Yes! My blog is back. *clings*
To celebrate, a post! In which I make you do my thinking for me!
Disclaimer: this post has not been motivated by the Katiebabs And All of Romanceland v. KMont rumble over Outlander (although that won’t stop me from taking this opportunity to tell KMont that (a) she must read Outlander, and (b) this image of a burning marshmallow and her callous invitation to mentally replace it with a copy of the precious Gabaldon tome will have me sleepless all night).
Rather, the idea for this post came about because of two recent events:
1. I had a post-work cocktail party Monday, and therefore cleaned the guest bathroom, where I came upon a copy of a book a fellow bus stop mom had lent me (see above). Months ago. I didn’t ask her for it. She showed up with it and told me I’d love it.
I haven’t read it, perhaps because there is just something about a “quirky twentysomething essayist” who is also a “well connected uber-publicist” that doesn’t attract me.
2. I was watching the BBC North and South miniseries with Richard Armitage, and I mentioned the author, Elizabeth Gaskell, to my husband. “Have you ever heard of her”? I asked. “Yes”, he replied. “That book is downstairs. My mother left it for you a while ago.” O-kayyyy.
When I journeyed down to said bookcase, I saw a number of other books people had begged me to read over the years. Some were hits (Lying Awake by Mark Salzman, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood) and some were not (Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif).
We talk a lot about trying to get our friends and family to read romance. As I type this, my own mother is sweating her way through none other than Outlander.
But how do you deal with friends and family trying to get YOU to read THEIR books? Do you politely decline? How so? Do you take a book and sit on it for months, like me? Or do you feel obligated to give it a try for their sake or the sake of politeness? Maybe you’re just eager to give new books a try, even if they are not in the genres or the types you typically read?
Does the relationship of the book pusher to you matter? Is the strength of their desire to get you to read the book a factor?
And what the heck do I do about this Sloane Crosley book?
First all I must say I bow down to your feelings about Outlander. My lawyers put Kmont’s to shame. Ha.
My aunt and cousin are big on memoirs or the Oprah type books out there. They try and get me to read them and they aren’t forceful at all. I have to say that I think it is great that other people will recommend books I normally wouldn’t read. That was the case of Memoirs of a Geisha. I wouldn’t have read that book if one of my family members didn’t go on and on about it.
Isn’t North and South a lovely book? Somewhat different in tone and with the characterization of John in the BBC movie.
But my oh my thank you BBC for the Train Scene and Richard Armitage!
Well, I usually forget about them, and they sit in my bookcase forever, and are then forgotten by both parties, or at least by me. It’s possible the other person doesn’t forget, and nurses a festering resentment. It’s sort of like a presidential pocket veto.
When somebody recommends a film to my husband he suspects he won’t like (which means any romantic, foreign, life affirming, animated or small indie film) he asks, “Well, is there a helicopter gunboat in it?” And that cures the person of any such recommendation for the future.
You could develop a line like that. Just look them straight in the eye and say, “Well, is there a hot billionaire tycoon in it?” I believe that would’ve prevented the Sloane Crosley exchange.
“North and South” is a cracking read. Except for the ending. The ending makes it a wallbanger, though it’s true to the period. The miniseries made it better (the miniseries was fabulous!)
And dare I hope you will do an entire post on what you thought of North and South? There’s a spot with your name on The Crusader list if you do you know. I have the the book by Elizabeth Gaskell which I really do need to read.
As for reading what others push at me, it doesn’t happen often but I just say I’ll read one of yours when you read one of mine
I have that same book of essays sitting on my shelf, unread. I saw it on a bargain table and decided to buy it, but haven’t bothered reading it yet. I don’t know if I ever will.
My mom pushed a few inspirational-horror novels at me last year. I read one, and liked it (kind of — there were sections that irritated me) so not hating it was a nice surprise. I will consider books that people push at me, but I won’t apologize for putting it down after a few chapters if I’m not enjoying it. (I’m the same way with movies. I will shut that baby off if I’m bored; I don’t care how much they loved it.)
Then I try to be honest if they follow up. And I’ll try to say something good (oh, the prose was nice, but…) but make it clear it was just Not For Me. I try not to add “And if you ever suggest something like this to me again, I’ll hate you.” Sometimes, though, I feel it.
