memes – Page 195 – What Cathy Read Next…

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve More Love. My list features secondary characters from literature whom others authors have made the focus of their own novels.

Bertha Mason from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Charlotte Lucas from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in Charlotte by Helen Moffett
Abel Magwitch (sort of) from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations in Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
Clara Marley from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in Miss Marley by Vanessa Lafaye & Rebecca Mascull
Mrs Ahab mentioned in Moby Dick by Herman Melville in Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
Flashman from Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days in Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

And finally, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels:

Professor Moriarty in Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
Irene Adler in Goodnight, Mr Holmes by Carole Nelson Douglas
Mrs Hudson in Mrs Hudson and the Spirit’s Curse by Martin Davies
Dr John Watson in Dead Man’s Land by Robert Ryan

I’d love to hear if you know of other secondary characters who have been given starring roles in novels?

background book stack books close up — Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post. You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

This month’s starting book is Postcards From The Edge by Carrie Fisher, the bestselling work of autobiographical fiction.

Postcards From The Edge isn’t a book I’ve read so I’m focusing on the autobiographical element plus a postal theme with the first book in my chain, Please, Mr Postman by Alan Johnson. The second volume in the former Labour Home Secretary’s series of memoirs covers his time as a postman in Slough and describes family and community life on the Britwell Estate in the 1970s and 1980s.

The main character in This Lovely City by Louise Hare, Lawrie Matthews is also a postman, finding employment with the Post Office after arriving in Britain from Jamaica in 1948 aboard the Empire Windrush.

Returning to postcards, an item that Lawrie, or Alan Johnson, might have delivered, my next link is Cartes Postales from Greece by Victoria Hislop. In the book, postcards arrive, week after week, addressed to someone Ellie does not know, each signed with an initial: A.

In Yours, Cheerfully by A J Pearce, Emmy is also in receipt of letters, this time sent by readers to Woman’s Friend magazine seeking advice on their problems.

Staying with the communication theme, Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford is an epistolary novel in which the story is told by means of telegrams and memoranda, as well as letters.

For my final link in the chain we’re into the world of undelivered mail. In The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen the ‘letter detectives’ of the Dead Letters Depot work to solve mysteries in order to reunite letters with their intended recipients.

My chain has taken me from postcards to letters. Where did your chain take you?