Valentine’s Day in Moderate Income Apartments is an amazing day let me tell you. Blacklight is curled up on Mr Couch watching Minecraft videos on YouTube and I just woke up from a nap. So why not stagger into the living room, grab Mr Laptop and write about the book guys who make me swoon. <cue Blacklight eye-roll> The only rule? I have to have read you/about you so many times even Blacklight has figured out you’re a literary rival.

-H.P. Lovecraft

Come on, this should not come as surprise. He’s not handsome, he can be difficult to read and good molly Miss Molly he was opinionated. But I can pick up a collection of his letters during his New York exile and feel like I’m right with him getting that little stove for his room or trudging around through every discount tailor shop looking for just the right suits to replace his stolen clothes. Blacklight: “Gwen…you have strange tastes in men” Me: <raises left eyebrow and stares at Blacklight> “Yeah…and???”

-Doc (Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday)

The part angel/part saint owner/operator of Western Biological who is one of the vital parts of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Without Doc, Cannery Row loses it’s heart. Heck, the main action of both Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday is Mack and the boys trying to do something nice for Doc. I’d slip over to Western Biological with some cold cans of beer any day no matter what Doc is collecting or get ready to send to a school.

-Charles “Pa” Ingalls (Little House series)

The Little House series has to easily be one of the most important book series in my life. It’s one of the things my parents read to me as a wee little BookGwen and I read it at least twice a year nearly forty years later. You television Little House come latelies can swoon all you want over permed hair Pa Ingalls. Actually… you can keep him and his lack of underpants. Seriously, I find Michael Landon as Pa beyond gross. The real Charles Ingalls has a kind of crazy intense look that reminds of Christian Bale going hardcore for a movie role (Blacklight: “I bet you think he’s hot” Me: <looks guilty>). The book version of Charles Ingalls isn’t a saint, and you know it could not have been an easy life being married to someone who dragged you and your children all over the damn country dodging Indians, financial ruin and the relentless weather. But those wonderful Garth Williams illustrations? Now that is one handsome man who could swing an ax as easily as he could play the fiddle. Maybe pulling up stakes…again…isn’t such a bad thing?

-Captain Brown (Cranford)

Cranford doesn’t quite know what to make of Captain Brown when he and his daughters come to live in the quiet town. For one thing, he’s a…man and well, he admits to being poor and loves The Pickwick Papers <shudders>. But he’s a good man who will do anything for his girls with his limited resources and his death? The man dies saving children from being killed by a train. Sorry Jim Carter, you did a lovely job as Captain Brown in the 2007 Cranford tv series but in my head? Captain Brown is Alan Rickman.

-Bernard Black (Black Books)

Okay so Bernard Black isn’t an author (his amazing response to a publisher’s rejection letter notwithstanding) and he’s not in a book but he’s a fictional character who runs his own book shop. He’s surly and loathes his customers and smokes and drinks. I should loathe him right back. But there is something about this cranky pants Irishman that makes me swoon and wish Black Books was a real shop to visit on my fantasy “Raid All The Used Book Shops In The UK” trip.

Now to spend the rest of Valentine’s Day with the only true rival for my books and Mr Kindle…Blacklight. 🙂