httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkizwJUiVjA
This started almost as a quid pro quo with a co-worker that I got to watch Orphan Black, but now I’m kind of waiting impatiently to see this.
In our conversations of TV shows to watch she mentions that she is excited to see that one of her favorite book series is finally coming to the screen. Starz is producing a TV series of the Outlander books written by Diana Gabaldon. She tells me it is about an English Army nurse from WWII who gets transported back to the mid-1700’s Scotland.
I’m a sucker for time travel, books or movies, so I’m interested. I check out the trailer(s) and now I’m intrigued. I read a bit of the blog that the author writes and I like her style and sense of humor, so now I think, maybe I should read the book. Jamie has a copy of the book on her Kindle, but can’t seem to find her, you know, ink on paper with a glued binding, circa sometime last century version, so I will have to see if I can find a copy of a book that was published in 1991.
Turns out it was pretty easy. My local supermarket has a paperback copy on their book aisle because book No. 8 of the series is just out in hardback and the paperback was re-issued because of the upcoming TV series (even has the two main actors, in character, on the cover.
Now my favorite book series will always be Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, tough guy private-eye with his own moral code that always gets his man, usually in a one on one violent confrontation. The writing is direct with short sentences in short chapters, double spaced on pages with large margins. A couple hundred pages of the literary equivalent of a can of sour cream & onion flavored Pringles.
Outlander is the polar opposite. There are densely packed pages filled with minute, detailed descriptions of the surroundings and stuffed with personal observations, sort of the literary equivalent of a Martha Stewart Poppy Seed Grapefruit Torte. Think Stephen King length, this baby is 850 pages. I’m not a big fan of period pieces, but I’m still with this one at the 500 page mark. I think I recognize the seed in all the flowery, descriptive text as the writing I liked in her blog. Still, I’m not sure I’ll read any more of the books, but if the TV series turns out as good as it looks in the trailers, I’ll be watching.