Artemis Fowl | Watching the Words

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers create their own lists based on the chosen topics and post links to our lists. It’s a way of all sharing our thoughts and our love of books. And who doesn’t love lists??

So this week’s challenge was to list the top ten most memorable secondary characters. Those characters in novels that were not the main focus, but that captured your imagination, made you want to see more of them. Some of mine come from the same series of books, series that have wonderful casts of characters, which is part of what makes those series great.

Rudy – Liesel’s dearest friend in The Book Thief. He is sweet and awkward, funny and brave. Everything a first love and a best friend should be.
Neville Longbottom – Who doesn’t love this dorky and awkward wizard from the Harry Potter series? Especially when he finds it in himself to become a courageous hero.
Professor Snape – The poor misunderstood and heartbroken seeming-villain of the Harry Potter series who is ultimately proven to be a hero.
Professor McGonagall – Another character from the Harry Potter series – tough, brave, smart, kind, and caring she really should have been the headmaster long ago!
Foaly – The geeky, arrogant, but utterly cool and brilliant centaur in the Artemis Fowl series.
Holly Short – The tough, determined elf police woman from the Artemis Fowl series. Her relationship with Artemis is humorous, difficult, and touching.
Hassan Harbish – The funny, smart, witty sidekick in An Abundance of Katherines always made me laugh.
LuLu – How to describe LuLu? This ex-prostitute who squeezes into spandex, eats lots of fried chicken and donuts, and manages to nearly kill everyone she tries to help is a laugh a minute in the Stephanie Plum series.
Hawk – I adore this funny, smart, tough, will-do-anything pal to Spenser in the series by Robert B. Parker. You know he always has Spenser’s back and their relationship is both hilarious and touching.
Cokie – The mulatto driver for the madam in Ruta Sepetys’s Out of the Easy is ultimately the one who is there for Josie. His constancy and his humbleness while doing what is right make him one of my favorites.

So this week the challenge is to create a list of the books that were my favorite before I was a blogger. Since I’ve actually only been blogging for a couple of months most of my favorites are from before I was a blogger, and I’ve already talked about most of them in other top 10 posts. So I decided to change it up a little bit and make it a list of some of my favorites from before I was a blogger that I haven’t already mentioned in some other top 10 list.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye by Rachel Joyce – Harold is recently retired and living in a small English village with his cranky wife when he gets a letter from an old friend who is dying of cancer. Instead of stopping at the post office to send his response he keeps walking, deciding to walk across the country to deliver it personally. I found the book to be humorous, poignant, and charming.
Good American by Alex George – Frederick and Jette travel to America in 1904 and what follows is the story of their lives, and the lives of their descendants, as told by their grandson. I loved the story of this immigrant family against the backdrop of the history of our country.
Abundance of Katherines by John Green – I have admitted to a love for John Green and this is one of my favorites. Colin, a former child prodigy, has only dated girls named Katherine (and always with a “K”, never a “C”), and has been dumped by all of them, nineteen times. He takes off on a road trip with his best friend in search of a provable Katherine Theorem. What follows is funny and insightful, a story of friendship, love, and figuring out who you are.
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall – I’m not a runner – I wish that I was – but that is not something my orthopedic surgeon would recommend. But you don’t need to be a runner to love this book. McDougall provides an engrossing story about ultra-runners, from scientific research to the Tarahumara Indians in an isolated part of Mexico that run hundreds of miles, to a race between those very natives and the world’s best ultra-distance runners. Makes me sometimes think that even I could be a runner…
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – I had to add this one – my favorite from the time when I was a little kid – one that I tried to re-read at least once a year while I was growing up. I always wanted to be Jo!
The Messenger by Markus Zusak – I have to give a shout out to my favorite author, even if I have stopped myself from carrying on again about my absolute favorite book (The Book Thief – in case you forgot). When Ed mistakenly stops a bank robber he receives his first playing card in the mail with an anonymous message – more will follow – a great adventure into the why and how and who… and does he change the lives of others or of himself?
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer – Artermis Fowl is a brilliant and evil criminal mastermind, and he is twelve. The first in this series is certainly the best as Artemis embarks on a plan to rob the fairies of their gold, combining fantasty, myth, adventure, and technology along with a good dose of humor this was a great read from beginning to end.
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz – Odd Thomas is a 20-year old fry cook who can see the dead. Throughout the series, Odd Thomas will try to stop a number of disasters and resolve a number of mysteries, but what is greatest about these books is Odd himself, a humble and courageous character, and the humor that is combined with the grotesque.
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss – Probably my favorite Dr. Seuss book, and certainly one of my favorites to read-aloud (although they are all great for reading aloud!). “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling – How can this not be on everyone’s list?? Of all the series, the first is still probably my favorite since it was what introduced me to the world of Harry Potter, a world I so desperately wanted to be real and wanted to live in. My eleven year old daughter has been reading the series for the first time and she wept when the first book was over and she realized that the world J.K. Rowling had created would never be real for her…