Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week there is a new topic and this week’s topic is: Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds

I’m sure that this week we are going to see a lot of lists with VERY well known bookworms on them (ie. Herminone), so I’m going to try to share some characters who you might not see on every list.

1. Lucy, Alena and Michael (I Kill The Mockingbird by Paul Acampora) – These kids love books so much that they go out of their way to create hype over a summer reading title in the hopes that others will begin to share their enthusiasm. If that isn’t dedication to the written word, I don’t know what is.
   • “Shelving books incorrectly is as good as stealing them. It’s almost worse.”
2. Thursday (The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde) – This series is all about a love of books and the preservation of literature. Thursday Next is a literary detective who is able to go into the fictional universe and interact with characters and their stories. She and her fellow LitraTech agents are tasked with ensuring that all the stories we know and love remain intact, but someone is stealing beloved characters and changing the face of literature in the process.
   • “Take no heed of her…. She reads a lot of books.”
3. Nicholas Benedict (The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart) – Nicholas had access to very few books as a child, until he went to a new orphanage where they had a huge library. He still had limited time for reading though, and was never allowed to take books back to his room. As an adult, he surrounds himself with stacks of books and encourages his young charges in The Mysterious Benedict Society to read whenever they wish.
   •  “In the candle’s flickering light, the library’s thousands of books emerged from the shadows, and for a moment Nicholas could not help admiring them again. During free time he had almost never looked up from the pages he was reading, but now he saw the books anew, from without rather than from within, and was reminded of how beautiful they were simply as objects. The geometrical wonder of them all, each book on its own and all the books together, row upon row, the infinite patterns and possibilities they presented. They were truly lovely.” 
4. Penelope Lumley (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood) – Penelope greatly values a good book. In fact, most of her luggage is full of books when she moves to Ashton Place. Throughout the series she often rereads her favourite books about a pony named Rainbow, and uses the stories to teach her students valuable lessons.
   • “Imagine: A studious-looking girl of fifteen, primly dressed, perched on a large, battered trunk and reading a well-thumbed volume of obscure poetry—what tableau could more perfectly match what any reasonable person might expect a young governess to look like?”
     
5. Aurora Teagarden (Real Murders by Charlaine Harris) – Aurora is a librarian, so of course she loves books. She is nerdy and awkward, but embraces those things about herself and even manages to solve a few crimes along the way.
   • “I settled opposite him in my favorite chair, low enough that my feet can touch the floor, wide enough to curl up inside, with a little table beside it just big enough to hold a book and a coffee cup.”
6. John, Jack and Charles (Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen) – These gentlemen are all respected authors and scientists, who also happen to be the guardians of the Imaginarium Geographica, an atlas of all the lands that have ever existed in myth and legend, fable and fairy tale.
   • “It is the world, my boy,” he said. “All the World, in ink and blood, vellum and parchment, leather and hide. It is the World, and it is yours to save or lose.”
7. Rose (The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey) – Rose is a medieval scholar, who has come upon hard times and takes the only job available to her, as a governess in the country. The amazing library that she finds in her new home has many wonderful books to keep her reading long into the night.
   • “Mister Cameron – I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me. ”
8. Leslie (Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson) – Leslie reads a lot, which feeds her imagination and helps her build the magical land that she dreams up for her and Jessie.
   • “I know” – she was getting excited – “it could be a magic country like Narnia, and the only way you can get in is by swinging across on this enchanted rope.” Her eyes were bright. She grabbed the rope. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s find a place to build our castle stronghold.”
9. Kit (The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare) – Kit is one of the few truly literate people in her new town, and fondly thinks back to the days when she would read Shakespeare in her grandfather’s library.
   • “Do you call reading work? I don’t even remember how I learned. When it was too hot to play, Grandfather would take me into his library where it was dark and cool, and read to me out loud from his books, and later I would sit beside him and read to myself while he studied.”
10. Lucia (The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter) – Lucia loves adventure, but she still brings a book along with her when she heads out with her brothers to find their missing parents. That’s my kinda girl.
    • “Still she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t alone. It came from reading too many novels, she told herself. From now on, she vowed, she would read more nonfiction, like Max.”