Top Ten Tuesday

This week Broke and the Bookish asks which fictional characters you would like to be friends with.

1. Sam Gamgee, Lord of the Rings. Is there anyone who thinks Sam wouldn't make a great friend?

2. Jean Valjean, Les Miserables. Valjean's persistence in becoming a "good man" makes him an ideal candidate for a good friend.

3. Sancho Panza, Don Quixote. He pretty much stuck with a total lunatic. I think he would stand by me.

4. Oedipa Maas, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. Ok, she probably wouldn't have my back when the chips were down, but her persistence in looking into the mysterious kind of makes her a kindred spirit. Plus, she basically is the reader.

5. Vince Camden, Citizen Vince by Jess Walter. He's a low-level criminal with a heart and a desire to change his life and the world just a little bit.

6. Lacey Rawlins, All the Pretty Horses. This dude will cross the border with you with hardly a penny to your names, go to prison with you, and stand by you while you keep making mistakes which threaten to put you back in prison...all because you are friends.

7. Rorshach, Watchmen by Alan Moore. Someone's killed an old "friend", and it looks like you and some of your other old friends might be next on the list. Nobody else seems to care...but Rorshach does. Just don't have him over for Christmas dinner.

8. Sal Paradise, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Ok this may be stretching the term "fictional", but that's ok. Wouldn't it be cool to make some of those road trips with Sal and Dean? And I think Sal would make a better friend than Dean, who is more flighty.

9. Ree Dolly, Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. Ree is an individual, which may make it difficult to see her as a friend, but as we get to know her, we find that there's more to her search for her dad than survival, than securing her ability to move on with her life...there's her love for her family and the family name. Ree is honorable, and that is perhaps the greatest quality in a friend.

10. Andy Dufresne, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King. Confession...I haven't read this novella. But if Andy is anywhere close to being accurately depicted in the movie, how could he not be awesome?