- Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Forget Mr. Darcy being your favorite Victorian love interest. Sydney Carton, alcoholic though he is, is really where it’s at.)
- Homer Wells from The Cider House Rules by John Irving (Cider House was my first introduction to John Irving, and I fell head over heels in love.)
- Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Don’t we all wish we were a bit like Arthur Dent? A stereotypical English nobody who finds himself in the midst of aliens. How cool is that?)
- Hamlet from Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Maybe I’m kidding myself here, and Hamlet is just my favorite Shakespeare drama. Can’t beat that word play, and Hamlet’s spiral into madness though.)
- Hobie from The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Hobie is charming, and restores antique furniture for a living. Honestly, that’s all I want in a man.)
- Cal(liope) from Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides (I will never forget when young Cal finds out she’s a hermaphrodite, looks up the definition in a dictionary at the New York Public Library, and finds one of the synonyms listed is “monster”.)
- Miss Amelia from The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers (Miss Amelia is tough, tall, and cockeyed. If that’s not enough to find her intriguing she also falls in love with a hunchback, makes her own booze, and creates her own medicine.)
- Rabo Karabekian from Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. He’s also from Breakfast of Champions, and Dead Eye Dick (Thought I would pick Kilgore Trout as my favorite Vonnegut Character, didn’t you?)
- Atticus & Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I feel like you can’t have one without the other.)
- Gertrudis from Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (Terrible name for a character, but she ended up being so badass.)
Sydney Carton
Toby Maguire as Homer Wells
Rabo Karabekian
Like Wild Onions 