<p>Finished Breath of Snow and Ashes last night. That was a good one overall, I thought. Especially </p>
<p>SPOILERS</p>
<p>…when “dude what I wouldn’t give for a beer and a football game on TV” time traveler shows up to steal the gems…Rog, Bree and family go forward back to their time, and buy Lallybroch, totally got shivers when Roger brought the box of letters from Claire from the past. Lots of intrigue…Jocasta, Bonnet, that lawyer. Thought the Cherokee would be a bigger part of the story but oh well. </p>
<p>I have the final two books and will likely be done in a week or two. People say this next one is one of the weakest of the series but I’m invested now :)</p>
<p>^^^^I am really impressed with your prolific reading. I also started the series when they were all finished and waiting for the last one to come out (if memory serves), but I needed breaks between books because they are so long, have so many people and details to remember, and take a lot out you (or me anyway) to read.</p>
<p>I really like to read. Lately my son and I sit in dual armchairs in the evenings and read - he’s on the 5th Song of Ice and Fire book, I’ve already read all of those, so we discuss. He says he wants to read Outlander next @-) </p>
<p>That said, I’ve taken a day or two between them, I think, sometimes more if I didn’t have the next handy. </p>
<p>Was just watching a video of some kind of special viewing of Outlander with a question/answer session. When he introduces Sam Heughan, he says “He loves, he fights, he spanks:as Jamie, it’s Sam Heughan!”</p>
<p>Hmm, wonder if that tells us that a certain scene in the book actually makes it to the screen…</p>
<p>I read that the scene in question was one of two they auditioned all the Jamies with. It’s pretty key…and I imagine that will be episode 9, no? Somewhere DG said when she saw it he did it perfectly. </p>
<p>Can’t wait for the editorials and reviews of THAT scene.</p>
<p>**<strong><em>Possible Spoiler of tv show</em></strong>*</p>
<p>Also saw DG say to Sam that she was looking forward to seeing him in the other <em>very</em> shocking one in the first book, with Randall.</p>
<p>I’ll be interested in your opinion of Book 7 and 8. Those were the two that I had to wait for. I haven’t “met” anyone yet that was able to read all 8 back to back. </p>
<p>I have no idea why I posted the link to this thread in my post 363. I think I meant to link to the Q and A with some of the cast, DG, and the producer:</p>
<p>Diana has now said there will be two more books to finish the story. I guess she can’t close it all up in just one more. Plus she is writing a prequel and a story about Raymond. I think the prequel and Raymond story might be short stories, not huge books, but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>I bought the first three books back in 2000 and have been reading the rest as they were published. When I read the first ones my brain cast Alex Kingston as Claire, so Cait Balfe doesn’t really work (though admittedly Kingston isn’t an option at this point). Balfe just looks too birdy-boned to be doing amputations and all the other heavy surgical work Claire performs with nary a second thought.<br>
Heughan is fine as Jamie, though I do like the suggestion of Laurence Fox with longer hair.
I called my cable company to sign up for Starz just to watch Outlander-- and when I ordered it, the woman at the other end of the line asked if that was why. She said our cable provider’s Starz subscriptions had taken a sharp upturn that week.</p>
<p>I finished Echo and have now started MOBY. I did enjoy Echo but I feel like I should have read those Lord John Grey books…suddenly a lot of characters introduced who I didn’t have background on (Hal, Dottie, etc etc), and Willie is suddenly front and center. But I decided to read the main books straight through first, so will go back to those, and the novellas.</p>
<p>@conmama - not sure what you are asking me? Difference between book and TV you mean?</p>
<p>What I mean is that Outlander was written so tightly, every scene was fascinating and interesting. Finished in 3 days after she passed thru the stones. I felt Echo was boring.</p>
<p>I agree with that statement about the excitement of meeting the characters. But I love LJG, Bree and Roger, so much of the first 6 books. Sure, some I liked more than others, some I read faster than others. But the last 2 have been so slogged with boring filler detail, it just seemed o me she was more interested in writing about her historical research than the relationships. Yes, there were her moments of brilliance, but it was few and far between in the last books…not constantly like the first 6. But I know others disagree. Plus, that last story in echo read like fan fiction to me. </p>
<p>I definitely agree that the books flagged as they went on. Too much cutesiness, too many coincidences, too many characters that have little purpose and who are not terribly believable. (Lizzie and the twins, for example.) I do think that the last book, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, is stronger than the preceding two.</p>
<p>MOBY has been faster reading than EitB, so far. I’m about 200 pages in. The US revolution isn’t as exotic or interesting to me as the Rising, that may be part of it. I was more into Scotland and Jamaica, as settings than NC or Philly.</p>
<p>I may also be a little angry about the 20 years, too. </p>
<p>Given that she wrote Outlander "as an experiment’ and presumably didn’t intend to write more, going where she did in DiA seems an odd choice.</p>
<p>I still want to find out about the ghost but looking around the internet it seems that won’t be answered until the next book or after (somewhere read she intends 10?).</p>
<p>I read an essay by Diana Gabaldon about how Outlander came to be. She said she never had an inkling that it would be published, much less that she would write a series. At the time, she thought she was just practicing how to write a novel. She had written nonfiction before, but never fiction. She would write chapters and have “friends” on some message board she frequented read and critique the drafts. Her husband would read them as well and give feedback. She said she wrote it simply for herself, yet the fact that she did solicit so much feedback makes me think that on some level she wanted it to be something that could be published.</p>