#ALSO they had Jamie get that one violent impulse at the end of 4 and they should've leaned into that more

[aidenwaites]

Man. And I was ready to see ten year old Jamie get fed up and get confrontational / get some kind of angry kid arc or something

[lukaina]

The BookWorm Questionnaire!

[Disclaimer: I have not created this questionnaire. I had the post in drafts and completed it today. However, the person that I saved the draft from has already deactivated the account. Their source was: http://bookaddict24-7.com/]

1. What book are you reading right now?

I am in the middle of “The illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy” (the second book: Gormenghast) by Mervyn Peake. I have a novella by Laird Barron left in the “Ominosus” anthology that contained to lovecraftiana novelettes by Elizabeth Bear and Caitlín R. Kiernan. Finally, on Friday I started reading “Too Like the Lighting” by Ada Palmer, the first book in the Terra Ignota quartet and a really challenging text so far.

2. What will you read next? I plan to keep on reading horror anthologies, maybe throw a Tanith Lee novel to spice things up and read the second TP of the comic “Monstress” by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. I am also interested in checking the much hyped “The Girls” by Emma Cline and reading “Sunshine” by Robin McKinley.

3. What was your favorite childhood book? It would be tied between “Glubbslyme” by Jacqueline Wilson (in Spanish: “Babatracio”) and “La auténtica Susi” (in German: “Echt Susi”) by Christine Nöstlinger.

4. What were your reading habits like as a kid?  I read often, went to the library at least once a week and was scolded for reading “too much” by my grandmother, who thought it was damaging my sight. In retrospect, it probably didn’t help that I needed glasses as soon as I started reading.

5. How many books do you have checked out from the library? Right now, none, but when I do I take at least two.

6. What books do you have on hold at the library? None at the moment.

7. Do you have a bad book habit? I have a horrible posture reading and my neck and back suffer. Also, I tend to read while eating now that I work at home and sauces/soups/teas end up staining the pages more often that I would like to admit.

8. Do you read one book at a time, or several? I used to be a strict one-book-at-a-time person (unless one was an essay) by now I juggle at least couple of books. I read the very heavy tomes and the paperbacks with thin binding at home to avoid damaging the books and I usually take the e-reader or a lighter book to read outside (for paperbacks, I use a small cloth bag I bought in Germany for book carrying or a totebag if I have lent the bag to Marc).

9. What is your favorite book you’ve read this year? “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin is absurdly good (and now I want to live on an anarchist moon). Second would be “Radiance” by Catherynne M. Valente, a decopunk novel about b/w cinema in a world where the Solar System has been populated by humans.

10. What is your least favorite book you’ve read this year? I read professionally for a publishing house and some of the manuscripts were subpar. A couple contained very harmful tropes and some had the laziest writing you can imagine.

11. What is your reading comfort zone? Dark fantasy, science-fiction, non-gorey horror, magical realism.

12. How often do you read outside of your comfort zone? Not often. I rarely read mysteries, romance, erotica or historical novels. Lately, I have received a score of YA manuscripts because of my and I have ended up reading many romantic stories and thrillers.

13. What is your favorite place to read? Trains and buses. I don’t usually get motion sickness and the landscape is an interesting view when I need to rest my eyes.

14. Do you lend out books? Not often. My friends live far or have too many books of their own pending.

15. Do you dog-ear books? NEVER. I remember or use one of my billion bookmarks (or random pieces of paper).

16. Do you write in the margins of books? No. I have a notebook for my manuscript reading and I try to take notes on my phone when I really like a quote.

17. What makes you love a book? Non-reliable narrators, a heavy use of mythology and folklore, beautiful descriptions, given names that have meaning, a plot that follows several generations of a family, sorority.

18. What will inspire you to recommend a book? When I realize a book is a perfect fit for a person and they are going to appreciate the style or the theme.

19. What is the one book you will always recommend to everyone? My Tanith Lee proselytism forces me to recommend “Biting the Sun” to everybody. I have also been an enthusiast defender of “The Drowning Girl” by Caitlín R. Kiernan, the comics “The Wicked + The Divine” (by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie), the novel “Embassytown” by China Miéville (translator sci-fi!) and Jacqueline Carey’s “Kushiel’s Dart”.

20. Is there a book you love that nobody else seems to? In high school we had to read “Últimas tardes con Teresa” by Juan Marsé and everybody I know dislikes it violently, while I can still quote fragments.

21. Do you read while you are: Eating? Taking a bath? Watching TV? Listening to music? On the computer? On the bus?  Eating: yes. Taking a bath: never (I would be too afraid and also I have a very small bath). Watching TV: no and I also find distracting if somebody else is watching. Listening to music: not often but I can if it helps drown a worse sound. On the bus: yes, and gladly.

