I was listening to the audio book of Diana Gabaldon’s A Breath of Snow and Ashes on the way home from work when a line was casually tossed into the narrative, that made me burst out laughing as I drove. Such brilliant understatement!
“…somehow one never translates the strength required for daily farm life into a capacity for homicidal fury.”
Well no, we don’t. Not from sweet, docile, farm wives who spend most of their time around the stove, at least.
However, given that Mrs. Bug (who just exhibited the homicidal fury in question) is an 18th century Scottish Highlander, it does make it more likely! ((cough)).
Shawn L. Bird 
LOL – I think we could substitute the word ‘farm’ with so many other words, eg, ‘marriage’ 😉
Oops – to be grammatically correct, that should be ‘married’!
lol Perhaps! Diana cracks me up on a regular basis.
I have never read anything by Diana Gabaldon thinking it’s another one of those typical romance genre books, of which I have read hundreds, but her name keeps popping up lately. I might have to check her out.
Absolutely nothing typical about her! Her bio says, the books is “described by Salon magazine as ‘the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting “Scrooge McDuck” comics.’”
Here’s what Diana says about the first book, Outlander: “Frankly, I’ve never been able to describe this book in twenty-five words or less, and neither has anyone else in the twenty years since it was first published. I’ve seen it (and the rest of the series) sold—with evident success—as Literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical NON-fiction (really. Well, they are very accurate), Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Military History (no, honest), Gay and Lesbian Fiction, and…Horror. (Really! One of my books beat both George R.R. Martin and Stephen King for a Quill Award in 2006.) Anyway, the only way I’ve ever found of describing this book to anyone is to begin telling them the story.” That description may be found at http://www.dianagabaldon.com/books/outlander-series/outlander/
If you start on the series, you’ll likely not come for air for a month or two… I was put onto the series by my 40 something editor. It has avid fans among my 30 something friends. My 80 something mother, 70 something PhD father-in-law, and my 50 something husband all loved it. Members of my Rotary Club (male and female) have read it and love it.
She says on book signings when people would ask “What’s it about?”, she’d tell them to open anywhere, read 3 pages, and if they didn’t want to keep reading she’d pay them a dollar. She never had to pay the dollar.
What does that say? Definitely check it out! lol 🙂
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