The beginning…

So my friend J and I are in two book clubs together. With the two, we read a wide variety of books. One book club brought us to the fine world of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Both J and I have read the entire series now. One day while chatting with our friend Scott (from now on we’ll call him by his trucker name…Scott) we mentioned that he may enjoy the book series because of the historical fiction aspect of it. He’s really into listening to audible during his days of hauling loads here and there. He had just finished Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson and decided to give Outlander a try. What he didn’t know was that Outlander would turn him into a 15 year old girl with a sailor’s mouth (or a trucker’s mouth?!?! Is that a thing?).  This blog is the hilarity that ensued via text messages between J, Scott, and myself. Obviously future posts will contain spoilers if you have not read the books. If you have we hope you enjoy the reactions of our friend Scott and his journey with Red Jamie and his Sassenach!

Ye are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone, I give ye my body, that we many might be one. I give ye my spirit, ’til our blog shall be done.

-B

Drums of Autumn

“I just got to part 2. Where we finally get a Brianna chapter. I wonder if we’ll hear her talking to Jamie and Claire through Mary Campbell from her perspective.” Part 2 of the 4th book already? “I actually have gotten to part 3. I do drive around all day, after all.”

“I have a strong feeling Roger and Brianna are going to go back. Just heard the chapter where Roger finds out J & C die in a fire in 1776. He saw something from a Wilmington newspaper in a book. Can’t remember what he was actually looking for. He still hasn’t told Brianna about it. And he asked her to marry him but she said not yet” Omg, I was so mad during that! I wanted to slap her and yell at her to marry him! ” Well, she doesn’t want to make the mistake Claire made marrying and then finding her true love after. But I felt bad for Roger. He refused to even fuck her even though she wanted to. All or nothing for him. Oh, and gay John Gray has shown up at Fraser’s ridge with Jamie’s son in tow. Gray’s wife died on the way to Jamaica. He found out about some land in Virginia that Jamie’s son owns or something. So they came to America to find it. And they stopped at Jamie’s OTW.” Are you surprised that no one else figured it out that William was Jamie’s son while he was growing up? “Well, yeah, people at Hellwater, sure. But Ian figured it out pretty quick.”

Book 3-Voyager Part II

Thursday March 23rd, 2017 @ 6:59PM “I have a new theory. So I wondered why there was a scene at Claire’s hospital where some guy brings Abernathy some old bones. Bones of a white lady who died 200 years ago in Jamaica. Well now that they’re almost in Jamaica it seems clear that Claire is going to meet whoever those bones belong to. And I think it might be that Swedish bitch named Anarchy or whatever.” Swedish character named Anarchy? Does anyone else know who he’s talking about? I had no clue so on a separate text I sent to just J I asked “Do you know who he’s talking about? I don’t want to ask and therefore make it clear that whoever he’s talking about obviously doesn’t have a big part cause I have to ask who they are.” J texted me right back with a “Ha, I was just about to ask you if you knew who he was talking about!” So we were clueless and just had to wait it out. You’ll find out later in this post who he’s talking about.

Book 3- Voyager Part I

Voyager is the third book in the Outlander series. It continues the tale of a 20th century nurse, now surgeon, and her time traveling adventures. It starts in the 20th century where Claire and her daughter are in Boston. In this book you find out about Claire’s life since she returned from the past/Jamie/standing stones. She returned to her 20th century husband pregnant with her 18th century husband’s baby! (Talk about a secret double life!) Once their daughter, Brianna, is grown and in college Claire finally decides to look up her lost love from the 18th century to see if he might have survived the Battle of Culloden somehow. She finds out he did. He hid in a cave for a bit before getting sent off to prison. Then after prison sent to be a stable hand at a place called Hellwater. After which he started his own Print shop. At that point, Claire went to him. Their adventure continues over the ocean. This book is my favorite. It contains shipwrecks, Jamaica, love children, death, a crazy perverted Asian dude, romance, whore houses, smuggling, Swedish goats, and time travel! Doesn’t get much better than that!

