Walker's Shortbread Highlanders: Product Review

We just returned from a 2-week trip to Scotland, where we learned that we love these shortbread cookies. We tried several different brands while in Scotland, but Walkers is the best. We brought several smaller boxes home with us, but those were either given as gifts or devoured soon after our return. I was thrilled to find them on Amazon.com, for quite a decent price. And due to Amazon's Subscribe and Save program, I can have my Scottish Tea fix any time I want. I've also found that they can be picked up at Whole Foods, also for a good price. It sure beats a 9-hour trans-Atlantic flight!

These "biscuits" are dense and crumbly, with a perfectly buttery taste. And they taste just right with any flavor hot tea, or even on their own. Delicious!

Crow Boy by Philip Caveney: Book Review

Crow Boy is a YA Historical Fiction novel about a teenaged boy named Tom who is suddenly taken away from his home in Manchester, England to Edinburgh, Scotland by his own mother and her new boyfriend. Tom finds himself in a new school where he knows no one, and he is immediately targeted by the school bullies. Tom just wants to disappear. His class takes a field trip to Mary King's Close, a place steeped in history beneath the streets of the capital city of Edinburgh. It's a creepy place, and the sights and stories of their tour guide really set the tone for ghosts. Of course Tom sees a ghost, and he follows her into a restricted area of the close. He falls through the floor, is knocked unconscious, and wakes up in the year 1645.

Thankfully Tom had recently completed a project on the late-medieval plague, and he had actually been paying attention to the Mary King's Close tour guide. So when he finds himself somehow transported right into the middle of the terrible Edinburgh plague, he is able to think quickly. Luckily, he has time-traveled with his mobile phone, a 5-pound British note, and a partially used pack of antibiotics left over from an ear infection. Of course these items all figure prominently in the story. Soon Tom finds himself apprenticed - against his will - to the infamous Doctor Rae. Doctor Rae, Edinburgh's plague doctor, wears a thick leather cape, heavy boots, and a mask in the shape of a crow's beak. The beak is stuffed with herbs and other things that are meant to protect the wearer from the miasma, the vapors that are thought to be the source of the terrible disease. The effect of the doctor's costume is striking; the sight of him is terrifying to the sick and able-bodied alike. The story unfolds quickly from there, and the end comes before you know it...or want it to.

Speaking of the ending, it is disappointingly cliché, and the only reason I didn't give this gem of a book five stars. The whole story had been so interesting and unique that I truly was surprised that it ended so flatly. Right before I got there, I thought to myself, "No way. He's not really going to do that to me, is he?" But the journey there is so fun and deliciously creepy that it wasn't a deal-breaker.

I realize that some of my enthusiasm for this book may be due to the fact that I just returned home from my first-ever vacation out of the United States; we just spent nearly two weeks sightseeing in Scotland. On our very first day, we toured Mary King's Close in Edinburgh, and I was creeped out by the wax statue of Doctor Rae and the stories of deaths and ghosts in the cramped living quarters that make up the close. As we exited the tour through the gift shop, I just happened to see this book and thought I'd give it a shot. I love it when a chance purchase turns out to be so good. And bonus, the copy is signed by the author. But despite my bias, I still think it's a well-written and exciting story. Perfect for the almost-Halloween season. I would definitely read more by this author. Four-and-a-half stars from this girl!

At the time of this review, Crow Boy was available for Kindle on Amazon.com for $4.79. There are paperback copies available from third-party sellers on Amazon too. Click here to get your own copy. Read about the author, Philip Caveney, on Goodreads.

My favorite book is about to become a TV series...

...and I'm not sure how I feel about that. (Warning: This is LONG. And emotional. And maybe even a little bit weird. If you're not a fan of Outlander, you probably won't care what I have to say, so you may want to just close your browser now. Consider yourself warned.)

I discovered Diana Gabaldon's masterpiece, Outlander, years ago when I was suffering from severe postpartum depression. I'd just given birth to my first child, and like so many other new mothers, I had a tough time. It got so bad that I could barely function. It was all I could do to change Mini-Maven's diapers and make sure he was fed. I was barely hanging on, barely keeping us alive until my husband came home from work every day and could take care of everything else, including the emotional needs of our firstborn. To tell you the truth, I don't even remember most of that time in my life. And I pray to God that he doesn't either, my sweet boy.

