Time Traveler's Wife

I originally read this about five years ago when it was a super popular best seller and absolutely loved it. I recall recommending it freely, only to be chagrined later on with the realization that the book is really not intended for the sensitive reader. With my first reading, Niffenegger managed to "smoke and mirror" her way around the book's frequent crude language and descriptive love scenes because Time Traveler's plot was so incredibly original.

After attempting a discussion with a friend who very recently read it, I realized most of my memory of the book was too faded for a legitimate conversation. I picked up the enormous hardbound copy at the library and quickly found myself escaping in the tricky time traveling romance and doomed love story once again. It really is such a fantastic idea and when I finished, I found myself still scratching my head in wonder about how Niffenegger got the idea for this book in the first place, and feeling slightly overwhelmed by its desperate ending.

The smoke and mirrors weren't as effective the second time around, however, as I felt more offended by the crude language used by both Clare and Henry. I'm not a prude who regards all language as inappropriate, and think sometimes the character's background or emotional outburst warrants the feeling such language manages to evoke. But it felt really unnecessary most of the time. Clare and Henry are both such smart characters, so capable of better verbs and adjectives. Additionally, neither seems particularly rash or impetuous - so their casual dropping of vulgar words only seemed...vulgar.

If you care about those things, you probably won't enjoy this book. If you can justify looking past it to read a story unlike anything you've ever read, you might just love this book. I did.

The Fiery Cross

The Fiery Cross is the fifth book in a series written by Diana Gabaldon about Clare Fraser, who can travel through time by touching stones (think stonehenge). The first time she time travelled, it was an accident. She travelled two-hundred years backward to the 1740s and met the love her life, Jamie Frasier, a Scottish highlander. Their love story has developed through out each of the books as Gabaldon details the historical setting that surrounds them. In The Fiery Cross, the year is 1771 and the unrest and dissatisfaction of the colonists in the New World are humming. Even though the author uses almost 1,000 pages, the story progresses less than a year through time. That's an awful lot of information, in my opinion, without anything really happening to the characters. Jamie continues to lead, Clare continues to freak out everyone by practicing 20th century medicine in the 18th century, Briana continues to nurse (I couldn't believe how often the author had to point that out to us readers. Her breasts are hardened with milk again????) and Roger continues to be a complete fish out of water. In fact, I believe this book gets read solely because it is part of a series where the reader is already attached to the main characters. Separate it from the other books, and The Fiery Cross is unnecessarily wordy and quite dull.

This book came out four years after the previous book in this series, Drums of Autumn. Four years. I finished Drums of Autumn only few months ago and I was constantly confused by the many, many unimportant names of characters Gabaldon throws at her readers. Who? Is this important?

Turns out, not really. My theory as to why she bothers making it so complicated is that she is trying to convince the masses that these books are much more than fantasy romance, but legitimate historical fiction. She makes her point. Gabaldon clearly has done a lot of research about the living conditions, medicinal remedies, and political atmosphere of the pre-revolutionary war colonies. She included it all and then some. Lots and lots of digression about medicine that Claire Fraser would not have learned or remembered from her med school days. They do not teach microbiology stain techniques, or pathology to the extent that she would be the expert she always ends up being. Gabaldon seems to forget that Clare was a surgeon, and since she rarely gets to do surgery, the author flaunts what she's learned about medicine elsewhere in the book and always uses Clare as her medium. I find it annoying. Clare wouldn't know all of that stuff and making her some sort of superbrain takes away from the realness of her character. Why can't Claire just be wrong...or simply not know? She's pigeonholed her greatest characters. Jamie must be uberbrave. Claire must be ubersmart. Throw in some nookie a few times and you've got your book.

This took way too long for me to read. It simply wasn't very interesting. Until, of course, the very end. Around page 920, she finally threw in some of her good stuff - the time travel stuff. Genuine conflict and not just a side story that takes you somewhere for 100 pages without a purpose. Darn it...I'm going to have to read the next one!

Drums of Autumn

Yes - yet another book in the Diana Galbaldon series. They are addicting. But I'm going to take a little break for now because I have all these other books piling up and I know if I go and check out the next one, somehow it will get read before all these other worthy books. Series are like that. Especially good ones.

This is the fourth book in the time-traveling saga about super couple Jamie and Claire Fraser. While Claire stayed in the 18th century the entire story, her and Jamie's daughter, Brianna, became an integral part of the story and it was her adventures this time that crossed the time boundaries. Jamie and Claire's group make their way in the colonies of the new world. New dangers and challenges await them as they struggle with their feelings about slavery and Native Americans (still called Indians here) and the need to survive the political and natural climate of North Carolina. When their daughter, Brianna, comes across and old newspaper clipping reporting their deaths, she decides to travel back into time to meet the father she never knew and possibly to see if she can, indeed, change the past.

I have to admit that I'm saddened with the aging of Claire and Jamie. It was hard for me to make the mental leap that was necessary to put them into the role of grandparents. All of a sudden, I had to imagine wrinkles and grey hair and I didn't like it! Brianna and Roger take over as the hot young couple with the steamy romance but it isn't the same.

