After reading about a book blog question on a Swedish book blog, I began to consider what, if any, literary characters I would like to invite to dinner. I've been blogging about similar topics earlier, but not, I think, about inviting characters to dinner.

Dinner itself might be a little problematic, since I'm vegan and I wouldn't like to offer any guest of mine anything not vegan. However, there are plenty of common and popular dishes that are, or can easily be made, vegan. For instance pancakes, lasagna, potatoes au gratin etc. At least one of my guests is vegetarian and at least another might be positive to eating vegan food anyway, see further below.

As for the others, I'd simply have to cook something really delicious so their potential prejudices won't be realized.

When it comes to the actual guests I had to do a bit of thinking. Meeting characters face to face is different from merely reading about them. Many characters are fascinating to read about but would most likely not be very pleasant to meet in real life, if it were possible.

Still, after a bit of consideration, here is my list:

Cat and Janet (Charmed Life), Conrad (Conrad's Fate) and Nan (Witch Week) from Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomanci series.

Bix from Dinotopia by James Gurney.

Bix, who is a protoceratops, must be vegetarian, so a fresh salad would probably work for her. I would just hope that the human guests would accept sitting down to dinner with a talking animal. If not, I'd love to meet her one on one. Bix is so cute and I'd really love to get to know here better.

Lucy from C S Lewis' Narnia books.

In a passage in one of the books, Lucy reacts strongly when she finds out that a meat dish she's offered contains the remains of a talking animals, so I can imagine she'd be open to eating vegan food, to make sure that she's not consuming parts from a talking animal.

The Midwife Serafina Flores, from Susan Russo Anderson's historic mysteries set in 1860's Sicily (and later France). Serafina seems like such a nice person, but since she's from the 1860's the food might be a problem. Or maybe not. Maybe a simple pasta dish with tomato sauce, herbs and some pine nuts might do.

I would have loved to mention some Swedish characters but I couldn't think of any. I read some Swedish crime series and some children's and YA books, but the characters aren't the type of people I'd like to meet. In the books for younger people the main characters aren't that interesting, it's more the plot and the setting I appreciate.