Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic: characters you either love that everyone else hates or you hate that everyone else loves. I feel a little like this prompt is tilted
towards reading that’s fandom-oriented (i.e. YA), which isn’t most of my reading. Since I can't come up with ten either way, I’m
going to split this as 5 Characters Everyone Loves But I Just Don’t Get and 5
Characters I LOVE But Others Seem To Dislike.
Not For Me
Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter): Honestly, she was the first character that came to my mind when I read the prompt. People ADORE Luna, and I just...don't. I re-read the series a few years ago and my first impression was confirmed. She's not an awful character or anything, she's just not my cup of tea...I find her quirkiness irritating rather than endearing, which leaves me feeling all aloney on my owney.
Lizzie Bennett (Pride & Prejudice): Everyone falls all over themselves about what an amazing heroine she is, but she's my least favorite of the Austen novel leads. I get that the whole thing with the book is her and Darcy learning to get over their pride (hers) and prejudice (his), but she's kind of a jerk enough along the way that I'd have been just as happy to see her not get the happy ending (I think Darcy's pretty yuck himself, though, so they totally deserve each other anyways).
Tris Pryor (Divergent): I tried and failed to get into the Divergent books (I thought the first was decent, but the second annoyed me so much I didn't even pick up the third. I will at some point, probably, but I'm in no hurry at all. Tris completely failed to grab me...she just immediately felt like a poor man's Katniss Everdeen, except with all the real interest sucked out of her. Pass.
Scarlett O’Hara (Gone With The Wind): The only reason
anyone can stand her, I think, is Vivian Leigh’s incredible performance in the
movie adaptation. In the book, I found her selfish and spiteful and petty and just a terrible mother. I enjoyed the book much less than the movie and the character of Scarlett was the main reason why.
Don Quixote (Don Quixote): The power of my hate for this book a year after I've read it is unabated. If the guy were just being weird by himself and not getting anyone else involved in his nutty take on the world, I have no beef. But like old dudes everywhere, he goes ahead and decides that his view of the world is the only correct one, dammit. Ugh. Ugh. Hated him, hated Sancho, hated the book.
But I DO like...
Daisy Buchanan (The Great Gatsby): She's selfish and shallow, but I've always seen her as a sad and ultimately sympathetic character. To me, she's trapped inside the world she's chosen and swallowed up by it. She's a pretty little bird, raised in a cage, that lives in a cage, and ultimately will die there without ever knowing true happiness.
Cho Chang (Harry Potter): This is maybe cheating a little because I'm not a hardcore Cho fangirl, but I think she gets an unreasonable amount of pushback. Harry gets a crush on her, waits forever to make a move, and then gets all butthurt when she's had the audacity to start going out with someone else who likes her. And after that guy dies, she tries to move on with her life and give going out with Harry a shot and figures out she's not ready to date again yet. What's to hate on here? I genuinely don't get it.
Frodo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings): He's not anyone's favorite character in The Lord of the Rings trilogy...not even mine. But I feel like he gets brushed off as whiny or boring, when he's actually incredibly brave and dedicated. Guy has never left his hometown and then VOLUNTEERS to take the most powerful evil object that exists to the worst place in the world to destroy it, and stays true to his mission even though he's given plenty of chances to ditch it. He only falters at the very end, when the Ring's malevolent influence that has been working on him the entire time finally overcomes him. Frodo is a badass, yo.
Humbert Humbert (Lolita): I know. He's reprehensible. He's a child rapist. If he were an actual human, my legs couldn't carry me away from him fast enough. But as a character in a book, he's fascinating: witty, erudite, and completely undone by his infatuation with Lolita. It's a testament to the power of Nabokov's talent that he can write this absolute monster of a man with such pathos that he's not nearly as loathsome as he should be.
Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair): I totally did hate Becky for the first portion of the novel as she schemed away without any apparent thought for the consequences for other people, up to and including her only real friend Amelia. But as the plot pushed forward, I found myself rooting for her. She's totally a sociopath, but girl is a SURVIVOR. She does what she needs to do to. Now that I'm thinking about it, she's a lot like Scarlett O'Hara, but for some reason I find her struggles to work her way up the ladder from the bottom more compelling than Scarlett's quest to retain a top-level perch.
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