CplusJason:
RaggedyAnn, I guess you also appreciate works from Africa?

RaggedyAnn:



Yes, I do. I like your list. I've only read three out of them though.

CplusJason:
Lol, so you don't want to buy naija to grow the naira?

Anyway, i also like your list especially HAMLET.

RaggedyAnn:




Looool! I buynaija, If it's worth it. If it is not, I stay away. I don't believe it is patriotic to encourage BS. We have really good writers in Africa, though. Good story tellers. Most people read for the entertainment of stories and have trouble remembering characters.

maggilove:
Okonkwo in Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Lamang in Helon Habila's Measuring Time
Kainene in Chimamanda Adiche's Half of a Yellow Sun
Otis Hampton in. Isidore Okpewho's Call Me By My Rightful Name
Nneoma in Akachi Ezeigbo's Trafficked
Nnu Ego in Buchi Emecheta;s Joys of Motherhood
Adisa in Festus Iyayi's Violence
Koko in JP Clark's The Wives Revolt
Lakunle in Wole Soyinka's The Lion and The Jewel
Piggy and Ralph in William Golding's Lord of the Flies
Macduff in William Shakespeare's Macbeth
Portia and Nerrissa in Wiliam Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
Muthoni in Ngugi Wa Thiong'O's The River Between
Efuru in Flora Nwapa's Efuru
Yaremi in Bayo Adebowale's Lonely Days
Dede in Eddie Iroh's Without a Silver Spoon
Uche and Annie in bibijay123 Almost Perfect
Ebere and Ifeoma in bibijay123 Allen Avenue
The girl in Twaci 's Diary of a nymphomaniac
Tomi and Kelvin in bibijay123 's Twine
James in chippapi 's Diary of a Broke Playboy
And many more
I love reading.

RaggedyAnn:

I've done that, check it.



Nice. I liked Kainene too. She and Olanna were both strong, out of the box kind of women. But yes, Kainene was the badder babe. Aloof.
Efuru! Flora Nwapa also creates intense female characters. Like Amaka (One is enough).


Thanks for playing. I'd really like to know what impresses you about these characters. The point of this is to find out what kind of characters readers respond to.

Richiy:
Books Yay!

Harry Potter: He is memorable to me because we kinda share a similar story. No, I did not attend Hogwarts. But I know what it feels like if you survived a ghastly incident alone.

Lady Johanna of Saving Grace by Julie Garwood: She exhibited a certain strength I won't have if I were in her shoes. That book was simply hilarious.

Richard Wright's Black Boy: The trip to a time in history and a culture that was alien to mine was well appreciated. I don't think I would have survived that period if I were there.

Pato23:
Robert Langdon.
Professor Severus Snape.
Albus Dumbledore.
Sophia Neveau.
Elizerbeth Sinskey.

RaggedyAnn:
People take different things away from reading novels - a good story, life philosophies, or even role models. If you're like me, you immerse yourself so deeply in a book that the ending seems like the end of the world, and leaves you a little depressed for a while. The characters seem like people you know really well, and care about. And some of them leave a lasting impression, they stay with you for a long time.

Who are the most memorable characters you've met in books and why were they impressive?




Some of mine are:

1. Ruth Mason Douglass, (These Latter Days, by Laura Kalpakian):
Even though it was only the nineteenth century, she was a woman who challenged the boundaries of the box she was put in. Maybe not as radically as her daughter Eden, who died tragically in a train wreck as she pursued her dream. I love this book (thinking about it now)! I read it so many years ago. It spans several generations, and Ruth is the the Matriarch. I sense there's going to be a pattern.


2. Kate Blackwell, (Master of the Game, by Sydney Sheldon)
Also Matriarch of her family and head of Kruger-Brent Ltd. I love her for her strength and badassness.

3. Maryann Flood, (79 Park Avenue, by Harold Robbins)
This book consists of this memorable character and my favorite genre - legal drama. Maryann Flood aka Marja Fludjinski is a tough girl who over comes sexual abuse by her step-dad (with her mother's approval), and subsequent life on the streets to build her empire. An escort business. Of course, she gets in trouble with the law, and while she's on trial, the prosecutor falls in love with her. Another strong female type.


4. Madame Bovary, (Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert)
I do not see Madame Bovary as a feminist model, but the character is very sympathetic. Like Ruth Mason Douglass, Madam Bovary is not satisfied with the options inside the proverbial box. She reads a lot of books and lives vicariously through them. She's a restless romantic soul who marries a doctor with the hope that he would open up her world. But he is a boring man, and she quickly gets bored with him. She starts a scandalous affair, hates herself for it and blames the doctor for everything. In the end she kills herself. Tragic. And shocking for the time in which the book was written.

5. Howard Roarke, (The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand)
A man of fierce integrity, who did not compromise his personal values for anything, even when he was piss poor. He won the world over in the end, and they learned to value him (his architecture). This is a philosophical novel, and it propagates the virtue of selfishness, and individualism against collectivism.

6. Lucky Santangelo, (created by Jackie Collins)
In a word: Lady Boss. And that's why I love her. But she also features in Chances, Lucky, and a host of others. She's a Mafia princess who's beautiful, smart and very glam.

7. Ifemelu, (Americanah, by Chimamanda Adichie)
I find Ifemelu very relatable and progressive. I like that she does not conform to typical standards and follows her heart in the end.

8. Dagny Taggart, (Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand)
Another uncompromisingly principled creation of the author. She propagates capitalist theories in the naturally uneven playing field.

9. Okonkwo, (Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe)
Principled character. Disgusted by his lazy father, he becomes the exact opposite. Hard worker, Quick tempered, traditionalist. Resists the change the white man brings. But kills himself in the end.

10. Hamlet, (Hamlet, by William Shakespeare)
Yes, I know this is a play but still. Hamlet is melancholic and asks the ultimate question: to be or not to be. Whether it's more dignified to live in suffering or to end that suffering by killing one's self. The whole soliloquy is awesome. And I relate to Hamlet.


You detest male characters?