Top Ten Tuesday - The Best Desert Island Companions

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  This week they have instructed their minions to list  the top ten literary characters we'd be most interested in hanging out with on a desert island.  Interesting thing is I couldn't come up with ten.  I decided it is because I'm a hard core introvert and not having too many people around sounds pretty awesome :0).

I went for two different kinds of people:  those that are problem solvers and those that would be good company.  Some of them are a little of both with a useful skill to boot.

1) Francis Crawford of Lymond from the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett)
Lymond is a force of nature and chameleon, who is able to deal with any situation.  He's a 16th century James Bond.  He's also one of those annoying people who has tons of energy and is really good at almost any skill he tries.  PLUS he's a charmer so he should be entertaining when not solving all the Desert Island's problems.

2 and 3) Miles and Cordelia Vorkosigan from the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold:
Miles is somewhat similar to Lymond in that he is hyper and a problem solver.  However I would find him super annoying so I'd also like to have his mother Cordelia there who would be amazing company, would be very motherly when needed and would keep Miles in check.

4)  Brother Cadfael from The Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters:
He's awesome and wise and worldly AND he knows his plants.  He could start a garden and figure out the medicinal uses for all the plants on the island which he could then use to heal anybody who got sick.  Bonus is that he also spends a good chunk of his time solving murders so if needed, he'd be all over that.

5) Stephen Maturin from the Aubrey and Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian:
Maturin is also a physician and he is used to working in primitive conditions such as 19th century sailing vessels.  In addition, he's a naturalist and he and I would have a blast inventorying and cataloging all the fauna on the island though I'm not sure I'd be down with his 19th century techniques; i.e. kill it and stuff it. Also Paul Bettany who played him in the movie, Master and Commander, is a stone cold fox.

6) Fermin Romero deTorres from The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon:
I could listen to Fermin expound on whatever subject strikes his fancy all day long.  And he's also pretty resourceful.

7) Mildred Lathbury from Excellent Women by Barbara Pym:
Mildred is quietly and cleverly funny and once you got past the polite exterior (which should be easy on a desert island) she would be an amazing companion. I feel like we'd have a lot in common.

8) Renee from The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Renee is a very well read Concierge at a fancy Paris apartment building.  She hides her awesome personality under a layer of servitude.  She'd be great to talk to as long as one of us can learn the others language.And of course we could talk about books!