#teamcollege

[humorinspirationdragon]

Graduation Nation!!! Congratulations 🎊 to my little sis!!! #ahs #arlingtonhighschool #graduation #teamcollege (at Arlington High School) https://www.instagram.com/p/CP5tu-rhLJ5/?utm_medium=tumblr

[nmbr-onespecial]

I have an essay due tomorrow but I'm on Tumblr-- WHAAAAA?!

[maspan]

Book club: Outlander

(I borrowed this copy, and I still want my money back.)

I recently read the first book in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series.

Otherwise known as “Twilight, with more pages and less plot; more sex and less titillation.”

This book required seven sequels? It has barely any plot for the first 675 pages. There is a case of accidental time travel to 18th-century Scotland, but our 20th century heroine doesn’t seem all that bothered, really! Especially not once she just has to marry the resident rugged Highlander with a mysterious past. The sex is mind-blowing, the spousal beatings are infrequent, and there are an alarming number of references to various characters being spanked – which I think are supposed to be edgy and erotic but which end up mostly being clumsy.

Oh, and there’s also a last-minute rescue from a witch trial. Still, for all that supposed action, this book was largely a slog. It’s like a failed romance novel:  everything -- from the glinting auburn hairs on our rugged Highlander’s manly, muscled arm, to the different leaves on the many, many plants that our part-time healer heroine collects -- is described in such excruciating detail that it kills all interest in what’s actually happening to the characters.  It wasn’t a difficult read, but it took forever because I kept on finishing a chapter and not caring what happened next.

At least, that was the case until I hit those last 175 pages. Wow. Personally, I might spend a little more time writing about: an aborted jailbreak; a husband submitting to rape and torture to save his wife’s life; an escape from a pack of wolves; a second, more successful jailbreak, resulting in the rescue and initial medical treatment of said raped and tortured husband; the prolonged despair and depression of said raped and tortured husband; a religious conversion experience; the sexual healing (yes, really) of said raped and tortured husband; and a pregnancy.

But then again, I apparently have a lot to learn if I want to write a book that satisfies readers’ needs for  “historical galavanting, romantic passion, and exquisite writen word." Now working on her eighth sequel, Gabaldon has to be laughing all the way to the bank.