Top Ten Unfortunate Character Names

Spoilers!! I don’t think I can talk about these names without giving away a little of the story, but I’ll try to keep them to a minimum


The first four are ones that as soon as I read them, I thought they were terrible choices.


1. Renesmee - Breaking Dawn, by: Stephenie Meyer. Really? Really?! Their baby is named what? You couldn’t come up with a name that was easier to pronounce. I know other characters in the book comment on the difficulty of the name, so that her nickname is “Nessy”, which is still dumb. I think this was the first name I ever looked at had to pause in my reading to contemplate how terrible it was.


2. Bree Tanner – The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, by: Stephenie Meyer. I get she’s young and we’re supposed to feel sympathy for her, but “Bree” is not a sympathetic name. The surname is fine, but I just can’t stand the name Bree for a heroine.


3. Courtney Stone – Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, by: Laurie Viera Rigler. This was another name that jumped out at me. I loved the story, thought it was interesting, but when I hear “Courtney” I think snobby teenage girl.


4. Fuschia – The Fuschia Is Now, by: J. Otto Seibold. I disliked this children’s book. One of the things I didn’t like was the main character being named after a silly colour. The colour/name is yelled through the whole book. It has yet to hold my daughter’s interest.


The rest aren’t terrible, but I thought they could have been better.


5. Artemis Entreri – The Legend of Drizzt series, by: R.A. Salvatore. I love Salvatore’s Drizzt books. I think they’re fun and exciting. I also think Salvatore is excellent when it comes to naming characters. Except when he name Artemis Entreri. Have you ever tried to pronounce his last name? It’s hard, but that’s not the part the really bugs me. Artemis is a girl’s name. Artemis is a Greek warrior goddess. A friend pointed out to me that she’s heard Artemis as a boy’s name before and I have too. Any time I hear it as a boy’s name, it irks me.


6. Dale “Barbie” Barbara – Under The Dome, by: Stephen King. Dale is a perfectly fine name. I even don’t mind the nickname, Barbie, when it’s used cleverly. But why does EVERYONE have to call him that? Even the woman he has sex with?


7. Liz Dunn – Eleanor Rigby, by: Douglas Coupland. Eleanor Rigby was a fantastic novel and Liz was a great character. Was Liz Dunn done from the beginning?


8. Samantha Sweeting – The Undomestic Goddess, by: Sophie Kinsella. She’s supposed to be a lawyer. Sweeting is just a very unlawyerly name.


9. Lord Bostock – The Princess and the Whiskheads, by: Russell Smith. As soon as I read that name, I thought “botox”. Sorry.


I could only come up with nine. A friend of mine suggested my last entry.


10. Every Mary Higgins Clark Character – I admit to never having read one of her books. My friend tells me that the women are supposed to be young and sexy, but they have “old lady” names. I’m taking her word on this.


Thanks to The Broke and The Bookish for another great list and the most difficult one for me since I've been participating.
 

Confessions Of A Jane Austen Addict

By the second sentence of Laurie Viera Rigler’s Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, I was hooked. Rigler’s main character is Courtney Stone, a twenty-first century, working, independent, thirty-year-old woman, who is obsessed with Jane Austen. Courtney’s mind is somehow transported into the body of a woman named Jane Mansfield. Jane lives in the nineteenth century, in a year when only Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice have been published. These two novels become Courtney’s only connection to her former life as she is forced to live Jane’s life.


Rigler’s writing was inviting, a smooth combination of contemporary writing style and “Regency” language. One of the first things that struck me and was maintained throughout the novel, is the realistic portrayal of life in the 19th century. The first problem Courtney is faced with is having to pee, which, as far as I can remember, is never addressed in any book or film about that time. There’s the lack of hygiene (Courtney has to insist on bathing twice a week), farting in church and a woman’s “monthly courses” which means she is “indisposed” until it is over. Courtney even comments on how the era is romanticized. She is frustrated by how little freedom women have and how a woman of thirty is practically over the hill. I suppose I would be too if I found myself in that era. Courtney’s observances only add to the plot of the story.


Just like in an Austen novel, nothing is what it seems in Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. There are misunderstandings. Hidden meanings. There are circumstances that Courtney laughs at, though if it were Lizzy Bennet, she might be disgusted. There are terrible people who pretend to be friends. There are marriages of convenience, while there is also the search for love. Laurie Viera Rigler’s first novel has left me happy; wanting to know more, yet satisfied with the ending.