22. What is your favorite genre to read? Dark fantasy followed by anthropological science-fiction (in the vein of Le Guin or Karen Lord’s “The Best of all Possible Worlds”).

23. What genre do you rarely read, but wish you read more of? Historical. I like history but I am not sure of where the good books are between a pile of mediocre and lengthy novels.

24. What is your favorite biography? I have not read many biographies but I like essays with biographical content like Caitlin Moran’s books or Kameron Hurleys’ “The Geek Feminist Revolution”.

25. What is your favorite non-fiction? I remember enjoying “Evil by Design”: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme fatale” about the idea of the fallen woman, the dichotomy Virgin Mary/prostitute, the mythological representation of evil women and the female characterization of absinthe.

26. Have you ever read a self-help book? My friends gifted me a teenage book on self-esteem but other than that I tend to dislike the genre and avoid it.

27. What is your favorite reading snack? Ideally, something that is not messy and does not leave crumbs or stains but I love drinking coffee/tea and eating chocolate while reading.

28. What is the most inspirational book you’ve read this year? “The Dispossessed” has prompted HOURS of speculation with Marc about the feasibility of the political and economic system in the novel. Creatively speaking, the Gormenghast series is so beautifully and evocatively written that some fragments are even painful to read.

29. Are there any books that have been ruined for you by all the hype? I hyped myself too much with Jeffrey Eugenides’ “The Marriage Plot” because I had loved “The Virgin Suicides” and “Middlesex”. I was a bit disappointed and I didn’t engage with the characters.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book? I don’t tend to follow the critics but I check the recommendations of people with a taste similar to mine.

31. How do you feel about giving negative reviews? I used to write reviews for a website and it was really hard for me, as I imaged the impact it could have in the author. I only rate books I really enjoy in Goodreads to get similar recommendations. I feel that the system of stars or points never really reflects my experience with a book and that we tend to focus on objectivity too much while most of my reading experience is REALLY subjective.

32. What book are you most intimidated to begin? It used to be “Ada or Ardor” by Nabokov and it was really challenging. Now I am respectfully waiting for the right moment to start “Perdido Street Station” by China Miéville.

33. What book are you most likely to take on vacation with you? I like tying books to travels (“Game of Thrones” was my Erasmus read, I read “Sabella” by Tanith Lee and “Aniara” by Harry Martinson in Venice, etc.). I tend to plan the books I pack for travels with care. In December I have a wedding and I am already pondering which Tanith Lee novel I will take with me. Probably I will continue the Flat Earth series.

34. What is the longest you have gone without reading? A couple of days.

35. What is a book that you just couldn’t finish? The feminist essay book “Vamps & Tramps” by Camille Paglia. I don’t recall exactly why, only that I feel a remnant of anger when I see the cover.

36. What is the most money you have spent on books at one time? Around 80-100 euros on a couple of very specific occasions.

37. How often do you skim through a book before reading it? Very often. I had to cure me of the impulsion to check the last line of a book because I was spoiling myself often.

38. Do you keep books or give them away once you’ve read them? I tend to keep them and they will make the next time we change flats a living hell :)

39. Are there any books that you’ve been avoiding, or refuse to read? I actively avoid giving money to Orson Scott Card.

40. What is a book you didn’t expect to like, but did? The first stories of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber. Sword and sorcery seems a bit stale for me as a subgenre but I found the stories funny and I loved to spot future Discworld references.

41. What is your favorite guilt-free pleasure reading? In ASOIAF I swooned with the Sansa Stark/Sandor Clegane relationship. I acknowledge he is a troubled character and his whole attraction to youth/beauty/purity is very cliché but I have a soft spot for certain clichés.

42. What reading materials are in your bathroom right now? None. My bathroom is a small wet place and I want my books dry. However, I sometimes bring reading materials to the bathroom.

43. What book do you most remember reading for school? “La plaça del Diamant” by Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda, the story of a poor and very sensitive woman living in a Barcelona cursed by the civil war. It’s a sad book with a glimmer of hope. If you are trying to get into Catalan lit, this one is a top recommendation!

44. What was the last book that you couldn’t put down until you finished it? “Wylding Hall” by Elizabeth Hand.

45. What book is (physically) closest to you right now? I’m in the office/library at home so most of my books are equally close to me now.

46. What is your favorite book series? The first Kushiel trilogy by Jacqueline Carey. It is not that I don’t recommend the other books in the same universe, only that I have not read them yet and I can’t say if they hold up to the original trilogy.

