Thursday, February 28, 2008

Booking through thursday #3...




So, I kind of missed last week, so we're jumping back in with this week's question:

Who is your favorite female lead character? And why?

I am have been thinking about this for a while now before I posted and thought I would have a really hard time deciding. I went through all my favorite books looking at their female leads, and while they're all interesting and admirable in their own ways, I couldn't find a favorite. Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha, Aline Seward and Godith Adeny in One Corps Too Many, Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities, Sara Howard in The Alienist, Cecilia and Briony Tallis in Atonement, all so diverse and well rounded and strong. But each one I have said to myself, "Well, I like her, but she's not my favorite." So I went to my bookshelf, looked at all the books on my shelf, and I have found her.

My favorite female lead character is Georgia Nicols from the "Georgia" books, a series of British young adult novels. These books are the personal diaries of Georgia as she muddles her way through every misadventure of life. I love her because, while most of the other women I mentioned are strong and intelligent and will struggle through all misfortunes with dignity, Georgia is a mess. She's insecure, she's sometimes lazy, she's always in some kind of mischief, she's superficial, she doesn't always know the answer, but she goes through life with a smile. No matter what happens, whether she's spying on her crush's girlfriend, or being expelled from school for hitting someone with a field hockey stick, or deciding to go to a costume party dressed as a stuffed olive, Georgia will make you laugh. I love her.

If you have never heard of these books, I absolutely recommend checking them out. The first is titled Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging. From there it gets a little confusing as they changed a lot of the titles for release in the US. And not like Harry Potter where the title is basically the same except for one word, I mean drastically different. For example in the US, the second book is called On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God but in England it's called It's Okay, I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers. Weird. But despite this oddity, these book are hilarious and everyone should read them.

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