Tag Archives: harry potter

Feature & Follow #93: Fictional Character Smackdown!

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Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly blog hop hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read. Each week, they’ll pick one blogger to feature, and it’s also a great way to discover new blogs and gain new followers. I’m excited to be participating this week, and can’t wait to discover some new blogs!

If you’re participating in the hop, I’d love it if you could follow me via the Linky Connect link in my sidebar, or you can sign up to follow me via email. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d leave a comment to let me know you were here. I’m still new to all this, so I want to know who’s out there in the blogosphere!

Thanks everyone! I look forward to “meeting” all of you!

So, moving on to this week’s question:

Q: Fight! Fight! If you could have two fictional characters battle it out (preferably from books), who would they be and who do you think would win?

Okay. This may be because one of my kids woke up crying for no reason, then I remembered I forgot to load the dishwasher last night, and then there was a bug on my coffee maker.

Needless to say, I woke up snarky this morning.

Anyway, I would like to have Bella Swan (Twilight) battle Hermione Granger (Harry Potter). And no, Edward is not allowed to save Bella.

Hermione would win. Duh. She would trounce her. Even if 11-year-old Sorcerer’s Stone Hermione was fighting 18-year-old vampire Bella, Hermione would win. Why? Because Hermione is resourceful, intelligent, and downright scrappy if need be. Oh, and also she knows magic. Lots of magic.

So yeah. I think what would make me happy this morning is a good smackdown of someone who needs a good smackdown, and Bella definitely could use one.

But Hermione is kind and fair, and she’d want to adhere to the rules of proper deuling (especially 11-year-old Hermione), so she wouldn’t leave Bella bruised and bleeding (well….maybe bruised). She’d just teach her a lesson about standing up for herself, even if you don’t have the boy you want, and how whining and moping isn’t the answer.

Then she’d probably help her up. Because Hermione is cool like that.

Starting out

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I’ve loved to read ever since I could read.

In elementary school, I devoured series like The Boxcar Children and The Baby-sitters Club.

In middle school, I ventured into the world of science fiction with Michael Crichton.

In high school, I dabbled in a variety of genres, from classic literature like Les Misérables, Jane Eyre and Lord of the Rings, to the legal thrillers of John Grisham, to the sweet and semi-sappy romances of Maeve Binchy.

The only limitation I put on myself was that I didn’t want to read anything that was actually written for kids my age. I viewed Young Adult Fiction with distain. I thought the only people who read it were kids who didn’t know any better. I was Above It All.

Then in college, a friend gave me a book for my birthday. It was a gag gift, since it was a series I had made fun of for years (and it wasn’t even the first book in the series). He knew if I owned it, I’d have to read it.

The book was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

I read it.

I loved it.

Fast-forward to over a decade later. I now read what I want. Sometimes it’s books about teenagers, written for teenagers. Sometimes it’s books written for adults about housewives, detectives, spies, reporters, librarians. If it sounds interesting, I’ll read it.

I finally realized that it’s not “mature” to look down my nose at a book simply because of its intended audience. Likewise, I was not winning any brownie points in life by only reading books written for adults (and let’s face it, there’s just as much — if not more — garbage out there targeted at adults as there is for kids).

This year – 2012 – I decided to start writing down my thoughts about the books I read. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I always end each book I read with my head swimming with thoughts, and often no one to share them with. So I’ll share them with you (whoever you are).

You may not agree with me. That’s fine. I don’t agree with anyone on books (or most other things) 100% of the time either.

So here we go.