My TBR pile is +80 books so I can honestly say that I doubt I’ll get to it anytime soon, thanks but no thanks.
Unless, it’s a romance – then I might take a look.
My mother actually wanted me to read Outlander (although here in Australia, it’s called Cross Stitch – anyone know why??) some time ago and I’d heard much about it. I borrowed it from the library and started it but I was in a contemporary mood at the time and I felt I couldn’t do it justice so I stopped, thinking I’d pick it up again some other time. Recently, I did pick it up – on audiobook as narrated by Davina Porter. Man, she is AWESOME. I am now sooooo in love with Jamie Fraser I’m thinking of going to Scotland, finding those standing stones and conking Claire on the head… sorry, what what I saying…?
Oh, yeah.
I’m just about finished listening to Dragonfly in Amber and have Voyager cued up. (hey did you know there is a discussion of the first 4 Outlander audiobooks coming up at AAR in November?). Obviously, I waited til the right time to start the series!
As for other books, I tell people I read romance and if it’s not romance, I probably won’t read it but thanks for the suggestion.
Meljean wrote:
The first time I read that, I thought you said I’d shut THE baby off and I thought – what? You’re own child! But I see. You mean the film. Me too. I have little or no patience with films these days.
My mum passes me women’s fiction sometimes that I have no interest in. Basically I don’t read it and when she asks if I liked it, I say mm hmmm. Non committal. I mean, I could just say no, but we don’t do that in our family.
Most other people I know don’t tend to literally give me books. They’ll say they’ll lend it to you if you want and if you don’t take them up, it’s fine.
Interestingly, I usually get the sense that fellow romance readers who send books on don’t feel annoyed if you don’t read/ like books sent on. It’s usually got the sub-text of ‘you may like this’ rather than ‘ you will love it. Report back’.
If I were you, I’d read the essays and the hand them back. There’s every chance she’s fuming that you haven’t returned them. But if you don’t like them, I’d tell her. Put her off giving you something else that doesn’t appeal.
I don’t think I could read a book by someone called Sloane.
I quite like doing mutual pushes. I feel less ‘pushed’ to read if I know the other party is reading something I’ve passed to them too. My husband and I keep talking about agreeing a mutual swap. Him – a romance; me – some dense piece of non-fiction.
My mother-in-law sent us “The Shack”, and though I’m sure the idea behind it is admirable, I know that opinion on its worth is divided. My hubby started reading it and, after a few pages, said: “You really shouldn’t read this book.”
“Why?” I asked, expecting some horrid detail he knows puts me off completely such as someone dying or an animal suffering in some way.
“Well,” he replied gravely, “there are seven adverbs on this page alone.”
lol! The man knows me so well…
@Anida. Yes, someone lent me The Shack as well. Sat on my shelves for months, but then my Book Club read it, so I had to read it & honour was satisfied. Now the person who lent me the book denies every having had a copy of her own, so I don’t know where to send mine home to…
I try and avoid getting books at presents, or being lent books. I think it’s because my mum, who was a librarian and then an English teacher, used to give me ‘good’ books to read – not in a horrible way, just in a my-child-likes-reading-and-this-book-is-meant-to-be-great-for-her-age way. And then I’d feel I ought to read them, when I really wanted to read other things. Sill makes my skin crawl, just a little, to be given something to read. (Yet if you leave ‘Statistics on Cricket Scores From August 1922′ on a shelf near me, I’ll read it just because it’s printed material. Makes no sense.)
So, yes. I’ve trained all my family to give me book tokens, never books. But because I love them, I will read any book they do buy me, and then keep it on the shelves forever, even though both things pain me.
Outlander: thumbs down
North & South: thumbs up, though less for the romance and more for the social setting.
Richard Armitage: sigh.
The Cake book – the reviews on Amazon.co.uk are mixed, but two of them mention the bridesmaid essay. Read that, and if it’s your sort of thing, you can read the rest. If not, you can pass it back to the other mum, and say: ‘The bridesmaid essay! Reminded me of the time …’
This will give the impression that you’ve read the book, without any need to actually inhale. One essay couldn’t take that long to read.
