Top Ten Tuesday: Übermenschen!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday challenge at The Broke and the Bookish is to name our Top Ten All Time Favorite Characters In Books. I wanted to participate in this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, but I didn’t want to break from the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge. The problem? It’s U day! U for crying out loud! And so I had to come up with a phrase that encapsulated the theme of this week’s challenge using the letter U. English failed me, but thankfully, German came to the rescue! It’s not perfect, but I think “Übermenschen” will do the job. The word is actually the plural form of the word Übermensch which Neitzche used to describe the kind of person that he thought should be the goal of humanity: the superior-man, or superman. Clearly, this is not the sense I intend it–I simply mean it to refer to great fictional people. So here they are–my all-time favorite (at least right now) book characters:

• Sherlock Holmes: The super sleuth himself. I am very partial to detective fiction, and Holmes is the epitome of the genre. I like the way Conan Doyle wrote him as flawed due to his dispassionate pursuit of logical precision. He cares little for the feelings of other–except perhaps Watson.
• Harry Potter: The hero of the series. I like many of the Potter characters, but it’s really all about Harry. And, again, he’s a hero with blemishes. He might be kind, brave, and loyal, but he’s a real teen, and he can be angry, jealous, and petty.
• Death: In his Discworld series, Terry Pratchett gives Death a new lease of life! He appears as the stereotypical Grim Reaper, but he is not just a symbol. He speaks in all caps, he can only be seen by wizards, and he has a daughter. If you’ve never read any Discworld, and you want to try one out, read MORT.
• Draco Malfoy: Malfoy is a nasty piece of work. But I like that of all the nasty pieces of work in the Potter series, he has limits. In fact, given the things he won’t do toward the end of the series, you can’t help wondering how much of his behavior was peer pressure, and deep down he really knows Harry was on the right side. Perhaps a little too optimistic?
• Jeeves: Bertie Wooster’s indefatigable and unassailable butler in P.G. Wodehouse’s famous series. Two characters couldn’t contrast more vividly than Jeeves and Wooster, and I like the fact that Jeeves manages to steer a course between respectful obedience and fatherly guidance of his flighty master.
• Samwise Gamgee: Frodo’s faithful friend. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he’s by no means the bravest or best of the Fellowship. But his loyalty to Frodo and his unswerving friendship, even in the darkest times, makes him stand out.
• Deryn Sharp: Co-hero of Scott Westerfeld’s LEVIATHAN series. She’s a Scottish lass who wants to fight in the British army during Westerfeld’s alternative World War I, but to do so she has to disguise herself as a boy. I like the way she passes herself as a midshipman, able to do all the guy stuff with the other guys, and yet manages to retain a sense of her femininity. Very well written.
• Grimble: I talked about Grimble on this blog a few weeks ago (he was “G” in the A-to-Z Blog Challenge). He was one of the first book characters to capture my imagination, so Grimble will always have a place on lists like these.
• James Bond: Yes, the book Bond, not the movie Bond. I enjoy the Bond movies, but the character in the books is a lot less of the “ladies’ man” “shoot-first-ask-questions-later” figure we see in many of the movies. He is far more reflective, a lot more vulnerable, and much more human. Yes, he has an eye for the ladies, but he’s nowhere near the womanizer you see on the big screen.
• Marvin the Paranoid Android: If you’re not familiar with Douglas Adams’s HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series, this character’s name itself should intrigue. He is indeed a paranoid android. A robot who constantly moans about having a “brain the size of a planet” and yet he’s asked to do menial jobs. “Life! Don’t talk to me about life…” Totally brilliant!

Don’t forget to visit The Broke and the Bookish to see what others think, and to participate!