Top Ten Tuesday #421-The Literary Dinner Party 2022 Tag

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, mine has been fairly busy especially over the last couple of days. My mum and I went to another flamenco show at Battersea Spanish on Saturday and it was really fun, I think we both agreed that we liked the musicians at the first show we went to better, but the flamenco dancer this time was truly spectacular. Me, my mum and my dad all went out last night, we got my Dad tickets to this one night only performance of The Simon and Garfunkel Story at the Palladium for his birthday (it’s kind of like a Simon and Garfunkel tribute act, but better & more theatrical) and despite not really knowing much of their music, I had a really great time, the singers, Will Strong and Oliver Cave were both spectacular and the live band were something else, truly extraordinary. My dad also had a really great night, so that was definitely a birthday present success.

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, so I have another Top Ten Tuesday for you all, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. I’m going off script once again this week because the topic, Things That Make Me Instantly Want To Read A Book is one that we did a few years ago, and honestly the list really hasn’t changed for me? I maybe read in a few more different genres than I did back then but a lot of the things I like in books weren’t really genre specific to begin with anyway, there were a few that are fairly fantasy specific, like dragons but most of the others can be found in various different genres of book. So anyway, I’m not doing that, and instead I’ve got another book tag for you, which it seems is one of my go-to’s when I’m not feeling the topic. This one is The Literary Book Party 2022 Tag which I saw on Carol @ Reading Ladies blog back in January and thought was fun (the tag is originally by Joanne @ Portobello Book Blog). It might be a little late on in the year than normal to do a tag inspired by 2022 reading, but I haven’t really read enough in 2023 yet to fill a full tag, so we’re rolling with 2022! Anyway, here we go:

1. A Character Who Can Cook/Likes To Cook

This one had me stumped for a bit, because I couldn’t really think of the top of my head who from my 2022 reads liked cooking or was a good cook. Then I remembered that it’s mentioned a couple of times in Looking For Jane that Evelyn’s friend and later partner Tom is a good cook and is often cooking for her, so I figured he could be our dinner party chef (I mean it’s certainly not going to be me!).

2. A Character Who Has The Money To Fund The Party

Mayor Hugh Grant is a fairly wealthy man, so I think he could afford to fund an extravagant dinner party for me and all my guests!

3. A Character Who Might Cause A Scene

Nellie Bly is incredibly good at causing a scene, it’s what allows her to get locked up in Blackwell’s in the first place! Still I would have loved to have met the real Nellie and be able to ask her questions about her life and her work as a journalist: given I can’t do that as the real Nellie has been dead for just over a century now, I’ll settle for inviting her to my imaginary dinner party and imagining I could ask her questions about her life and work.

4. A Character Who Is Funny or Amusing

Lyudmila Pavlichenko has such a dry and cutting wit that I reckon she would have been great fun, if a little scary to have at the dinner table. I would have loved to have met the real Mila, she seems like she was such a fascinating women. But again, since I can’t, I’ll settle for inviting her to my imaginary dinner party. She would need to be checked for weapons on the way in and out though…….

5. A Character Who Is Super Social or Popular

Robin Blyth definitely fits the bill for this, he’s definitely the life and soul of the party type of person and I reckon any dinner party with him at it would become instantly more fun, though the potential for danger with him there would be slightly greater!

6. A Villain

Bit of a strange thing to want a villain at a dinner party, but I’ll roll with it. I didn’t have too many books with villains in the traditional sense last year, and those that were I really would not want to have at a dinner party. However, since Sam Colton from this book plays an antagonistic role for Nellie, I figured he would work well enough for this one. We’d just have to hope that not too many sparks would fly between the pair of them at the dinner table…..

7. One Couple

Instead of choosing a romantic couple for this one, I’d thought I’d choose a….well it’s hard to really describe this pair without going into massive spoilers for the book, so I’ll just say friends and choose Nancy and Evelyn. I would love to be able to talk to them both about their work with the Jane Network.

8. A Hero/Heroine

Hero:

Since Robin is coming, it seems only fair to invite Edwin too, make sure that we have someone who can keep Robin in check! Robin would have 1000% died without Edwin multiple times over the course of this book, so I definitely think it’s only fair to consider Edwin the real hero of the tale. Plus I just have a soft spot for the prickly yet kind hearted librarian magician and would absolutely need to discuss his library classification system with him at length.

Heroine:

We might have to check her bags on the way out to make sure nothing had mysteriously gone missing (she is an infamous thief after all) but Nahri would be so much fun to have at a dinner party, and useful as well, being a healer as she is, in case anyone got ill at the party.

9. An Under Appreciated Character

I always loved Zaynab and never felt like she got enough credit for everything she for Daevabad, especially in the second book and I always wish she got more page time. She did get her own story in The River of Silver which I loved, but I would love to have her at this dinner party and get to learn a bit more about her: take this as my petition to Shannon Chakraborty to do a book about Zaynab in the future!

10. One Character of Your Choosing

I’d love to meet Elaine and chat to her about her work with the printing press and everything she did for the Resistance (if she was willing to talk about that). I’d also love to find out more about her reunion with Ava and if they kept in touch over the years as that was one part of the book that I felt was a little short and I wanted to know more.

11. A Troubled Soul

Poor Ursula, she suffers so much in her various lives, so I’d definitely call her a troubled soul. She deserves a night of fun so hopefully this dinner party could be that for her. Though I won’t lie, I’d definitely want to find out from her about how the whole reincarnation thing works and just how much she remembers from her previous lives.

12. A Young Adult Character

Briseis could provide the table decorations for the evening since she’s so good with plants. I would love to have a chance to see her powers in action and maybe chat to her a little about the more unique plant species that grow in her garden!

So there we go, those are the characters I’d invite to my Literary Dinner Party. Quite a eclectic bunch no? I think it would be a very fun, if slightly chaotic evening! Have you read any of these books? Which characters would you invite to your own literary dinner party? Let me know in the comments!

I’ll be back next Tuesday for another Top Ten Tuesday, once again I will be altering the topic as next week’s topic is the inverse of this week’s original topic Things That Instantly Make Me Not Want To Read A Book and again my list of those hasn’t change much since I last made it. So instead, I’ll be doing a topic I saw on Cindy’s Book Corner last week and sharing 10 Netgalley Rejections That Crushed Me as that seemed really fun!