For some reason, one crisp fall day, I picked up my old copy of Outlander, a book I'd bought years prior at a used book store on the recommendation of the shop owner, and just started reading. It didn't take long; I was hooked. By page 100, I had cried five times and I knew that something in me had fundamentally changed forever. I would never go back. I started being feeling more alive during the day, playing with Mini-Maven more and just all-around being a better mother to him. At night I would lose myself in 18th century Scotland and the world of Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp Randall. The more lost in Outlander I became, the better I got, and by the following spring, I was healthy again. I don't understand it but I truly believe that that book saved my life.

That Christmas, after I'd devoured the book (the first in the series), I ordered about 15 paperback copies and gave them to all the great women in my life. I wanted everyone I knew to be a part of it. It's just that good. To this day, I read something by Diana Gabaldon every fall. It just seems right.

Since then I've started researching my own Scottish heritage. I want to know more about my ancestors who came to America from Scotland, why they came here, and what life was like for them in Scotland. I've studied Scottish history, listened to and learned to play Celtic music, and bought a lot of Celtic jewelry (haha!). And this year, for my 40th birthday, my husband took me to Scotland. I can't even express what it was like being there. (That will just have to be another blog post at another time....)

So obviously, this book is not just a book to me. It has become a part of who I am, who I was, and where I came from. And it is most certainly a part of who I will be in the future.

I can remember telling my husband, in the midst of my first read of Outlander, "Man! I hope they make a movie out of this book! It is AMAZING!" That was my mantra for years afterward too. But then I realized that movies of really good books never do them justice. There's just not enough time in a movie, and who wants to wait ten years for a trilogy? Not to mention the exorbitant cost of such a venture. But at the time, Game of Thrones was not on anyone's radar. It had not yet become the groundbreaking TV series phenomenon, so I wasn't thinking, "Hey, they should make a TV series of Outlander instead!" Well fast-forward to June 2013, when it was announced by Herself that she had entered into a contract with the cable TV channel STARZ. I couldn't believe it. The time had finally come. I was so freakin' excited I could hardly stand it. Once again, my poor husband probably thought I was never going to shut up about Outlander (At that point, he had finally read the book himself a year or so previously...and loved it. Imagine my joy.). And it didn't help that our 18-months-in-planning-40th-birthday-trip-to-Scotland was coming up in just TWO MONTHS! Would they start filming WHILE WE WERE THERE?! Would we actually get to SEE SOMETHING?!! I couldn't believe the timing. (As it turned out, production didn't actually start until about two weeks after we had returned home again. Shucks.)

Not a day goes by now that I don't see or hear something related to the filming of "my" show. I've joined every Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram account, and e-mail list I can find that has anything to do with Outlander. I've always watched Diana Gabaldon's blog and accounts, but now I watch them much, much closer. Sometimes it's a bit overwhelming. I thought I was a true fan, but let me tell you, there are some folks out there who are Cray. Zee. No joke. The level of dissection and examination of every single facet of every tidbit of anything related to this show is just...mind-blowing. I've had to pull myself back from the craziness of it because it was starting to make me sad. I don't want to know everything about everything before it even airs. I want to experience it all at once in its final form. I want to know Sam Heughan as Jamie Fraser and never have competing images from fan art (that has Photoshopped red hair from the cover of a goofy bodice-ripper onto his head) in my mind as I'm watching. I don't want to second-guess Ron Moore's every move, and I certainly don't want to presume to have a better idea than Diana Gabaldon, the creator of these fictional characters Herself. It drives me bonkers when people have virtual fights (with Facebook posts that are hundreds of comments long) over what Jamie Fraser looks like or what his body type is. He's not real. And if anyone knows Jamie Fraser, certainly it's Diana. Right? My husband just laughs and tells me, "Welcome to the world of fanboy-dom!" As a life-long Star Wars geek, he has long known of this Dark Side of fandom.

I love the intelligent discussions, though they seem to be few and far between. I love it when someone posts a question on one of the Facebook fan pages, asking what others think about a certain passage in one of the books (you know the series has seven books now, going on eight, right?). I've never really had anyone to discuss the books with, and this is like my own little book club. (If only there had been Facebook when I first read Outlander!) But the ugliness - and the crazy - just really overshadows the good. I find myself feeling selfish. All those years I wanted someone to love these books as much as I did, someone I could share it with and talk to about. All those years I wished there had been a movie so I could see the story come to life. And now it's finally happening and I'm finding myself thinking, "Whoah! Wait a minute! Hold on just a second. I was a fan first! I loved these books before you! You were just a BABY when this book was first published!" Isn't that crazy? Why do I feel this way? I think about all the women who are drooling over Sam Heughan, and getting creepy about it, and I feel...what is it? Jealousy? Sheesh! What is wrong with me? But it's not jealousy for him. It's jealousy that now the books and the story aren't just mine. I've always felt like, whenever I open one of the books, Jamie and Claire and Lord John Grey are my old friends and we're getting reacquainted again. It's a very personal thing when I read these stories. These characters saved my life. And now thousands of strangers are talking about my Jamie and Claire as if they know them too, and the whole thing feels like a runaway train down a greased track. The craze has left the station and it's passed me by. And I'm really surprised at how it has affected me.

