I've worked my way through the Outlander series of books. I turned down the corner of the pages where passages spoke to me. Here are my comments:[return][return]On big fat books:[return][return]� What is it� twelve hundred pages? Aye, I think so, After all, it is difficult to sum up the complications of a life in a short space with any hope of constructing an accurate account.� [return][return]� True. I have heard the point made, though, that the novelist� s skill lies in the artful selection of detail. Do you not suppose that a volume of such length may indicate a lack of discipline in such selection, and hence a lack of skill?� [return][return]� I have seen books where this is the case, to be sure,...an author seeks by sheer inundation of detail to overwhelm the reader into belief. In this case, however, I think it isna so. Each character is most carefully considered, and all the incidents chose seem necessary to the story. No, I think it is true that some stories simply require a greater space in which to be told.� [return][return]� Of course, I admit to some prejudice in that regard,& I should have been delighted had the book been twice as long as it was.� [return][return]Since Gabaldon� s novels run to 1000 pages + and nothing is superfluous I� m wondering if she shares my high opinion (and love) of big fat books.[return][return]We often look at the past as some kind of idyllic Eden but would you really like to go back in time to pit toilets and no antibiotics?[return][return] I had been taking careful note of the machines� all the contrivances of modern daily life� and more important, of my response to them. The train to Edinburgh, the plane to Boston, the taxicab from the airport, and all the dozens of tiny mechanical flourishes attending� vending machines, streetlights, the plane� s mile-high lavatory, with its swirl of nasty blue-green disinfectant, whisking waste and germs away with the push of a button. Restaurants, with their tidy certificates from the Department of Health, guaranteeing at least a better than even chance of escaping food poisoning when eating therein. Inside my own house, the omnipresent buttons that supplied light and heat and water and cooked food.[return][return][return]On stubbornness:[return][return]� And it� s no use to shout at a stubborn man, or beat him either; it only makes him more set on having his way.� [return][return]Gee, whatever could she be talking about?[return][return]On living somewhere foreign:[return][return]� You� ll not know how it is, to live among strangers for so long.� [return][return]� Won� t I?� & [return][return]� � Aye, maybe you will� . He said. � You change, no? Much as ye want to keep the memories of home, and who ye are� you� ve changed. Not one of the strangers; ye could never be that, even if ye wanted to. But different from who ye were, too.� [return][return]After about five years living abroad, for me anyway the guest culture becomes what feels like � home� and home starts feeling and sounding foreign.[return][return]On the sudden joy found in being present:[return][return]� It had happened many times before, but it always took me by surprise. Always in the midst of great stress, wading waist-deep in trouble and sorrow, as doctors do, I would glance out a window, open a door, look into a face, and there it would be, unexpected and unmistakable, a moment of peace.� [return][return]We don� t know everything yet:[return][return]� � Well, I say it is the place of science only to observe,� he said. � To seek cause where it may be found, but not to realize that there are many things in the world for which no cause shall be found; not because it does not exist, but because we know too little to find it. It is not the place of science to insist on explanation� but only to observe, in hopes that the explanation will manifest itself.� �