47. What is the longest book you’ve ever read? Shortest? Longest: According to Goodreads, “A Dance with Dragons”, followed by Michel Faber’s “The Crimson Petal and the White”. Shortest: don’t remember. Maybe a couple of small anthologies with Russian short stories by Pushkin and Teffi.

48. Who is your favorite book character?  As a kid, I adored Anne (of Green Gables). Now I admire Granny Weatherwax from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, for example.

49. Who is your favorite author? Tanith Lee.

50. What is your favorite book?  I am not really sure but I started saying “Biting the Sun” by Tanith Lee and it has stuck.

[archerton84-blog]

Outlander and the Cost of Claire's White Saviordom

An Outlander episode on slavery was inevitable the second the Frasers set foot in 18th century America. The time-traveling drama touched on the cruelty of the slave trade in Season 3 when Claire (Caitriona Balfe) inadvertently stumbled into a slave auction and bought a man for sale to save him from further humiliation in the market square. She later set him free once he helped Claire and Jamie (Sam Heughan) find Jamie's nephew, but it was only a brief dalliance with the topic.

Season 4 took a deeper look at slavery in the Americas in its second episode as Claire and Jamie arrived at Jamie's Aunt Jocasta's (Maria Doyle Kennedy) plantation, River Run. Claire's distaste for the practice was immediately made clear. The audience understood Claire's perspective because we know she's an enlightened woman from the 1960s who knows how the effects of slavery will still be present some 200 years after her River Run stay, but for those in the show without knowledge of the future, her stance was not only contrary, but dangerous to their way of life.

Discover your new favorite show: Watch This Now!

That's taken to another level when a slave named Rufus (Jerome Holder) took an axe to his overseer's ear. Claire and Jamie were dispensed from the main house to attend to the wounded man, only to find that he already took justice into his own hands and strung Rufus up to a tree with a rusted hook in his abdomen. Claire's attention immediately went to the slave being tortured and she put his life above that of his injured overseer. Things went downhill from there.

Despite the warnings from literally everyone around her, Claire brought Rufus back to the main house of the plantation, operated on him on Jocasta's dining room table and saved his life — for a few hours. The price of any slave drawing blood from a white man in that time period was death. Claire saved Rufus from the hook, but there was no way to save him from death overall. As she struggled to find an escape for the slave boy, an angry mob descended on Jocasta's house and demanded justice. Rather than hand Rufus over to the mob, Claire reluctantly poisoned him in order to give him a peaceful death rather than a violent one. Still, Jamie had to turn the boy's body over to the mob, which promptly dragged it through the mud and then strung his corpse up in the nearby tree as the Frasers watched powerless from the porch.

The preview for next week's episode showed that the Rufus incident will push Claire and Jamie onwards to settle Fraser's ridge, which was always the intended arc for this season. The slaves on Jocasta's plantation and in the surrounding area will stay behind in the heightened hostility caused by Rufus' actions and Claire's savior complex.

Caitriona Balfe, OutlanderPhoto: Aimee Spinks

"In this episode she's so lead by her emotions and she's not really thinking it through. What she sees in the moment, she just wants to help Rufus and doesn't think about the larger implications of what it will do to everyone else on the plantation," Balfe told TV Guide. "I think that's why she's so eager to get away from River Run, because for her to stay there in that position makes her feel complicit in the whole slave system or the system of slavery. It's not something she feels at all comfortable with. Obviously, her actions have probably made the conditions worse for every slave on that plantation."

And there we have our issue. Claire's actions in this episode have made the lives of an entire group of people she barely interacted with that much harder in a time period that wasn't trying to cut them a break in the first place. As this is a story about Claire and Jamie's adventures in the 18th century, we won't see exactly how those tribulations shake out. Instead, the pain of those slaves, directly increased by Claire's impulsive desires, are used as a catalyst for the Frasers' next chapter. It's a tool to propel the journey of white characters, and frankly, it's infuriating.

Outlander Just Introduced the First Worthy Villain Since Black Jack Randall

I am an Outlander fan and also a woman of color, which makes watching episodes like this deeply personal and complicated — perhaps more so than for fans without African-American ancestry. Most weeks, there's no need to divide the fan base along racial lines. We are all escaping into a fantasy where strapping tall Scottish men sweep us sassenachs off our feet for an hour every Sunday. I have to use a little more imagination perhaps, but who cares? Jamie Fraser is worth it.

