Top Ten Tuesday: Dynamic Duos

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists! Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers’ answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND fill out Mr. Linky.
If you can't come up with ten, don't worry about it---post as many as you can!

Top Ten Tuesday Rewind is a chance for you to go back through the archives and chose a past TTT that you want to do, or maybe even redo! The best part is that the linky is going to be like a grab bag! You won’t know what it is until you get there!

Top 10 Dynamic Duos

My favourite pairings in books. Romantic, heroic, friendly… you name it, I think I got it in there. No order other than as they came to me.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle (and continued by many others) – The Holmes and Watson dynamic is just awesome. I have a real soft spot for Nigel Bruce’s performance as the doctor in the film series, despite him dumbing down Watson to the level of a sweet old duffer, but the books are far superior because they show them as a pair of partners who help each other to achieve success that neither of them could have managed on their own – as good a detective as Holmes is, having Watson to back him up is integral to a lot of the better stories because he can rely on him utterly.

Link and Ridley in the Caster Chronicles (Beautiful Creatures and Beautiful Darkness) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl – I love the main pairing of Ethan and Lena, but Ethan’s best friend Link is one of my favourite ever supporting characters and Lena’s cousin Ridley is just awesome. I’ll avoid going into details about them so’s not to spoil the books for those of you yet to read them (seriously?! Come on, go buy them!) but the interaction between them is fantastic

Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald – My favourite tragic love pairing ever.

Romeo and Juliet from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare – My second favourite tragic love pairing ever.

Ty and his love interest from When I Was Joe by Keren David – Outstanding development of the relationship between these two, in one of the most powerful novels of the last few years. Avoiding stating who the love interest is because it’s spoilery.

Hermione Grainger and Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling – Yeah, Harry’s a decent enough hero, but come on, it’s all about the way the relationship between Hermione and Ron develops over the seven books! (Oh, and apparently there’s some villainous guy they need to beat; I was busy paying attention to the angst personally.)

Judith Dunbar and Loveday Carey-Lewis from Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher – One of my very favourite coming of age novels, while both of these girls have several relationships it’s the beautifully depicted friendship between the pair, who meet as outsiders at a boarding school in the Thirties, which keeps me reading this rather long story over and over again. The TV version – which featured Keira Knightley in an early role as the teenage Judith – is a horrendous adaptation which plays much too fast and loose with the book, but is quite a good TV drama in its own right if you can get past this.

Eleanor of Aquitaine and Geoffrey of Anjou from Devil’s Consort by Anne O’Brien – Eleanor has several lovers during the course of the book and they’re all interesting characters – however I thought the contrast between her first husband, the pious Louis, and the thunderous Geoffrey made the chemistry between her and Geoffrey really sizzle.

Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe from the Dalziel and Pascoe series by Reginald Hill – Again, the TV adaptations don’t do them justice! As much as I like Warren Clarke as Dalziel, the books are far better – some of the most satisfying police procedurals around, mainly due to the way the dynamic between bluff Yorkshireman Dalziel and the sensitive graduate Pascoe develops throughout.

Scout Finch and Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – The best portrayal of a father I’ve ever read. I’ve seen descriptions of Atticus which say that he is ‘too perfect’ but they seem to be missing the point – Scout’s telling the story of what she saw through the eyes of a child, she naturally idolized Atticus. As did I, reading the book. A breathtaking novel.