Sunday, February 7, 2010

Sunday Life

This will be short because my newest blogging goal is to blog three times a week, Mon., Wed., and Friday BUT I got an award from Michele Emrath at Southern City Mysteries and I want to fulfill my duty to this honour. Thanks Michele for giving me my favourite stroke (she said on awarding me this that I was 'honest no matter what'). I am required to say ten true things about myself - yep, it's one of those. As if blogging wasn't self-centered enough!
So my ten things are going to be the ten characters from books who have affected my life.

1. Anne of Green Gables fame. Yep, that spunky red-headed snippet keeps up a steady presence in my life - telling me to live with imagination.

2. Cap O'Rushes, from an Irish fairy tale - this young woman introduced me at a very early age to the qualities of persistence and how we must travel far and labour low to get our rewards.

3. Jane Austen's Emma. For those of you who are Austinphiles - yes, not the usual choice but Emma is important to me because she realizes mid-book how she has let her self-importance and meddling hurt good people and she CHANGES!

4. Jane Eyre for showing me that a person can fashion a parent from books and a kind servant - not that I needed to but it has been very helpful in my role as a therapist.

5. Thomas Fowler, a British journalist living in Vietnam, from the novel
The Quiet American by Graham Greene. I don't think I can tell you what I learned from him because it is beyond words. He isn't a hero - he struggles with many faults but I love his search for peace and truth.

6. The Mouse Army in the amazing novel, The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson - cyber punk cum steampunk - the Mouse Army is an army of little orphaned girls in a futuristic China. They remind me that one can affect great change in community.

7. Madame Wu, the protagonist in Pearl S. Buck's Pavilion of Women. She reminds me that although I would like a life of contemplation - I am a householder and attached to those I love and care for and that can also be a spiritual life.

8. Count Almasy from Ondaatje's The English Patient, who understands that time and space and life itself are no barriers to love.

9. Scarlet O'Hara from Gone With the Wind - who might be a selfish tart but has a great indomitable spirit!

10. The Teeny Tiny Woman, from the nursery story of the same name, who dares to yell at a ghost bone...
And I pass this award on to Hart (tartlett to me) at Confessions of a Watery Tart - she is the epitome of scrappy honesty in my book! And tartlett - in the interest of being a rebel angel - you can write ten true things if you like or you can invent something or nothing else to do!

5 comments:

JournoMich said...

I AM honored! You made an extra post just because of me! Thank you. And what a post! I am especially intrigued by #6. I haven't read #5, but I did see the movie with Michael Cain, and it was excellent. You ARE interesting...And I am including your Friday Challenge in today's Sunday Foreign Post Roundup on my blog.

Michele
SouthernCityMysteries

Jan Morrison said...

Thanks Michele - The Quiet American is my favourite novel period. And that being so, I was terrified to see the movie but I found it true to the book in a wonderful way. The Diamond Age, A Victorian Girl's Primer, is a fabulous book. Stephenson transcends genre in everything he writes and this is my favourite - Snow Crash is also wonderful. And now to get back to my wip!

Hart Johnson said...

Oh, Jan, what a WONDERFUL honor! I love it! And though I may make sport of Misattribution, I do try to call it as I see it, so this one means a lot!

Let's see what I can make of it...

Jemi Fraser said...

Congrats!

Anne Shirley is one of my main influences in life as well :) I was way too quiet to be her, but I always wanted to be her friend!

Jan Morrison said...

No problemo Tartlett - I look forward to what you share!
Jemi - oh, in my case I was a red-headed snippet. And a chatter-box with a love of creating great fictions so it was a natch. I still haven't fulfilled my desire for puffed sleaves yet. On a 58 yr. old - euhhhh.