Book 2- Dragonfly in Amber Part II

Chapter 42-“I’m on the verge of insanity with how often Jamie says Sassenach. Jesus, you can only hear the same shitty Gaelic word so many times. Blech. That’s what all those fucking guttural Scottish words sound like.” Well someone didn’t seem to be in a good mood today! Guess he woke up on the wrong side of the truck or possibly with a lot lizard in bed with him. He calmed down enough to tell me where he was in the book. ” Anyways, the war has begun. They’ve just gotten to Jamie’s Grandfather’s castle to persuade him to send the Fraser Clan to support Charles. And Black Jack reappeared to get Claire to help his dying brother. Who I’m now certain isn’t going to be having kids with anybody. So my theory goes out the window.” Scott was convinced that Mary and Alex were going to be married and she would be popping out their babies. His theory was back on the next day though. “Damn, I WAS right! Alex is the father!” Make up your mind Scott! “She misdirected me with him being sick.” Scott, sick people have babies too. The common cold stops no man. Well…..stops no woman. Men get the tiniest sniffle and they start filing for disability.

Book 2 -Dragonfly in Amber Part I

Saturday, March 11th, 2017- Scott was getting settled in with Dragonfly in Amber, the second book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  Once again, if you don’t want spoilers please stop reading! You’ve been warned. The second book is their trip to France, finding the Bonnie Prince,  and trying to stop the Battle of Culloden. The first text came at 6:36PM. ” So now I know Jamie dies in that battle and the Randall’s move to America. Also I think that woman that wants to marry the historian dude is Geillis Duncan, but I’m not positive.” Well that theory thoroughly confused me as I thought he was speaking about Brianna, Jamie and Claire’s daughter. He wasn’t. He was talking about Fiona, the housekeeper of the Wakefield estate. She’s the granddaughter of Mrs. Graham which was the caller for the ritual performed at the Standing Stones. I was also shocked by the idea that a man reading this book would think Jamie was dead. No woman would dare to believe that! Jamie is the backbone of this novel. He’s every woman’s dream man. No way that character would die in an eight+ book series, at least certainly not in book one. I don’t think any woman reading this novel would have accepted his “death” like Scott did. But we moved on because I didn’t want to make too much a fuss about how he was just willing to believe Jamie dead. ” She (Claire) wanted to find Geillis. I wonder what the hell she’d say to her? You haven’t met me but you’re going to go back in time and be burned as a witch! And I will almost too?  I just don’t know what she’ll say or do. And I don’t think Geillis ever gave any hint she had actually met Claire. Just that she knew Claire was also from the future. ” After we discussed what we would say to try and convince someone of such a thing while all the while trying to not come off as insane, we gave up. We moved on to another character. Black Jack Randall. “I think he must not have actually been trampled at the prison. His gravestone had the 1746 date.” So let me get this straight…Scott thinks it can be pretty easy to kill a good guy in a book but he instantly distrusted the death of a bad guy?! A bad guy that was trampled by a herd of cattle. That’s man brain for you! In a romance novel…if the villain can survive a few “deaths”, you can bet your vagina that the lead man will!

Book 1- Outlander

As I have warned before….This will contain spoilers. If you have not read Outlander and you do not want any spoilers, stop here and go read it. We’ll still be here when you return….

Monday, March 6th, 2017-that’s the date it all started. Scott was somewhere in the Souteast. He had started Outlander the day before. On Monday he shot me a text and I asked him how he was enjoying the book. “Outlander is pretty interesting so far. I’m up to the point where Claire meets a woman who knows how to give abortions.” Oh yes, Geillis Duncan! I like how the abortion giving ability was what he thought I would remember about her character the most. That’s good ole Scott for you! Later he admitted to me that the reason he didn’t call characters by name was because listening to the audible does not help with spelling. And in this book there is a lot of Scottish & Gaelic which unless you’re familiar with, it is impossible to spell from it’s pronunciation!