I stole this from Nathan Bradsford who stole it from someone else.
It is all the rage in authorland to have reader giveaways of character names. Novelists offer to name characters in upcoming works after the winners of their various contests. So the question today is what book do you wish you could inhabit?
For me, this is an easy one. I have always wished I could live inside Anne McCaffery’s Pern series. Sure, it’s a rustic existence on a rather inhospitable planet in some distant future, but the upside is dragons. Riding dragons with whom you share a telepathic bond and the ability to cross time and space in the flutter of an eyelash.
I can totally envision myself with aloft, battling the vicious thread with flamethrowers astride my golden dragon and being mistress of a weyr. I can also see Rob decked in leather and charging into the fray on a sturdy bronze, Weyrleader respected by all.
Yep, I am geek like that.
What book would you live in? And don’t be wimpy with just title and author. Tell me who you’d be and what you see yourself doing.
anniegirl1138 
When I was much younger I was captivated by John Norman’s Chronicles of Gor. I wanted to be the character Tarl Cabot, an earthman regularly transported to the counter Earth. On earth Cabot was a professor, but on Gor, he was a master swordsman, an adventurer and a frequent partner of beautiful “kajira” (slave girls). I could see myself, well muscled and wearing primitive armour, flying about on a “tarn”, making friends and allies, engaging and defeating foes, and always, at the end of the day, lying on the diaphanous silks of some sultry and seductive kajira.
DarcKnyt has claimed a more recent favourite character of mine: Roland Deschain of Gilead, aka “The Gunslinger”. There is something about Roland’s resolute conviction that appeals and, of course, those huge pistols with the sandalwood grips. Although book one (The Gunslinger) of the Dark Tower series contains what I consider to be the best opening line of a novel ever : The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. I found the rather circuitous nature of the series to be a big disappointment. Stephen King, although he left readers the choice to not read the last chapter, opted for the easy out, in my opinion.
But, after some consideration and deliberation, I think that, were I to inhabit a story, it would have to be something in the Star Trek universe. I wouldn’t have to be an existing character, I could simply be myself. Living in that world and seeing and doing those sorts of things kind of align with (or, perhaps, explain) my secret heart’s desire to live and work in space.
I agree with the opening line. The one from The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger is, in my opinion as well, the best opening line in literature. Brilliant. I wasn’t thrilled with the ending either, but I have to admit it fit the story cycle perfectly even if it WAS a cop out (and it was).
This is simply awesome.
I think I’d like to be Miss Marple, and hang out in a village minding everybody’s business. Although I’ve already seen enough dead bodies for anyone’s lifetime.
that’d be “delicious”…
and “interest”… crap. shouldn’t type while eating fresh green peppers…
the cheap answer? i want to be one of David Sedaris’ sisters…. just so i have someone else on board as i make fun of my family.
Literary character? [guilty pleasure alert] Amelia Peabody, from the silly adventure series by Elizabeth Peters. Although i stopped reading them somewhere around 1985 (The Mummy Case), i have always harbored a not-so-secret fantasy to go back in time and be a daring Egyptologist… with a deliscious and brilliant love iterest (i could skip the precocious sprog named Ramses, however…)
Oh, that’s easy!
I want to be Harriet Vane, from Dorothy Sayers’ mystery novels. The structure of British Society is starting to fall apart, but it’s not altogether unraveled, so we still have butlers and high tea; she’s Oxford-educated, witty, and not unattractive; she stands on principle, onlookers be damned; she’s a successful novelist; Lord Peter Wimsey is in love with her; and they speak to each other in obscure quotations.
I wouldn’t mind being Roland DeSchain from The Dark Tower, on the condition I can keep my fingers. Or Jason Bourne. That’d be cool, too.
I suppose I could make a show of it and select something with literary pretense but that would be false. I’m going below the belt and say I’d like to be Bond, James Bond, specifically, in From Russia With Love. This before Fleming flew off the track a bit and was still writing crackling spy novels and not science fiction like Moonraker. Saving England, shameless drinking, smoking and gratuitous unprotected sex and a refillable prescription for Benzedrine. Not my typical day at the office. It all just looks so damn fun.