@ Kaetrin: Davina Porter rocks! She is a goddess and I could listen to her forever … listening to those tapes took a well-spent year of my life!
I hate bookpushing probably a little too virulently. It’s just that I get so little time for pleasure reading — and such a long TBR pile of things I actually want to read — that it feels like yet another person’s demand on my free time. Recommendations, though, are always appreciated — hence my love of romance blogs.
How did my copy of The Map of Love end up on your bookshelf? I will confess that when I first read it I was guilty of pressing it on everyone I knew, with mixed results.
Having said that, in general I don’t mind recommendations, although I’m not particularly likely to read the book, but loathe having the plot described exhaustively to me. One of my sisters does this all the time when she’s excited about a book she wants me to read, and the more detail she goes into, the more my eyes glaze, and the less likely I am to actually read the book. Books that are pressed earnestly into my hands are received politely, shelved in one of my bookcases, and mostly forgotten about until either their return is requested or I’m doing a spring cleaning.
It’s funny, aside from other bloggers comments, no one really pushes books on me. I have friends that read, but they don’t often say that I HAVE to read something. Either our tastes are so similar that they know I eventually will on my own, or they just aren’t pushy. I kinda wish they were.
I actually love people “pushing” me to read Outlander. Because I can laugh and chortle and say NO! Hahahahaha! Ha! Haha.
I can’t think of any other book besides the recent Dreamfever that I was absolutely hounded to read and that was by one of the same folks that’s hounded me to read Outlander for years. I did cave to the Dreamfever demand but only because I did eventually want to finish the series.
North and South suuuure is loved. I’ve never seen it. Doesn’t BBC start it over a lot? I suppose I oughta catch that one sometime since there are women the internet over just a-swooning over it left and right. I don’t even know anything about it beyond the obvious implications from the title. But I’ve got even less time to watch TV than I do to read. Somewhere, life just went terribly wrong….
Outlander is not a romance. Just ask the author, who you know… hates romance.
All the reason you need right there not to read her – evah. Just saying.
Re-read the blog and the comments and I’m going to have to walk the book pusher walk of shame. I come by it honestly though, my mum’s a librarian and she’s still trying to get me to read this that and the other thing. Plus I bore … now I know this to be a fact
my hiking buddy by telling her plots.
Oh well, never to old to learn new tricks.
It very much depends. If the book in question is being recommended to me by someone whose taste I trust, I’m much more inclined to give it a go.
A recent example is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I’d seen the hype and heard it described as an ideal book club pick. This made me think of Oprah, whose taste rarely converges with mine, and I was put off. When a friend gave me a copy for my birthday, I read it and enjoyed it more than I’d expected to. And, yes, it would make an excellent choice for a book club!
Sybil wrote:
I’d just heard this after Babs and I started heckling one another over Outlander. It sure sounds like a romance given all the love for Jamie and Claire as a couple.
@ KMont:
I have to say for Gabaldon swearing the Outlanders series isn’t a romance, she sure can write some sexin love scenes. Some of those over the course of the 6 books are very steamy.
I tend not to enjoy books that people recommend. I think it’s like dating–if you’re single for awhile, most of your married friends will try to set you up with some random guy you have nothing in common with simply because he’s single too. If people know you like to read, they will shove anything into your hand simply because it’s a book.
My grandmother always tries to make conversation with me about Oprah book club picks–she just assumes that I read them all because reading is, apparently, what I do.
katiebabs wrote:
I don’t know. It’s one of the books I was loaned and haven’t read. but I really enjoyed the miniseries.
Carolyn Crane wrote:
this is it! the solution I was seeking! Thank you!
Ann Somerville wrote:
No HEA in the book, perhaps? That would be bad.
KristieJ wrote:
Oh, yes, that was my whole reason for watching it!
@ Meljean:
If the billionaire tycoon line fails, I have my backup: “the prose was nice, but…”. Thank you!
You know, I have skimmed passages of the Sloane book, and I admit some of it was funny.
Kaetrin wrote:
And now I have a third line of defense! My TBR pile!
Strangely, despite my love for romance on audio, I failed at listening to Outlander on audio, and enjoyed reading it much more.
