Outlander / Diana Gabaldon / 627 pgs. / Scottish - Irish Challenge

What can I say about this book besides "Awesome" and "Well Written"?  The author, Diana Gabaldon, has a wonderful talent for storytelling and she can evoke the feeling of a time and place for a reader with her words.

This book has it all: time-travel, romance, true love, battles, raids, Witch trials, a prison break, sword fighting, torture, family feuds, a wedding and other celebrations.  And the characters are flawed which make them more believable.  There is so much about the book that you can talk about as you really do feel (as one of my coworkers described it to me) like you are on a rollercoaster with all of the ups and downs in the events in the story.    

The writing reminds me of Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear" series, where the books are long and detailed, but there is so much going on that you don't notice the length.  I guess it goes without saying, I would highly recommend this book to anyone, but would caution that there are some very gory descriptions of violence.


 

The Seduction of Elliot McBride / Jennifer Ashley / 309 pgs. / Scottish/Irish Fiction Challenge

btw: I chose this book because

he looked like he has a great

personality.

Juliana St. John is jilted at the alter, so instead of facing embarrassment she quickly asks her longtime friend Elliot McBride to marry her.  Having been in love with Juliana his entire life, Elliot acquiesces. 
Elliot, however has just returned from fighting with the British army in India and has severe post traumatic stress syndrome.  Juliana spends much of her time at first trying to "fix" Elliot through her "love", but ultimately learns that she can't change him back to the way he was before the war, only understand and care for the person he is now. 

A good message, and an important topic; its just the book was so over the top cheesy it made it almost comical.  Granted I do not know how PTSD works, but it seemed a bit much when one "trigger" word would send the hero back to the memories of the cave where he was held and tortured.  Even if that is how PTSD works and a person can just flip out and start attacking people, other elements in the story were overdramatic.  My favorite being at the climax of the story Elliot has run off into the woods and the heroine Juliana is running through the rain searching for him to let him know how much she Luvvvvesss him, and how that will make everything better. 

Yeah, I probably missed the point of this book.  If you have an hour ask me what I really thought of this book.  ;)        

The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel / Diana Gabaldon & Hoang Nguyen / 224 pgs. / Scottish Fiction!!

I have never read Outlander, but anyone who has ever talked to me about the book says "ohhhhh...you gotta read it!!!"  Unfortunately for me, Outlander is 688 pages, and the complete series is 8 volumes (with #9 being published in December)  each 800 - 1,000 pages long (or in my case 30+ hours on CD); Basically this book better be beyond amazing for me to invest that kind of time.

Soooooo, I cheated and I read this Graphic Novel.   You can tell that Gabaldon must really pack a lot into her books, because this 200 pager jumped from one event to the next and trying to add back story   I really felt like I was missing a lot of the story and was reading some sort of cliffnote version, which basically I was; and was shocked to read in the author's note that this Graphic novel really only covered one-third of her 1st novel!  Yikes!

Now do I really want to read Outlander?  Maybe... I am a bit annoyed with the female main character Claire.  Yes, she is from the 1940s, and has time traveled back to 1700's Scotland, so she is a "liberated" woman in a misogynistic society; but some of her "brassy and fiery" antics just come across as "whiny and annoying".  It was very reminiscent of the movie "Romancing the Stone" where the heroine screams at the Michael Douglas character for hacking the heels off of her very expensive and very high heeled shoes with a machete thus making them flats so she can walk through the jungle.  There were times when yes, it was nice for Claire to point out how unfairly she's being treated, and at other times I just wish she would stop whining.  I also didn't like that the main character Jamie had to "punish" Claire by whipping her; Historically accurate for the time? most likely yes;  But no matter how "hard" it was for Jamie to punish her and how "sorry" he was; I am that bitter enough of a person to not want to forgive him (even if he was doing it to save her life).

But the male lead Jamie is super sweet and romantic.  I now see why so many female readers speak fondly when they talk about him and the series.  So maybe, just maybe, I could forgive this one transgression and try to read the actual book.

If anything if could really boost our page average in the competition!  That and if Laura W. reads Ulysses :)