who would you choose?

I'm terribly excited because Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath landed on my desk today. Hours of happy reading ahead (it is just under 700 pages!) for this sequel to Inkheart and Inkspell. Anticipation is part of the joy of reading, don't you think?

The basic premise (spoiler alert) of these books involves the talent of reading book characters to life and out of the book. So I've been thinking about which book characters I would want to read to life. Unfortunately, years of movie watching is clouding my judgment because Rhett Butler would be Clark Gable, Mr. Darcy would be Colin Firth, Colonel Brandon would be Alan Rickman and on and on. As a child, I would have wanted to read myself into Little Women and The Secret Garden. As a teen, I wanted to be in any book that would give me a great wardrobe, especially the hooped skirts and broad-brimmed hats of Gone with the Wind but reading a character out of a book...hmmm.

My first thought was to read Mrs. Bennet out of Pride and Prejudice and Emma's father out of Emma since I find both characters loathsome but I soon realized that the books would suffer because of my prejudices. I adore Hagrid in all of the Harry Potter books but, due to his generous size, where would I put him? I would love to know and spend time with Dickon from The Secret Garden because of his exoticness (hey, I'm from Minnesota--the Yorkshire moors are quite exotic in comparison), his love of animals and his sunny disposition. I would like to spend an evening in conversation with Matthew Shardlake (from the C.J. Sansom mysteries) because of his keen mind...maybe Sherlock Holmes could join us so I could be the happy (and silently appreciative) audience while they performed a duel of wits.

Are there any characters you would want to read into your life?