Hello there. I’m very impressed by the efforts of sundry and many of you with the six degrees of Francis Bacon. Your efforts are muchmost more elegant than mine!

I was browsing the internet (what a fine thing! So big!) when I happened upon this list of the favouritemost characters from fiction in the 20th Century: [www.npr.org]

All good and well this may be but what of the classics, our own area of joy and glorylove?

I was going to propose that we vote on our own topmost classical characters, but then I started thinking about the bestmost villains, love affairs, plot twists, fight scenes and endings and things like that.

So this is my idea. Why don’t we create the perfect book, a Frankensteinish novel conjured from the best bits of classics? (Any of things from cave paintings up to 1900 counts as classic in my book, if yule excuse the pun.)

Here are some starter categories, why not start making our own perfect books from these?

Perfect Protagonist

Perfect Villain

Perfect Love interest

Perfect Plot twist

Perfect Ending

Perfect Fight/Battle

Perfect page 49

Please throw suggestions at me and I will try to catch. Also, if other categories spring like springs to your frothing minds, please do add them.

For starterings, I would go for Alice as protagonist, with Bill Sykes as Villain, Beowulf as love interest, by all accounts he is deliciously rugged… over to you folks and folkettes.

YG

Niebla

Perfect Protagonist- The Time Traveller

Perfect Villain- Saruman

Perfect Love interest- Grace O’Malley

Perfect Plot twist- Darth Vader turns out to be Luke's Father

Perfect Ending- Stan, Cartman and Kyle manage to save Terence and Philip and stop the Canada/Colorado war

Perfect Fight/Battle- Malkovich malkovich, malkovich. Malkovich malkovich...

Perfect page 49? Dont quite get this... The perfect page would be 3.14159...

For perfect endings, I always loved that of Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland": Just as the villain federal attorney starts to descend on a rope from his circling helicopter to ravage the sleeping maiden, his supperiors decide to call him off. At this moment, a young deserted sailor from a soviet fish trawler enters the wood, holding an accoustic guitar, and wooes the maiden with knowing all the guitar solos from her boyfriend's underground punk band. Then, everyone is living happily thereafter.

Sounds like a book I need to track down....

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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Fie be upon the soulless propaganda borg that is NPR!

Perfect Protagonist- Well, I have grown REALLY attached to Sam Vimes.

Perfect Villain- When I was an ickler person I was petrified of the witch Oyin from Beaver Towers - lame I know but I remember beign really freaked out by the book!

Perfect Love interest- For Sam? erm, I don't know - any suggestions? for me, I was really in love with the character Akkarin from the Black Magician trilogy and also the Chairman from the book Memiors of a Geisha.

Perfect Plot twist- Sad I know but I did NOT even consider the ending of Prisoner of Azkaban - I will always remember how impressed I was by that!

Perfect Ending- I rather love the ending of Pride and Prejudice

Perfect Fight/Battle- Erm, I remember being impressed by the fight scenes in the Looking Glass Wars, the final battle in The Amber Spy Glass and also Granny Weatherwax is usually a colossus who I enjoy supporting - so many to choose from.

Perfect page 49? Well, I looked through a few, and I have come to the conclusion of p 49 of the paper back UK version of Jeremy Clarkson's Born to be Riled book as he makes me laugh, there are many many other fine p49s but they are more in context where as you can get a laugh out of his as a stand alone.

Perfect Protagonist - Jilly Coppercorn for modern, D'Artagnan for classic

Perfect Villain - Child Catcher from Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang still scares me

Perfect Love interest - Athos from the Three Musketeers

Perfect Plot twist - the end of Salem's Lot, as I'm sure I'm not supposed to be on the vampire's side so it twisted for me.

Perfect Ending - Dr Zhivago, tragic but perfect

Perfect Fight/Battle - D'Artagnan vs the Three Musketeers or Gandalf vs the Balrog

Perfect page 49 - so far? Wind in the Wllows, it's the start of the Wild Wood chapter in my hardback copy

Perfect Fightbattle - Me with a cricket bat vs. NPR!!!!!

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I am baffled by your pixelly face DisturbinglyAvid, but your words I like. Are you available to be used in books? Is your bat?

YG Niebla

Another thought I haved thinked about books be this:

If you were feeling cheeky much in a bookshop, where would you reshelve the story fiction ones in more relevant sections?

I think I would put Wind In The Willows in Crime because Mr Toad is naughtysome and I would put Wuthering Heights in the annoysome emotional/Romance/How to get a man and keep him section.

Where would you put other books? Where would you put Pride and Prejudice?

YG

Niebla

Horror.

Where would you put Paradise Lost?

Gardening

oh yeah, erm where would you put Harry Potter

(awaits suggestions with amusment)

On a pallet in the middle of the room. All 300 copies of them.

Well, that's how I saw them most of the time.

in education...with a shelf talker thingy saying "how not to run a boarding school!"

on a bonfire

Under 'religion' just next to anything published by the Evolution Protest Movement.

Provided I can watch the resulting fist fight from a safe distance.

Fist fight? I think we might just be embarking on crusade territory there! I like these suggestions (I am a fan, but I can see the funny side too!)

New suggestion - Tony Blair's autobiography of his time in office?

Comedy.

horror

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing