What has a married couple, 3 'Catch 22 characters, Paddington bear, James Bond & an anonymous judge from Tolstoy’s ressurrection ?
The top 100 fictional charachers as chosen by “100 literary luminaries” in today’s The Independent Newspaper. It seems it is World Boook Day. :smack: You live and learn.
So any reactions ? I can’t see anything ‘normal’ - it’s all either characters from the classics - by which these folk’s mean English language (but mainly just English) books with the odd French or Russian to show willing - or characters from kid’s books to show the contributor isn’t stuffy.
That said, I like a couple of the choices. Who would be your favourite, wait that’s tooooo difficult, who would be your top 3 favourite fictional characters ?
My order of preference would probably vary from day to day but today I’ll say
Hamlet
“Of Mice and Men” 's George
Maria Merryweather in a children’s book, “The Little White Horse” by Elizabeth Goudge
(or should the last one be Jo from Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books ?)
Hmm nothing too modern there is there ? I’m having trouble with fiction at the moment, don’t know why.
So Dopers, over to you.
what the hell are you talking about? 
I didn’t read every single word in the linked article, but I don’t see The Independent claiming anywhere that these are the “top 100 characters.” As far as I can tell, they just asked 100 book-related people to each write about one favorite character apiece, which is not at all the same thing.
Some nice stuff there – I particularly agree with Terry Pratchett. (And how gratifying it is when a writer you like also likes other books you like!) I’ll also vote for Psmith, though I don’t think his first name is correct as given in the link.
If you’re asking Dopers to answer the same question (presumably, “Write a short paragraph about your favorite fictional character who hasn’t already been taken”), then here goes…
Lew Archer is Ross MacDonald’s Everyman – he has just enough personality to be a person rather than a cipher, but not enough definition to have a fully-realized life outside of the books. And so he becomes the perfect fictional detective, a clear lens through which we see the murders and family strife so common in MacDonald without distorting or coloring the view. And yet he is a person; we understand him and know him as we do a good friend – or, perhaps, as we do ourselves.