Gabaldon intro post

[meko00]

Some of you might know that Ronald D. Moore is adapting Outlander by Diana Gabaldon for Sony and Starz. (The link to the author website has further links to twitter and Facebook, where she usually posts snippets of scenes from upcoming or recently published works.) Outlander was published in 1991. It has 850 pages and 41 chapters, and it's to be

Comments

[meko00]

Re: Frank.

Frank's obsession with genealogy and his reaction to Claire's discussion of Roger.

[kassto]

Hi! Just to be clear, what do you class as a spoiler, given that these books have been out in the public domain for years. Do you mean spoilers for people who may watch the TV show who haven't read it? If that's the case, how do you want the spoilers marked in the comments?

[meko00]

Well, I thought that people who haven't read the books might stumble across this post and find something of interest. I think I'll make further posts spoilery and then they can just use this one. Or something; must say I haven't really pondered all the possible alternatives, sorry.

[kassto]

Spoilery comment: I speak as someone who has read this whole series of books several times. A lot of my thoughts about it are from that perspective.

[meko00]

I don't think that your comment is all that spoilery; this is more or less what I meant. Not many specific details :-)

You know, while I enjoy spare prose (and often write it myself) I don't mind a more leisurely approach when there's a clear purpose to it: a sort of settling into the scene; in fact, it's a way of colouring the details that make the world come alive more. Then again, from a nonfiction translating POV economical prose doesn't really enter into it, so it's good to be a literary omnivore. *g* And, I'll confess to having been bogged down with The Fiery Cross for a while as there were some series of scenes that went on for hundreds of pages, it felt like, so, I agree that economical prose can be a good thing. Personally, I'm often too concise in my word choice and sentence construction, which isn't always positive. It's difficult for me to ramble on about things, but I think that it partly depends on how much time there is for internal planning beforehand. In fiction I quite like when I get a peek into internal monologues

[kassto]

With Claire, DG has made a specific point of choosing someone who will survive in the past - she's a nurse, she's used to war and men at war, she's accustomed to having no real home and being without the comforts of civilisation, is eminently practical etc, as well as being pretty ballsy. It's not like the modus operandi of reality shows where the idea is to have people who won't cope very well in order to manufacture drama

[meko00]

I agree: as a fish out of water, Claire adapts very well. :-)

Mmm, going forward must be much worse.

I read 3½ of Rowling's books but found her prose increasingly annoying from the middle of the 3rd book. Maybe i'll go back for another try one day. Don't remember being annoyed by Ondaatje's writing, though. Then again, I hardly remember it.

They did, last year I believe.

Huh. Well, a lot of Nordic Lutheran tradition is centred around food, and there's some pagan elements too. Of course, there's the religious part too, if people are interested. Which I'm not.

[ayinhara]

I read the first three books but declined to follow the stories any further. I guess I have limited interest in the Perils of Pauline even in an updated form. I do love the time travel gimmick and Claire having a modern perspective trying to deal with 18th century characters and issues was entertaining.

[meko00]

Not having seen The Perils of Pauline, I just looked it up on Wikipedia; I think the series is far more than that. Then again, I read for more than just plot.

[ayinhara]

The expression perils of pauline is used colloquially to refer to any damsel in distress situation, where the hero routinely saves the heroine from death or dishonor. I didn't realize that the expression derived from film serials. I just looked it up myself.

[meko00]

(Not living in the States (nor being a native speaker), I have other colloquialisms. *g*) Well, I still feel the books have more to offer than a mere damsel in distress situation, but to each her own. Also, it's not clear who's the damsel. Of course, in the first two books there are elements of danger from death or dishonour, but that's partly due to the setting and Jamie's religious and moral code. Me, I'm agnostic secularised Lutheran so a Catholic in the 1740s seem a bit... odd, but I can accept it.