This week we continue on books—but we’re gonna do series: Something that has become more popular and money making for publishers and their authors over the last few years.
Today we’re doing the Novel/Series as an obsession.
All pictures —or at least the main and the ones at the beginning and end—–which I took are from the Morse Museum on Park Ave in Winter Park: http://www.morsemuseum.org/
Frank at once settled down to the mating dance of the academe, and they were soon neck-deep in archetypes and the parallels between ancient superstitions and modern religions. Outlander
When does a read become a passion—-when you start out with a British nurse (who’s just home from the front lines and reunited with her professor husband) in 1945….then take her to Scotland with that loving, but not too exciting, husband. Then send her thru some time portal stones where she ends up still in Scotland—but now it’s 1743 and she’s in the middle of a unsteady peace threatening to break out into a war.
I must confess that I started with the TV movies first and then moved on to the book—I actually had the first few of them…I tend to pick up chucks of series and put them in my library to read when I get to it….I’m one of the few people I know that has my bookstore try to get me to not buy another series just yet….
When the writer makes you feel like you’re there—makes you relate to the heroine (me being a nurse didn’t help) and gives you a cast of characters that you’d like to be stranded in time with.
I turned my face to the wet pillow and sailed a salty river into the caverns of grief remembered, into the subterranean depths of sleep.
—Claire in Dragonfly in Amber, Prologue
And then you bring on a hero that’s tall, ginger and handsome, who actually treats women respectfully and is in a kilt….and is a true Scot (as in what’s he wearing underneath)…..oh and this is a spoiler….but to top it all off he’s a VIRGIN…….ok so when was the last time you read of such a hero and he’s strong, and brave, speaks multiple languages ….I could continue but Dianna might get me for copyright issues.
So what’s not to get obsessed about? And then they get married to keep her out of trouble—which of course never works but then the marriage goes from convenience to hot and steamy and if you’re not hooked you never will obsess over a book so why am I wasting my time.
Now the fact that there’s a TV series of course helps the obcession cause the perfect man is now flesh and Sam blood; Jamie Land we can all identify with feisty and often open mouth insert self into grave danger Cait’s presentation of Claire.
Whether he was expecting a demon or an angel was uncertain. He had no idea of the staffing requirements of Purgatory; it wasn’t a matter the dominie had addressed in his schooldays.
And we have lots more that Time Travel and sexy episodes (though I’m not skippin’ any of those)—I’ve read all 8 books and we’ve had evil British officers, Nasty jealous staff, a trial for witchcraft, and that was all in the first book.
In addition to Scotland we deal with duels and quickie Kings in France to major battles back in Scotland. From strange Masters of herbs to pretender’s son. There are major battles and multiple sea voyages as well as sea sickness and acupuncture by strange Chinaman. Print shops and battlefields….a new world and an Island home of an old aquaintanes. And don’t forget the Lock Ness Monster who does not appear in the TV series.
And it’s all written by Diana Gabalon:
Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling OUTLANDER novels, described by Salon magazine as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting ‘Scrooge McDuck’ comics.”
http://www.dianagabaldon.com/about-diana/bio/
Still less could I be afraid of those ghosts who touch my thoughts in passing. Any library is filled with them. I can take a book from dusty shelves, and be haunted by the thoughts of one long dead, still lively as ever in their winding sheet of words.
—Claire in Drums of Autumn, Prologue
But these books aren’t all happy and healthy….there is death, destruction—rape of both the female and at least one of the male characters….there is rough bits and characters that aren’t always sweet and loveable. In one episode one of the ladies is badly used when she is rescued and it is found out what happens none of the prisoners are left alive to stand trial for their crimes. In another of the novels one of the main characters looses a hand compliment of the British army for thievery.
There are all manner of good and really evil characters and the best thing is that like in real life both are capable of going away from their standard paths. We have gays and straights, sadists and much more. We go thru a world where jealousy is flaming and love even more so…..this is a romance that lives thru it all and endures but as one expects from two such independent characters not always serenely. And there are other lovers, other romances, other stories of the old and new world….children come and grow and add their lives to the telling and it does not subtract from the lovers but rather enhances them within their tribe of family and friends.
So there you have it….a condensation of why the series constitutes an obsession for me and some of the many strains of that drug called Outlander that has me and millions of others hooked.
I have lived through war, and lost much. I know what’s worth the fight, and what is not. Honor and courage are matters of the bone, and what a man will kill for, he will sometimes die for, too. And that, O kinsman, is why a woman has broad hips; that bony basin will harbor a man and his child alike. A man’s life springs from his woman’s bones, and in her blood is his honor christened. For the sake of love alone, I would walk through fire again.
(Jamie, “The Fiery Cross”)
