Follow Friday - Lincoln Mentioned "Fourscore and Seven Years" in the Gettysburg Address

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Bookworm Brandee and Writer's Block.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Activity! Who do you want to be? If you could choose any character from a book. What do you think that character looks like and what do you have in common?

This is a deceptively difficult question, because although there are many characters that I enjoy reading about, most of them live lives that I would not want to have to endure. For example, while it seems at first glance that it would be enjoyable to be Ian Fleming's James Bond, given that he frequently get captured, beaten up, tortured, and forced to navigate painful death traps, I don't think I'd actually want to be him. Paul Maud'dib is a fantastic leader who gets to be the ruler of the galaxy, but I don't think I would particularly enjoy the part where prescience drives him mad and he wanders the desert as a blind lunatic before being stabbed to death by his own sister.

This holds true for the protagonists of many books that I read. I love reading about Aragorn, but I don't think I'd want to spend the bulk of my life traveling the wilderness and sleeping on the ground so I could fight trolls and orcs. I love Hari Seldon, but the prospect of being condemned as a criminal for coming up with a new form of mathematics seems less than ideal as an option. I like partaking vicariously of Dominic Flandry's adventures, but I don't think I'd want to live them. Elric is an interesting character to read about, but probably a less than enjoyable character to be. Wishing to be one of these characters would sort of be like the people who wish they were Batman but don't consider how Bruce Wayne got to that point.

I guess given that, that I would choose to be Murdoc Jern from Andre Norton's two book series of The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars. Leaving aside the down note of his father being murdered, I suppose that inheriting the key to unlocking the secrets of a long-forgotten alien race and, along the way, making a romantic connection with one of the last surviving members of that telepathic species would be some compensation. Throw in the ability to travel the galaxy in a star ship you own while engaging in lucrative trading deals and Jern's life sounds pretty good.

Go to previous Follow Friday: There Are 86 Metals on the Periodic Table of Elements

Go to subsequent Follow Friday: In Kill Bill O-Ren Ishii's Gang Was the Crazy 88s

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