As for the title difference, I found this on a website called Editorial Ass. I guess it happens to other books too:
“Diana Gabaldon, meanwhile, wrote herself a bestselling series that starts with a book that was called OUTLANDER in the States. When she found out people in England knew her book as CROSS STITCH, she was totally confused. The timbre is certainly pretty different, at least on American ears! (I heard her tell the story of her absolute stupification over the British title at a book signing once.) But it turns out in England, the Commonwealth definition of the word “Outlander” prevails–and outlander is some kind of slang in Australia for something that didn’t apply to her book (back me up here, global friends? I can’t remember or find online what the exact definition is). So in her case, it was a linguistic gap kind of thing” .
Marianne McA wrote:
A FOURTH strategy. Thank you!
Laurie EC wrote:
I feel exactly the same way.
Aoife wrote:
Oh, it was driving me crazy trying to remember who gave it to me! LOL. I recall thinking at the time, “this is a romance novel lite”. I tend not to like genre hybrids, that’s probably why I didn;t like it.
KMont wrote:
Actually, I watched it on my laptop via Netflix, a newish feature that I LOVE and use way more than I expected. It allows me to catch bits of a movie when I can, because staying awake for two hours after the kiddos are in bed is … forget it. I recommend it. No, wait. You HAVE to watch it.
Sybil wrote:
It’s interesting that she thinks so, but it is not up to her. It really isn’t.
@ Janet W:
No worries!
SarahT wrote:
That was a factor I didn’t mention in my post, but it;s a good one.
katiebabs wrote:
Really. Outlander has one of the best virgin deflowering scenes in print.
Erm – doesn’t anyone else use the ‘first ten pages plus last paragraph’ test? Works for me.
I’m with Meljean – I’m more put off by the name Sloane than any other factor. Books of essays can be quite good – I really liked Nora Ephron’s collection with the ‘I Hate My Neck’ title (can’t remember if word for word) and the great thing is there’s no penalty for skipping the ones you don’t like after the first two paragraphs – you won’t miss critical information needed to understand the next bit, as can happen when you skip pages in a novel.
And, since this discussion seems to be insidiously about Outlander – I read (and liked) the first book, and was perfectly happy to leave it at that, ignoring all subsequent volumes.
About the Outlander title (I hope we realise how much I’m self-sacrificing here!
):
Cross Stitch was the original title. It was changed because US publisher thought it was too Crafts-related, which does make sense.
This comment pretty much backed up what I heard – http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-do-british-novels-often-have.html?showComment=1246887133999#c8852547875830412485
But just want to say, ‘outlander’ didn’t (and in some areas, still doesn’t) refer to an English person. It refers to a non-Gaelic person, e.g. Scottish people aka lowlanders.
Somehow and somewhere along the line, the Scots use it as a form of abuse for English people, which is probably why the popular definition stuck. It’s wrong, but there is it. Typical.
(Also, excuse the nit-picker in me, it’s not ‘sassenach’. A proper Gaelic word is ‘sasunnach’. ‘Seassenach’ is a Scots/lowland word, mimicking the Gaelic word. (cough) I’ll shut up now. Yay! =D)
Damn it. I couldn’t hold back the nit-picker after all. (weeps)
@ Maili – thanks for that. Sounds like we can gush together and not make ourselves nauseous at all!
Now I’m wondering if anyone knows (sorry, this is totally off topic, bit it IS about Outlander) why my Arrow version of Cross Stitch has some different bits in it to the unabridged audio version? There is a bit in particular where Jamie is describing his very last arse-whipping at Leoch after he’d dissed Mrs. Fitzgibbon. In the audio, there was detail about what he’d done and how Mrs. Fitz had gone to Callum etc. In my Cross Stitch, the detail is all left out – it just says that he ran his mouth off and he got in trouble for it. My book is not abridged. Why is this so???
As to whether or not Outlander is a romance. Let me put it this way, it’s the romance that makes me care – it’s why I read it. And, Jessica, you’re quite right, it isn’t up to Ms. Gabaldon to say it is or it isn’t. If we, the readers, think it is, then it is. Art and the beholder and all that…
Oh, this is a shameful topic, to be sure. A neighbor (Swedish, but has lived here for 50+years) lent me a book (The Thrall’s Tale, I think) about some Scandinavian indentured servant — haven’t even opened it. She hasn’t asked, thank goodness. But now a friend has lent me three books (!) that actually belong to her daughter (!!) so they eventually have to go back (!!!) on Richard III. *sigh* I’ll never read them, so eventually I’ll return them with a sheepish apology. And burn in shame.
