Follow Friday - Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953), Held That Race-Based Real Property Covenants Violated the Fourteenth Amendment

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 a single Follow Friday Featured Blogger 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 Featured Blogger of the week - The Plot Bunny.
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: 3 Favorite Book Boyfriends, books they're in, and why you'll always love them.

Questions like these serve to remind me how far out of the mainstream of book blogging that I really am. I don't have book boyfriends. I don't really have book girlfriends either. For the most part, I don't read books that would generally lend themselves to that sort of evaluation, and the few that I do read that would, I am usually not particularly interested in that sort of analysis. I do, however, have some heroic male characters that I particularly like and if it were possible, I would like to meet.

Ged from the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin. Also known as Sparrowhawk, the use name he chooses to avoid knowledge of his true name from being spread about (which would allow others to gain magical power over him), Ged begins the series as a headstrong, impatient boy who dreams of gaining power and prestige. First apprenticed to the patient and quiet Ogion, Ged chooses to leave and study at the great school of magic on Roke, where his hubris leads him to make a terrible error of judgment that almost kills him and unleashes a terrible blight upon the world. But what makes Ged an interesting character is that he learns and grows through the story. Every mistake he makes (and he makes quite a few) teaches Ged something, and he pays attention to the lessons. As one moves from A Wizard of Earthsea to The Tombs of Atuan to The Farthest Shore, one sees how first a hero and then a legend develops from a foolish child.

Taran from The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. Taran is another character who grows up in the course of the series he appears in. Starting as an assistant pig-keeper who dreams of setting out on glorious adventures, Taran is soon thrust into the middle of big events and discovers that being in the middle of a quest or a war isn't quite as much fun as he thought. But Taran grows through the books, maturing into a capable leader and a certain amount of hard-won wisdom. The actual adventures that Taran has turn out to be much more interesting and much more costly than he ever dreamed, and the lessons that Taran ends up learning from these experiences are both harsh and valuable. In the end, Taran becomes a legendary hero, but not in the way he anticipated, and not in the way that he expected even up to the end. His story is about the reality of heroism, and how the process of becoming a hero and a leader often doesn't seem all that heroic when one is in the middle of one's own life.

Éomer from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. When Éomer first appears in The Lord of the Rings, he is in exile, having gone against the decree of King Théoden of Rohan by taking up arms against Saruman's encroachments. By the end of the story, he is King of the Riddermark, a position that he probably never really expected to hold (as he was Théoden's nephew, behind his cousin Théodred in the line of succession), rubbing shoulders with figures from legend.Éomer isn't an every man - he was born into a royal family and elevated to being king of his people - but in the context of Tolkien's story, he is a mere mortal standing among giants. Aragorn is the heir to a line of almost superhuman kings. Legolas is the son of the king of Mirkwood, and is at least five thousand years old. Gandalf is the physical manifestation of an angelic being. Éomer is none of these. He doesn't have a special destiny, or power drawn from being around at the beginning of time, or anything else that marks him as being anything more than a man trying to do his best to protect his countrymen while he walks among giants.

Previous Follow Friday: The City of Rome Celebrated It's One-Thousandth Anniversary in 248 A.D.

Subsequent Follow Friday: "250 Things You Should Know About Writing" Is a Book by Chuck Wendig

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