But then Jamie and Claire stepped foot in America. I knew the slave episode was coming, even if I haven't finished Diana Gabaldon's novels on which the series is based. On weeks like this, I don't get to be like most Outlander fans, even with a little extra imagination. I can't pretend to be Claire, a noble woman from the future inheriting a plantation with her gorgeous Scottish husband, because no amount of imagination can erase the fact that if I traveled back in time to River Run, I'd end up as one of Jocasta's belongings rather than an honored guest. For this episode, I spent my time relating to the slaves on Jocasta's plantation that Claire interacted with rather than her, no matter how good her intentions were. I understood their fear when she did rash things. I understood the quiet way they tried to warn her that what she was doing would end badly for everyone involved, afraid to speak out in case they would end up like Rufus.

Outlander Season 4 Review: America Isn't Easy for Jamie and Claire

I can appreciate Claire's intentions in this episode and understand that she meant well. She was trying to be on the morally right side. I also know that a show set in 18th century America can't ignore an issue as big as slavery. Outlander has an obligation to depict the time periods that its characters inhabit accurately. Claire couldn't save Rufus because that never would have realistically happened. She can't singlehandedly end slavery, even for a small group of black people in North Carolina, because Season 2 proved with the battle of Culloden, history is fixed for this show. Outlander also has to be careful about how it deviates from the novel series, for every change it makes has larger ramifications down the line. They can't delete an important section of the book because it might make a section, and probably a small one at that, of the audience uncomfortable.

As I do these mental gymnastics to understand why this episode exists in the way that it does, I have to wonder did the show do any gymnastics of its own on my, and the fans like me's, behalf? A Google search of all the writers listed on the show's IMDB page revealed the Outlander writers' room is all white, and like Claire they undoubtedly had great intentions with this episode. But I have to wonder how the story might've been tweaked if there had been a person whose actual family history includes people represented the people on screen — people who might've cautioned that Claire's remorse doesn't make up for her ignorance, and repeated dismissal of the black people in this episode begging her to stop what she was doing. Her need to validate her own emotions were put ahead of these people's agency. In trying to be their savior, Claire actually robbed them of the little agency they had in that situation and her grief still took center stage.

Now You Can Get Your Outlander Fix Through Hulu!

I know she felt horrible about poisoning Rufus and it was hard for her to watch his lifeless body swing from that tree, but I also know it was harder for the enslaved housemaids watching a few feet away. It will also be hard for them to burn the tablecloths Rufus laid on, and probably the dining room table as well where his black blood was spilled — blood considered poison to everything it touched. These are things that don't occur Claire as she insisted she was right and knew what was best for Rufus. These are things she can push away as she settles her new land away from River Run, which is the problem with white saviors stepping into black narratives. They step out just as easily, whether they actually saved anyone or not. The black people left behind, and their descendants watching the stories about their struggles, do not get that luxury.

This is not a call to boycott Outlander. I am still a rabid fan and some of my favorite stuff this show has ever done occurs in the upcoming episodes this season. I am just angry at Claire in this episode, but not in the same way you get angry at your favorite TV characters who do stupid things like try to negotiate with Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) by themselves or treat their first husbands like garbage for reasons said husbands can't control. It's a deep-bodied, seething anger that is difficult to articulate. It's not like I'm actually one of the slaves stuck on Jocasta's plantation, but I am a person that still sees the ramifications of that time period still alive and well in 2018.

Wait, Is That Frank's Voice in the Outlander Season 4 Trailer?

In this month alone voter suppression deterred tens of thousands, if not more, black people and other people of color from voting in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. Our sitting president said that black people are too stupid to vote for him, amid other racist remarks and then invited the leader of a white nationalist group to the White House. There are still real people fighting against the oppression instilled in the DNA of this country, where the institution of slavery still lingers and the racist beliefs required to dehumanize black people flourish out in the open. Nevermind the exhausting microaggressions people of color experience on the regular, Claire's actions in this episode are a reminder of the allies who show up to the marches and write the eloquent Facebook posts, but then don't show up to vote when it truly matters.

So at the end of the week when I wanted to watch one of my favorite shows, I didn't want to have the scars of the past reopened for the sake of Jamie and Claire's next settlement. I especially didn't want to have to do mental and emotional hula hoops to understand Claire's entitlement and subsequent grief. I wanted an escape, and just like the slaves Claire's white saviordom failed in this episode, I was denied.

Outlander continues Sundays at 8/7 on Starz.

PHOTOS: These Outlander Season 4 Photos Will Send You Into a Shipping Frenzy

Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe, OutlanderPhoto: Aimee Spinks Source: https://www.tvguide.com/news/outlander-season-4-episode-2-recap-claire-rufus/?rss=breakingnews