We share one thing in common with some of our favorite characters from literature: a love of reading. We also happen to think reading can be a heroic act, whether that means imagining a different world or standing up for novels. Here are a few of our favorite readers in literature. Who are yours?

Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

“She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague 'she' of all the poetry books.”

Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery

"People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?”

Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

“The world was hers for the reading.”

Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.”

Jo March in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

"I like good strong words that mean something."