School is out and summer is practically upon us. What better time to instigate a course of summer reading. First on the list should be the English/Scottish time travelling Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Set primarily in the mid-20th and the mid-17th centuries, Gabaldon does her best to suck you into this paranormal romance series from the get-go. Passion, honor, adventure, and more are incorporated into the story of Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser who come from different centuries, but despite vast differences still have much in common. Plus it has kilts and who doesn’t love kilts? I’ve only read the first one, but loved it and will read the second soon. I hope you get as much enjoyment out of this series as I have.
We don’t have all eight to 12 (depending on how you count) novels in the series, but we do have five of them and the others you can get using UW Request (formerly Universal Borrowing) from other UW System libraries for free.
The Outlander series is also a Showtime television series that began in 2014 and has been renewed for a third season next year. I’ve seen one episode of that and it was quite enjoyable and faithful to the book. Unfortunately it is not available through the UW System yet, but if you have Netflix or another similar video service you can get it that way.
Another option for enjoying Outlander is to investigate the graphic novel series. There’s one out so far, The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, that covers the first third of the first book. Hopefully another one will be forthcoming. The graphic novel can also be borrowed from UW-Milwaukee using UW Request.
