In all my favorite books I have favorite minor characters.
Lonesome Dove has Gus and Call, of course, but it also has Lorena and Newt.
I love Calvin and Charles Wallace as well as Meg in A Wrinkle in Time.
It's obvious who the title character is in Anne of Green Gables, but who can resist Marilla and Matthew?
India Opal Buloni and her father, The Preacher, and the dog, Winn-Dixie? I adore all the characters, minor and major, in Because of Winn-Dixie.
How often do you run across Death as a character in a novel? It's Death that makes The Book Thief so poignant.
By the Great Horn Spoon is full of crazy characters: 12-year-old Jack Flagg; his butler, Praiseworthy; Jack's Aunt Arabella; and the dastardly Cut-Eye Higgins.
There's Head of Ranch Security, Hank the Cowdog, of course, but there's also his loyal assistant, Drover; Hank's chief annoyance, Pete the Barn Cat; two buzzards, Wallace and Junior; two coyote brothers, Rip and Snort; and the humans, ranch owners High Loper and Sally May, and their kids, Little Alfred and Baby Molly. All the characters of the Hank the Cowdog series are favorites.
You never know what characters you will encounter in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, but I have come to love inept wizard Rincewind and his luggage and Cohen the Barbarian, the tourist Twoflower, and witches Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching. Oh, and, you can't forget Death.
Don Quixote has the lost dreamer himself but also the wonderful Sancho Panza.
You might be thinking about reading The Count of Monte Cristo now that you've seen the series on PBS. I encourage you to do that. You love The Count in all his pain and hurt, but you will also find yourself intrigued, I think, to read more about Mercedes and Abbé Faria, and the wicked Danglars and Fernand Mondego and Gérard Villefort.