The difference between Gabaldon's writing of her male and female characters was very apparent to me throughout this book. Most of the males are either very good or very bad while the females live more in the grey. Of course, there are exceptions but I thought she romanticized the males a bit more and the females were annoyingly truer to life. For instance, Claire and her moral dilemma over abortion and the struggle between being everything to everyone. Jamie, Roger and even the stubbornly homosexual Lord Grey are allowed to always try do the right thing and when they don't, the error of their ways almost immediately come to haunt them. My overall feeling is that her males are more likable because they behave less bratty. Maybe it was just this particular story though, which wasn't my favorite. I liked the story better in Europe but realize the need for fresh material. Putting them in this historical context gives the author what she needs to continue her epic.

Voyager

I am so glad this series continues. Even though my arm gets tired from holding the sheer mass of these books (this one was 890 pages), I am eagerly looking forward to the next book.

Diana Gabaldon struck gold with the idea of a time-crossed super couple. The first chunk of this book, Claire was in her comfotable, but lonely,20th century, raising her and Jaime's daughter, when she decides to finally find out how Jaime died (it was too painful when she returned through the stones twenty years earlier to save their child and escape the Scottish slaughter at Culloden). These first hundred pages were well written, but luckily, Gabaldon realized that she needs these two together for the magic to be there. When Claire left all of her conveniences again, this time by choice, and finds Jamie in his printshop and says, "Jaime. . .it's me, Claire.", I got that warm-heart-all-a-flutter feeling. I think I may have even teared up. I'm not proud of it.

In Voyager, Jaime and Claire leave Scotland when trouble brews for Jaime and all of his aliases (he's become a smuggler, printer and seditionist now that his soldiering days are over), and travel to the Caribbean in pursuit of a kidnapped nephew. The history of slave trading, European colonial rule and sea travel are all richly detailed.

Unfortunately, I still cannot simply give a full stamp of approval to Gabaldon. She is a great writer and the historical detail and storyline are independently worthy of praise. But, in my opinion, she keeps these books from being truly great by including all the "ample bosom"isms. I don't know if there was a quota for the number of times she had to mention nipples but if there was. . .she met it.

That being said, I still loved it. It's a perfect mix of escapism and page-turning plot that truly makes reading fun.

Yes, I am still reading English Creek. Apparently, Ivan Doig just doesn't write the word "nipple" enough.

Dragonfly In Amber

The second book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, I enjoyed this book immensely. It's true...the series is addicting. At 743 pages, I finished wanting more and immediately reserved the next book at the library.

It doesn't have all of the Jaimie/Claire drama that the first one did. In fact, it almost felt like a "building up to" book. Not that it was boring. I learned a lot about the Scotland uprising and the tangled web between countries and royalty. It is good historical fiction. There is still the love/drama/intrigue novel that makes it fun to read but I can honestly say that I learned about a part of history that I know very little about in an interesting way.

I'm no longer a critic. I'm jumpin' on the fan bandwagon.

Outlander

I've put this off for days. Preparing myself for the wrath of Dana and Kristin. I know how I feel when a beloved book of mine isn't adored. Simpletons! Idiots! But I just can't sugar coat it...here goes.

This book has a lot going for it. It reminded me very much of one of my favorite movies of all time, Somewhere In Time. You know? The one with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour? So romantic. This book is romantic like that. A woman from the 1940s gets trapped in the 1700 Scotland and is forced to marry for her protection. This is when it started to remind me of the paperback novels with heaving bosoms and muscular chests. The protagonists, Jamie and Claire, are married for convenience (he must protect her from his arch nemesis Jonathan Randall who is brutishly evil and she must be married to be protected by Scottish law instead of the English crown) but really he wants her and she falls for him. Passion ensues but she keeps getting kidnapped which keeps him on the hunt and her constant hero. No amount of pain or torture can stop him from protecting the woman he hardly knows but just can't get enough of. It's just...unbelievable. Diana Gabaldon writes an engaging story but doesn't develop the characters enough for this to be great literature. No one is that tough, that bewitching, that heroic or evil or honest or brave. Except in romance novels.

But that's not why us girls read books like these. Simply, this is a fairly tale but instead of pretty gowns, there are kilts and clans and a lot of fight scenes. But the love story reigns supreme over the underlying story about life in 1700s Scotland. Honestly, this is the kind of book that made me fall in love with reading. This book is seven hundred pages and I read it in a day and a half because I really wanted to know how it ended. And, happily, it is a series! There is more to come. I am looking forward to reading more about Jamie and Claire.

Love you guys! Forgive me?

Never Let Me Go

This book is really best read without any prior knowledge about it. I picked it for this month's book group and we had a pretty good discussion about it. Andrea said it best when she said that while reading the first page, she thought the word "carer" was a misprint and that they meant "career". My favorite thing about this book is the writing. Not the choice of words but the view of the world the writing gives the reader of this story. It is so unfamiliar, so foreign that it takes awhile to figure out what is going on. But the author is in no rush to placate the curious or the impatient (are you a patient reader, Kristen?). He takes his time getting the reader accustomed to this strange girl, Kathy H. and her strange world.

Once I figured out what was going on and started to digest it, ethical questions, moral dilemmas, and the irresistible urge to compare it to real life debates floated around in my thoughts for a good week. I knew this would be a book I wanted to discuss with others and the book group didn't disappoint.