HSU IT Department

My first crush on a fictional man was at about age eight or nine: Prince Gwydion from Llloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. Well, how could he not be? With his green eyes and wolf-grey hair and the sword and cloak and also hello, a prince, he was everything that a girl bored with sappy Disney royalty would adore. He didn't waste his time rescuing princesses, he was fighting THE LORD OF DEATH, for Merlin's sake. And I loved that he was noble yet accessible: a prince for working days, as it were, not in the least high and mighty, because he didn't need to be.

My next fictional crush was Laurie from Little Women (so sweet and funny and romantic, and played the piano with such passion -- Jo, how could you turn him down?!) closely followed by Dan from Jo's Boys (my black-eyed wounded rebel soul, I'm still sad he didn't win the heart of Bess).

Then I read Dragonsong and fell hard for Masterharper Robinton, with his sharp intelligence, his weakness for Benden wine, his wit and his generous heart; when he and Menolly were alone on the boat in Dragondrums I thought, "At last, at last!!" but the silly tart thwarted me, a betrayal for which I still have never quite forgiven her.

Next: a toss-up between Lord Peter Wimsey -- war hero, collector of incunabula, and sooo very persistently faithful -- and Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes. The scene with Peter and Harriet on the bank of the river is one of the all-time sexiest scenes ever, even though they never touch each other, and the night that Holmes tasks Mary Russell with wanting to propose to him caused me to cheer out loud.

You'll notice that Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, Eomer & Co. are conspicuously absent. They were a bit too distant for me when I first encountered them, I think -- I was eleven, and at the time they all struck me as rather biblical, probably due to Tolkien's elevated language. Snape is also absent from this list since he didn't ring my bell until I saw Alan Rickman. After that it was very hubba hubba, but I don't feel right about including him in this list when it was a real person that actually spurred my interest.

So tell me, who are/were your fictional (book) crushes and why?

It's not my fault. It's circulating. irishredlass gave it to me. Or rather, she posted it and I can't say no to anything involving books, so I had to do it, so if I look like a showoff who's read, like, everything (or at least 70% of the list), blame her, heh heh heh...

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2.) Italicize those you intend to read.
3.) Underline those you LOVE.
4.) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read.

( The list, it be here )

The Librarian By Day blog has a great post entitled Nine reasons publishers should stop acting like libraries are the enemy and start thanking them. I'm particularly fond of #4: "Archives - We keep copies of your older books that the bookstores have sold at discount prices or gotten rid of. We will buy additional copies when the ones we have get old or lost or stolen."

As an archivist I approve of this and would have put it at #1, but at least it's in the top 5.

She also points out that "For children we are a magical place where they can check out 20 or 50 books a week and take them home to read or for parents to read those books." My mother still loves to tell the story about the first time she took me an actual bookstore when I was about five. I'd only ever been to the library before, so of course I wandered the store and ended up with about thirty books in my pile. I was traumatized to find out that I could in fact only have TWO, and promptly went back to doing my shopping at libraries for the next ten years.

When I was fifteen, of course, I got a job and my own disposable income, most of which I now dispose of on books (better job = more book money!). Since then I haven't gone longer than a week without buying at least one book, which only goes to show that working is a bad idea; I should have stayed unemployed and stuck with libraries.

Went to B&N on Saturday for coffee. For me, it's the most expensive coffee on the planet, usually costing at least $30 since I can't NOT buy a book or two. Or three. This time I bought three: two that are on my to-read list and one, a YA fantasy that leaped off the shelf and thrust itself into my hands, mostly due to the title and cover (The Forest of Hands and Teeth). Yay! New goodies!! I felt almost virtuous about it, since they were running a special where some percentage of your total went to a local public library. Yay! New goodies AND supporting my local library!! Now the torment: do I stick with Purgatorio, as I promised myself? Or do I take a brief foray into something else before plunging into epic poetry once more? Julia Barrett's Presumption is calling me back to Pemberley and FitzWilliam Darcy...

Speaking of epic poetry, I intended to buy a copy of The Aeneid while there but the plethora of translations intimidated me. I knew I wanted one that's actual poetry, so could dismiss out of hand the ones written as prose novels, but beyond that I had no idea. Tried to compare two of the translations but the line numbers were all askew. Will have to research a bit. (Sadly, D. Sayers appears not to have done one!)