Current Obsession: Outlander

Hi, it's been a while! I've been busy with university and things so haven't really had anything to write about, but since I finished reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon a few days ago I figured now would be a good time.

So, Outlander. The story is so complex that trying to explain it shortly is super hard, but the basic idea is this: Claire Randall, a combat nurse from the 1940's, goes to Scotland with her husband and they find a stone circle. Claire touches one of the stones and ends up in the 18th century. 

I first found out about the books when I was watching the Vaginal Fantasy Hangouts on Youtube (it's a book club, I know you were going to ask) and Outlander happened to come up in episode 13. The whole time travel aspect interested me a lot, but I didn't actually get to the books until after the TV show started airing in Finland almost exactly two years ago and I fell in love with it. I'm a sucker for romance and historical stuff is always interesting, especially when it's obviously very detailed and well researched, so there was a lot of things to hold my attention. The story does have a lot of really dark points too, but I guess I have just strong enough stomach that I can deal with it. I'm never watching the last episode of season 1 again though. 

The Outlander series is currently eight books long and they're all at least 1000 pages long (except for the first one), so reading them can feel like a bit of a commitment. Despite the intimidating size of the books and me being a slow reader it has only taken me a year and a half to read six of them and I'm determined to read the last two this year too, or at least before book 9 comes out. To be honest I'm pretty proud of how fast I've been reading them because it took me like over 3 years to read all the Song of Ice And Fire books. It does help that the characters, especially Claire and Jamie, are so great and I love them so I have to read at least a little bit every night to see what happens to them. After I finished reading The Fiery Cross I said I'd take a little break from the series but a couple of days later I found myself thinking: "I miss Claire and Jamie..."

So I had to buy the next one. Oops.

One thing that has also been pretty great about the series is that I accidentally got my mom interested in it too when I asked her if I could get the box set of the first four book for my birthday. I've been slowly collecting the Finnish versions of the books for her as Christmas, birthday and Mother's day presents so I haven't had to think about presents too hard for a while and it has been kinda nice to be able to talk to her about something I like and she actually knows what I'm talking about. 

Finnish and English Breath of Snow and Ashes!
The Finnish covers are stunning.

Since I just finished A Breath of Snow and Ashes I'm trying to take a little break and read something else for a change (I'm currently reading The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher), but we'll see how long that lasts. I know I'm gonna end up impulse buying book 7 at some point. I'm also super excited about season 3 of the TV show! September can't come fast enough. I don't regret reading ahead at all because waiting for the new season with no idea what's going to happen would be insanely hard. Of course now it's hard because I know what awesome things to expect so... Help.