What I'm Reading: 'Outlander' by Diana Gabaldon

I thought that this would be the best week to talk about Outlander since the series wrapped up its first half of season one on Saturday evening. If any of you are as swept up in the world as I am, it was a tragic day indeed. But! While you suffer until it comes back on Starz in April, you can satiate your love for the Scottish Highlands with the novels upon which the series is based (all eight of them!). 

I started the book a few weeks ago and then set it aside in favor of other things, until the series reached an impending big moment (I won't spoil it, but those of you who watch the series know what I'm talking about), which motivated me to pick the book back up again, and then I managed to voraciously consume it in a manner of weeks. It is, at its core, a book about time travel, so naturally things get a bit crazy, but Gabaldon does such an excellent job of transcending any genre that it could possibly exist in (fantasy,  historical fiction, romance, adventure). I would liken it to the Game of Thrones series in that way; i.e., it is ideal for people who never read historical fiction or romance or fantasy, myself included; unlike GoT, however, the Outlander books have been written for a female audience. so you can read them without feeling guilty and recommend them without apology. If I had a teenage daughter I would definitely try to get her hooked on them as a passive way of teaching essential feminine/ist values and sex ed.

This Week in Books Adulthood Dies and Margaret Atwood Lives Forever.

The shortlist for the 2014 Booker Prize has been announced; it's particularly significant because this is the first year the prize is open to non-Commonwealth writers (i.e., it used to be exclusive to Britain, Ireland, Canada, and a few other former British colonies, like India). The books still must be written in English and published in the UK, but it's possible for Americans (Karen Joy Fowler and Joshua Ferris made the cut) to win now, which actually seems kinda lame.

Flavorwire has a nice interview with the ladies behind Women in Clothes, which I'm still obsessed with.

After the initial flurry of interest in the YA genre bashing back in early summer, I was very over it, and I don't even really read YA books anyway. But Emily Nussbaum and A.O. Scott, two of my absolute favorite cultural critics (neither of whom writes about books) got into the mix this week, and I enjoyed the results. Plus, Nussbaum gives some attention to Outlander, which only further secures her place in my heart.

Finally, some frustratingly awesome news out of Canada. Margaret Atwood is the first author to participate in the Future Library project; a forest in Norway has been planted with the intention of one day supplying paper to publish a Margaret Atwood book that has been written but will not be read and distributed for 100 years. That's pretty cool, but also kind of non-news.

This Week in Books I endorse Roxane Gay and Outlander again...

There was a great piece by Michael Harris at Salon about reading and distractions, which everybody should be able to relate to, even the most hardcore readers among us.

Everybody (except me, who hasn't yet read it) has been loving Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life, and this week it was announced that she's writing a sequel.

Teju Cole is an excellent Nigerian-born novelist who I've endorsed on the blog before (if you loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) and he wrote an essay for The New Yorker on re-reading James Baldwin, another author I really admire. In light of recent events in Ferguson, good writing about race in America is clearly as important as ever.

The #WeNeedDiverseBooks has been gaining a lot of momentum this year, especially among librarians, and it makes a good companion to #ReadWomen2014. NPR has been doing quite a bit of coverage on the topic this week, but I especially enjoyed this story about how to sell diverse books, as the lack of market is often cited as the primary reason for the lack of diversity in serious literature.

Finally, Roxane Gay is recapping the entire Outlander series for Vulture, episode-by-episode, so you have yet another compelling reason to get into this show/book series.