OUTLANDER Challenge 2009

I stumbled across this site today:

https://outlanderchallenge.blogspot.com

"The challenge is simple: to read or listen to (because audiobooks are a great format for these books) each of the six Outlander books in publication order prior to the release of An Echo in the Bone."

Now that 2009 is here, and we are all eagerly anticipating the release of AN ECHO IN THE BONE, it's time to think about starting a re-read (or re-listen, if you're like me and you prefer the unabridged audio versions).

If you start now, there's probably enough time to get through all six OUTLANDER books, and possibly the Lord John books as well.

So....are you up for the challenge? I definitely am. I'm in the middle of ABOSAA at the moment myself, will probably listen to one or more of the Lord John books after that, just for a bit of a break, then I'll start over with OUTLANDER. I'm going verrrrry slooooowwly this time around, but I'm going to try to time the next go-round so that I'm done with ABOSAA sometime around the time ECHO comes out.

And that's the tricky part, isn't it? We don't yet know ECHO's exact publication date. Diana keeps saying that it will be sometime in the fall of 2009, but keep in mind that she's still WRITING the book. <g> Last I heard, she's hoping to be done by mid-February, if she can manage to write 90,000 words (!) in the month of January. I will, of course, post here if I hear anything from her on Compuserve about a possible publication date.

I'm always curious to hear what parts of the books people are currently reading. I'm currently at the part in ABOSAA just after Henri-Christian's birth, where we have a very long flashback of Ian's memory of the loss of his first child, and his encounter with a wolf. The following quote really jumped out at me when I listened to it the other day:

"You will want the skins," [Eats Turtles] said. "To wrap your son, when he shall be born."

A shock went through Ian, like the shock of sudden rain on bare skin. Eats Turtles saw his face, and turned his head aside, avoiding his eyes.

"This child was a daughter," Turtle said matter-of-factly. "Tewaktenyonh told my wife, when she came for a rabbit skin to wrap the body."

(From A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 36 ("Winter Wolves"). Copyright© 2005 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Happy (re-)reading!

UPDATE 1/9/09 1:34 pm: Here is another reading challenge I found online that some of you may be interested in. This one involves reading Big Books, so it won't be difficult for those of you who are already thinking about doing the OUTLANDER challenge described above.

https://feelinchunky.blogspot.com

If you see any more of these challenges that you think people here would be interested in, please let me know.