Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is Top Ten Characters Whose Job I Wish I Had. I’m modifying it to focus exclusively on characters with literary, or literary-tangential, jobs. This was a terrible decision because I basically only read YA, which is… not rife with employed characters. I decided to stick purely to contemporary so that I could avoid the mental debate of whether I could even reasonably say I wouldn’t die in two seconds as a Shadowhunter. Some of the listings are a bit of a stretch, but that’s okay because at least you, dear reader, were not the one who had to track them down! They’re ordered from the least to biggest stretch, so have fun as you reach me desperately grasping at anything that will fit the list at the end.
Recommended For You by Laura Silverman
It’s set in a bookstore. I would like to work in a bookstore for at least some part of my life, even if just for a summer job. Thus, it gets to go on the list!
Words in Deep Blue, by Cath Crowley
See the above reason.
Love & Olives, by Jenna Evans Welch
The bookstore in this book sounds so wonderful!
All I Want for Christmas, by Wendy Loggia
Honestly I didn’t enjoy this book, but the main character does work at a bookstore, so, for the above reasons, it gets to go on the list.
Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
A bit of a stretch, it does mostly take place in a really-cool-sounding bookstore, and bookstore employee relatives of one of the main characters play a relatively(?) important role in the plot, so it makes the list!
Let’s Talk About Love, by Claire Kann
The main character works in a library, which is definitely bookish! It pains me a bit to include this, because I didn’t really like the rep in it at all, but… Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Verona Comics, by Jennifer Dugan
We now transition slightly out of the realm of bookstores to comic book stores! Yay! I want to get into reading comics at some point (I’ve read all of Ms. Marvel (2014-2015), which I loved, and I adore the MCU, but I don’t have much experience with the genre).
Tash Hearts Tolstoy, by Kathryn Ormsbee
Tash directs a web series adaptation of Anna Karenina, and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t jump at any chance to participate in a project like that. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Green Gables Fables, and Emma Approved are some of my favorite pieces of media, so honestly doing something similar would be great.
Truly Devious, by Maureen Johnson
We are now entering the portions of this list that are a bit (or a lot) of a stretch. Nate (one of the main secondary characters) is a published author, so I’m counting this! I’m very glad for it, because this is one of my absolute favorite series, and I just rreead it last week, so I want to shout about it anywhere I can.
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, by Maryrose Wood
Penelope Lumley, the protagonist, is a governess for three children, which is at least tangentially bookish? There’s a lot of poetry references in this series at least, so I’m saying that it counts!
That was my list! I’m not sure how successful it was (I’m not a thousand percent sure that secondary characters or teaching jobs should necessarily qualify a book for this list), but I tried, and that’s what counts here.
Being a governess could definitely be bookish!
My post: https://lydiaschoch.com/top-ten-tuesday-characters-whose-job-i-wish-i-had/
I agree, and I think the character herself definitely makes it so, but my main argument with myself was whether or not it was intrinsically bookish as a position regardless of who is filling it. I eventually decided it counted, but there was definitely an internal debate there.
Truly Devious almost made my list too! I love that you went for bookish jobs specifically, it’s a nice twist!
https://readingrecluses.wordpress.com/2021/03/02/top-ten-tuesdays-characters-whose-jobs-i-wish-i-had/