Cooking with words

[karen_w_newton]

I am currently reading Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. I got it free from the Kindle store because it's being offered as a promotion. The book came out in 1991 and is the first of a series, so in that way it's typical of a lot of promotional (i.e., free or temporarily free) ebooks

Comments

[bogwitch64]

First--I couldn't get through The Outlander. I thought it would be SO ME!!! But what irked me was that Claire had too many instances of living out a fantasy through no choice of her own. Poor darling, she's trying to rekindle a life with her husband after six years apart, but things aren't exactly as she hoped they'd be. While thinking deep thoughts about where her life is going, she is thrust into another world where she meets a handsome scoundrel of a man she is instantly attracted to, then has NO CHOICE but to marry him, has NO CHOICE but to have amazing sex with him. She lives out all these fantasies for women to sigh over, because they might want the same sort of, "I want this so much but I can't do it but if I were in a position of "I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO GET EXACTLY WHAT I WANT," everything would be fine. Bleh--that was my take, anyway

[karen_w_newton]

I think a lot of authors suffer from second book syndrome. You get years to write the first book and six months to write the second!

I get you on the convenience thing. There is a fair amount of that. Claire is also a little dim in places. If I figured out the laird's heir wasn't his biological son, I think I'd have sense enough to keep that to myself. I really like Gabaldon's depiction of 17th century Scotts, though-- the women as well as the men. And I like the fact that they're not at all apologetic about being so brutal. Like was brutal.

I'm just not sure how much I want to stick with it. I guess I'll see when I finish the book.

[paulwoodlin]

I think that objection condemns a great deal of romance literature in general. They twist themselves into all sorts of knots to maintain steamy tension between the hot, lustful couple who in real life would be having sex by the end of the first chapter, but the writer has to stretch it out for hundreds of pages. Being forced into doing exactly what she wants is one of those knots.

[bogwitch64]

I think this is one of the reasons I'm generally not a romance reader. I love a book with romance in it, I write books heavily shaded with romance! I think you'd be hard pressed to find a book WITHOUT romance in it. It's the suspension of belief necessary to believe otherwise intelligent people can so fool themselves, even lie to themselves in this intimate way that gets me. How convenient that every fantasy she has comes true against her will. That's just squicky to me.

There are TONS of people who love that sort of thing. I have no stats, but I believe that romance is the best-selling genre with the most loyal fans in all readerdom. As I said, a sizeable part of my book club had their own mini-book club because they loved it so much. It's not condemning the genre to say I'm not a huge fan of it as a genre in general. It's just my preference.

That being said, my two "guilty pleasures" are Sarah Addison Allen and Nicholas Evans. :)

[secritcrush]

This book sounds interesting, and at that price (yay free!), I've downloaded it to give it a go.

[karen_w_newton]

Yeah, you can't beat free. I'll be interested to see if you like it. I can see bogwitch64's points (above comment), but I still like the story. Of course, maybe "free" lowers expectations a bit, too?

[paulwoodlin]

A friend of mine gave me a book further along in the series, when Jamie is a fully mature stud of a warrior hero. There actually wasn't much romance in it; it felt more like it was tying up loose ends from the previous books. Along with a plot about if America should revolt from England or not, because the happy couple had ended up in backwoods America. Don't ask me what that has to do with 17th Scotland; maybe another time travel trip.

Sometimes it read as if the author wanted to complain about male sexism but couldn't think of a modern sexist bad enough to be a dramatic villain, so stuck her heroine in the past so she could give (or think) speeches. But she did have a flair for plot twists that kept me reading along.

[karen_w_newton]

>as if the author wanted to complain about male sexism but couldn't think of a modern sexist bad enough to be a dramatic villain,

What an interesting way to put it! In a way, I think that's what you do when you put a modern character in the past- you highlight how things have (hopefully) changed.

[paulwoodlin]

I'll try to put it your way next time. I've been looking for a politer way to phrase it.

[anonymous]

First of all, OUTLANDER is not (as you've noticed) a typical romance novel! (Far from it.) In fact, although the book was initially marketed as such, and the series was shelved for many years in the Romance section of the major bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders (though this is no longer the case), OUTLANDER and its sequels cannot easily be classified in any particular genre. There are elements of historical fiction, scifi/fantasy, and many other genres in these books.

I discovered the OUTLANDER books in 2006 and quickly became thoroughly addicted. For the past two years I have been Section Leader of Diana Gabaldon's section of the Compuserve Books and Writers Community, which is the online forum where Diana hangs out. Diana likes to hear from her readers, and we're always happy to welcome new people there, so please feel free to come and join us on Compuserve if you have a comment or a question about anything OUTLANDER-related.

By the way, if you liked OUTLANDER, you may want to check out the new graphic novel, THE