Outlander

"I love this book. I have no idea how it’s interpreted in the wider world; all I know is that the first time I read it, I fell in love with a country, not just the characters. Jamie and Claire have this incredible love story, there’s time travel, there’s war—there’s a lot going on in this story. There’s even a murder mystery buried at the heart of it. But she gave me a window into a world I’d never been able to witness. I read it so long ago, but it stuck. And of course, she’s written many sequels since then. I watched a couple of the first episodes of the television show, and I loved them and thought they did a great job. But I had to step away, because I felt like I was sharing this thing that I loved—that was personal to me—with the world. When I fall in love with a book, I feel like it’s mine, like I don’t want to share it or see another person’s interpretation of it. So I haven’t seen a lot of the show, but I think that the novel is a masterwork of how to transport a reader to a previous time, and to make them care about the world those characters inhabit. I read that book decades ago, and I still think about Jamie and Claire. It’s a love story for the ages. Yes. Time travel gives us a willing suspension of disbelief. You’ve been picked up, you’ve been transported. Establishing that up front with the reader, I think, helps them overcome their hesitation, because it feels fantastical. It’s a little bit of magical realism that helps them make the transition in their minds."