I’ve never read Outlander, but I loved Bel Canto. Loved it. I’m just saying.
Hi! I just stumbled across your blog and am all agog because your bookshelf (in your header) looks exactly</i) like mine. So I figured I should say hi.
As to the current post, a) Outlander is a fantastic book, I love it, but I'd argue that it is not a romance by current genre standards, being that it's written in first person, and the relationship plays out over a series of books, and it's also rather too long for a romance. There's more subtle things too–like its very slow start, that don't jive with the genre. I'd call it speculative fiction with strong romantic elements.
Of course it won a RITA award, which I suppose makes it romance by adoption. But in general, any author would be hard pressed to sell a book like Outlander as romance today. Maybe things were a little looser in 91? Or maybe it's just a black swan.
I get Oprah books pushed on me all the time. Given my own druthers, I read door-stopper fantasies, romance and classics. But my mind is a garbage scow. I'll give anything a swing, so don't mind having books pressed on me. But I do find that the older I get the less I can tolerate any writerly self-indulgence. All I want is a a good story.
best,
Evie
I don’t get the impression that Diana Gabaldon hates romance novels. She just argues that the Outlander books don’t really belong in the romance genre, and unlike some of the previous posters, I believe she’s right. The books have strong romantic elements and some very sexy stuff going on, but I think they’re a blend of several genres and can’t really be classified easily. Weren’t a lot of people unhappy when Outlander won the Rita precisely because it wasn’t viewed as a romance by many?
Jessica – it’s interesting that you say it’s not up to her to decide if it is a romance or not; I think that as the author, she is certainly free to characterize her books as she wishes. That’s not to say we can’t have views that differ from hers.
As for Gabaldon’s views on the romance genre, I’ve never gotten the impression that she is dismissive of it, and have seen recommendations by her for romance novels – definitely for SEP, probably for other authors as well.
Meri wrote:
Yes, I meant to say, “It is not up to the author to decide FOR HER READERS.” sorry I wasn’t clear, but we do agree!
I also agree with you that Outlander contains strong elements of other genres. I think perhaps subsequent volumes in the series, which drifted from the romance formula, may have some readers forgetting their initial read of Outlander, but my own view is that Outlander is a romance novel, defined as a book primarily about a central love story with a satisfying and optimistic ending.
Lots of thoughts on this topic. 1) Perhaps the only book I read which was given to me was The Thorn Birds and I only read it as we were away at the time and that was the only reading material available, otherwise I strongly discourage books as gifts, booktokens yes, everytime.
2) North and South, I started to watch the latest version and gave up. I had read the book and thought the TV version so compacted as to make no sense. I really liked the book.
3) I think I would call Outlander/Crossstitch, romantic in the old fashioned sense, rather like Robert Lewis Stevenson’s books.
This is actually a very timely question for me. BFF and I are both voracious readers, with differing tastes. While we do intersect in places, we definitely have our differences. We recommend books to each other all the time – with varying results. Sometimes the book is a complete revelation, other times it’s destined to be a forgettable experience, worthwhile only for the book evaluation the two of us will have after the fact.
Right now I’m reading Lamb by Christopher Moore on BFF’s recommendation. I am enjoying it, but so far am not finding it quite as hilarious as she did. I think though that if the recommending promotes literary discourse for us, it’s worthwhile. Although, neither of us are “pushers” so to speak…
I think that if someone other than BFF were to force me to read a book, I would probably just let it languish on principle!
[...] a book reader’s perspective, what’s the point? Do you choose what books to read based on reviews? I almost never do: taste is so subjective, so I don’t rely on the yes/no [...]
@Jessica:
No, there is a HEA. It’s just not very dramatic, so I guess they wanted to spice it up a bit. The ending just affirms everything that was wrong about Victorian women’s status in law and society, and while the author challenges the status quo in so many other areas, it’s irritating that on women’s rights, she seems to be very conservative. True to her period, though.