumped out as being great.  I have read some “great” books, but they were kind of depressing and not really very fun, so I am not going to recommend them.

But there are a couple of books that I think you guys will like, so I will mention them here.  (I totally could have done a video blog, but I feel kind of on the verge of sickness, and am not really in the video blog mood).

Impossible by Nancy Werlin is a book I read a long time ago, and I can’t believe I haven’t talked about it yet.  I met Nancy Werlin at the Young Adult Literature conference that I went to in September….and she was awesome!!!!  I bought her book first thing in the morning because I vaguely remembered reading a good review of it, and the cover is incredible.  Then she gave her talk in the afternoon and she brought me to tears.  This book is a really great story for anyone who likes Twilight.  That’s right I said it, a Twilight read alike.  It has nothing to do with vampires or werewovles, but it reminded me of Breaking Dawn (and I loved Breaking Dawn so that is not a bad thing).  I think the book trailer below describes the plot better than I ever could, but I will just mention that my favorite part about this book was how Lucy’s family rallied around her and supported her throughout the whole ordeal.  She is faced with three impossible tasks and most people would have thought she was crazy, but her family sticks by her.  Nancy Werlin said that she has written many books about what happens when the people you love let you down….this one was about what happens when they don’t.

Another book that I loved is Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix.  When I lived in Iowa City, I went through a whole Margaret Peterson Haddix reading rampage and read a ton of her books.  I really liked all of them.  Her newest is Palace of Mirrors, which is a companion novel to Just Ella (but you don’t have to read Just Ella in order to understand everything).  Palace of Mirrors is about a girl named Cecilia who is the true princess of her land.  When she was a baby the king and queen were murdered so in order to keep the princess safe, she was taken away to live as a peasant and a “fake” princess was left at the palace in her place.  Cecelia has been training her whole life to take her place on the throne…but when she finally goes to the palace things are a little different than she expected.  I loved this book because it had most of my favorite things:  Princesses (check) Romance (check) An interesting plot (check) A happy ending (check–sorry I hope that didn’t spoil it for everyone).  It doesn’t take much to make me happy, but I loved this book.

One book that I just read yesterday that I enjoyed a lot was The London Eye Mystery by the late Siobhan Dowd.  I did a mock Newbery discussion on Friday and two of the ladies raved about how awesome this book was, so I had to pick it up (sorry though, not eligible for the Newbery because she is not American).  I loved it because it was set in London and it was very London-y.  Dowd described a lot of placed and I could picture myself there in the city which always makes me happy.  The book itself revolves around a really great mystery, where Ted and Kat’s cousin Salim gets on the London Eye one morning, and then he never gets off…he just disappears.  Ted is the narrartor and he has Aspergers syndrome, and he always mentions how his brain runs on a different operating system than everyone else’s.  But of course, his brain is the only one that is observant enough to figure out what is really going on.  This is a really quick read, and a good straightforward mystery where all the info is there for you to solve it, but of course I totally didn’t figure it out.

I think that one of the reasons why I haven’t been too impressed with the books I have read lately is because I just finished re-reading Twilight, so all I want to really read is New Moon…but of course I didn’t have New Moon and the holds list at the library is ginormous.  So I ordered it from Amazon, but it was taking way too long, so I ran to Target yesterday and bought the last copy they had.  Aaaaaaahhhhh (contented sigh).  I feel so much better now.  I started it last night and am on page 230.  I should work my way through the rest of the series soon and then I will get back to enjoying regular books.

Jen

I Found My Savvy in Naperville

Let me just preface this by saying that September has not been kind to me.  Somebody hit my car and drove away, my apartment parking lot flooded, the check engine light is on in my car, work is knocking me on my ass, the spiders are back, my best friend’s cat died, and I spent 45 minutes today scraping dried egg off my car.  Yeah, that’s right……I can’t even afford to buy eggs to eat and somebody tossed them all over my car.  I wish I could have know, I would have stood out there and tried to catch them.  Maybe I could have had an egg salad sandwich.

But all of that was made better by the fact that last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the most awesome conference in the history of the world (except of course for the Harry Potter conferences, which will forever remain the best).  I went to the YA Literature Conference put on by Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville.  I don’t even know if I can find words to describe how awesome it actually was, but I will try.

I knew that Suzanne Collins was going to be there, but I hadn’t looked at the flyer in a long time, so I really couldn’t remember any of the other authors.  Imagine my shock when I opened up the schedule and saw that Ingrid Law (the author of Savvy, duh!) was one of the presenters.  I literally screamed in the middle of the Holiday Inn Ballroom.  Thankfully, my friend Abby was just as excited about YA lit as I was, so she didn’t judge me (at least if she did, she pretended not to).

When I went up to Ms. Law and got her to autograph my book, I actually got a little teary, but I don’t think anyone noticed.  It was just so cool to meet her and get to tell her how much I loved her book.  You don’t usually get to do things like that in life.  During her presentation, she said she just wrote down the first sentence that popped into her head and that became the first sentence of the book.  She wasn’t quite sure where the story would go from there, which makes the book all the more amazing.  (The first sentence is quite a doozy to just pull out of thin air.  You should buy the book and see for yourself what I mean).

Here is a pretty picture of all my books that I got (two of them for free!):

Here is a list of all the people that I got to hear speak:

Suzanne Collins (duh, you should all know who she is)

Ellen Klages (wrote the amazing historical fiction novel The Green Glass Sea and its follow-up that I can’t wait to read White Sands, Red Menace)

Holly Black (wrote the Spiderwick Chronicles and the new graphic novel The Good Neighbors, plus an all around bad ass)

Nancy Werlin (wrote the incredible new book Impossible and made me cry during her speech)

Paula Yoo (cutest woman ever!  her speech was so great that I had to buy her book Good Enough……and she played the violin)

Cameron Tuttle (very funny lady who wrote the new book Paisley Hanover Acts Out)

Ingrid Law (Yippee!!)

John Stokes (one of the only remaining members of a group of students who went on strike against segregation, he wrote Students on Strike)

Caroline (B.) Cooney (wrote the Face on the Milk Carton!!!)

All that was crammed into one day (with no time for bathroom breaks).  I had a great time and even ran into a friend from library school (Hey John!).  I walked away with lots of free stuff and a renewed passion for books.  It was worth every penny of the money I spent on it (because my library doesn’t pay for frivilous stuff like that) and I can’t wait to go to the author’s breakfast in February.  I hear someone named Meg Cabot is going to be there……….hmmmmm…… where have I heard of her before???

Jen

I will leave you all with pics of my autographed books: