Nabbed from Alma Alexander: the Dinner Party Meme. You’re throwing a dinner party. You can invite ten authors, living or dead, to the party. Who do you choose?
1. Shakespeare, if only to take him to see “Anonymous” after dinner. :) No, really, because he’s *Shakespeare*, for heaven’s sake.
2. Oscar Wilde, because OMG.
3. Murasaki Shikibu, because I would dearly love to meet the woman who wrote what is widely considered to be the first novel.
4. Mark Twain. See Oscar Wilde for reasons. :)
5. Susan Cooper, because I love the Dark is Rising Sequence above almost all other fiction.
6. Jane Austen, because man, that would be interesting.
7. Walt Whitman, because A Song of Myself is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.
8. Robert A. Heinlein, because while there may be a very good chance we’d have violent political disagreements, what I wouldn’t give for the chance.
9. Stan Lee, because, well, STAN LEE!
10. Veronica Franco, because she would be fascinating.
With the exception of Susan Cooper and Stan Lee, I’ve chosen dead writers. This is because of the faint, if mistaken, belief that I may actually get to meet ones who are still alive. But I’d want to be *sure* of meeting those two, so they get a place at the table. :)
Alma also has a second table over there, with ten favorite characters sitting at it. Mine would be:
1. Methos from Highlander (this cannot possibly surprise anyone)
2. Spike from Buffy (this cannot possibly surprise anyone)
3. Vincent from Beauty and the Beast (this canno–you get the idea.)
4. Gerald Tarrant from CS Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy (Tarrant is my favorite fictional character *ever*, and if you’ve read the books, well, see above)
5. Dianora from Tigana (who may end up the only woman on this list, but that’s okay, because she’d have the men eating out of her hand before she finished saying hello)
6. Trent the Uncatchable from the Continuing Time by Daniel Keys Moran
7. Zoe from Firefly (who actually shouldn’t surprise anybody either, if they think about it at all)
8. Anne Shirley
9. pretty much any of the X-Men, but if I have to choose one for a dinner party…Hank McCoy
10. Harry from The Blue Sword
If I got to have dinner with ten of my *own* characters, now…:)
A point of clarification: Tarrant before or after meeting Vryce?
It hardly matters, I don’t think. The character’s qualities are still there, one way or the other. I happen to like the pre-Vryce Tarrant as much as the contemporary-to-Vryce Tarrant (and the sole mistake I think the books have is the handling of post-Vryce Tarrant).
Generally this list is not of people it would be *safe* to have dinner with, but by God I would enjoy it to the last. :)