People who don't read may not understand the power that a truly good book can have. And people who have never experienced the dark and lonely depths of depression will not understand what it feels like to finally pull yourself out of it. I can't wait to see Outlander on my TV in my very own living room. I truly think it's going to be a blockbuster show. And maybe by then I will have worked out my weird angst about the whole thing. I sure hope so.

How to be More Scottish: Book Review

This is a good "first look" at Scotland, for anyone who is unfamiliar with the land and its people and wants to know more. It's accessible, light, and a practical introduction to all things Scots--including a brief history, the culture, dialects, the people, the food, the land, weather, common words and phrases (as well as how to properly pronounce them), and various points of interest. It was also full of useful tips on what to do and say and what NOT to do and say (for instance, NEVER call a Scot "English," and always carry a brolly, er...umbrella). I found the travel/tourism part of the book less useful than the rest of it; there is so much history, too much to see and do there. It's just not possible to cover it all in a book like this, and that was not the authors' intent. But it was somewhat frustrating to me that so many place names were thrown out with not even a two-to-three-word description of what they are or why they were mentioned. I had no idea what most of these places or points of interest were, so I found myself skimming this section with plans to refer to my Lonely Planet Guide to Scotland or the Rough Guide to Scotland instead. The book could have used some better editing. Some sentences were awkward and difficult to understand. I was reading the book on my Kindle, and it felt as though it didn't translate well to the Kindle format. For instance, the paragraph indentations were odd, margins weren't consistent, and end punctuation was often left out (which made it trickier to read). All in all a good, fun read that feeds my excitement about our upcoming visit to the country. And it's only $1 on Kindle! Ye canna beat that!

Buy it on Amazon. 

BRAVE Wasn't What I'd Hoped

In light of last Sunday's Academy Awards, and the fact that Pixar's Brave won Best Animated Film, I thought I'd share my original review of the movie, which I first posted on my Facebook page last June.

"It pains me to say I was disappointed. Maybe my expectations were just too high; maybe the fact that I love all things Scotland and have been anxiously awaiting this movie for two years just set me up to be let down. Don't get me wrong - it wasn't a BAD movie at all. It just wasn't up to Pixar standards. 

Brave had no heart. Every Pixar movie has heart. Well, I don't really count Cars 2; that movie was awful. But aside from that one, all Pixar movies have heart; they move you and make you feel. Second, Brave has very little character development. I didn't even like Merida, and I so wanted to! By the time the big conflict occurred, I found myself not really rooting for the "good guys." I didn't really care about the characters because they didn't really have any depth to them, and in the end, I found I wouldn't really mind it so much if things didn't get resolved and there was no happy ending for Merida. The plot was formulaic and there were no big surprises, no twists. And there were very few funny moments. Truly, the best laughs are the ones you've already seen in the trailers. There was nothing particularly Scottish about it either, other than the fact that all the men wear kilts. Eh. So what? It could have taken place anywhere; they didn't do anything to make it truly Scottish and that disappointed me. Even the music was a let-down. 

The biggest negative for me was the family dynamics. I take issue with movies and TV shows that make the father out to be a bumbling idiot who can't do anything properly and needs his overly dominating wife to do everything for him. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for strong women! But you can have a strong woman without sacrificing the masculinity of the male counterpart. In so many Disney movies there is only one parent to begin with. Why do they have to emasculate the man when there's finally a two-parent family unit in place? I loved that the father could be funny and playful at times, but they took it too far and made him out to be nothing without his queen wife.

But...the animation is fantastic. I was mesmerized by Merida's hair. I have no idea how they animated it so perfectly life-like. I didn't like Merida too much, and wasn't convinced her story mattered, but I was in love with her hair!

I was glad we had not taken our kids with us to see it. At ages seven and nearly-two, I think it would have scared the living daylights out of them both.

Unfortunately I think the competition may have finally figured out the master formula to a great movie, the secret only Pixar held for the longest time. How To Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me moved me more than Brave did. I didn't even cry. And I ALWAYS cry at Pixar movies! Well, not during Cars 2. But like I said, that one doesn't count.

So there you have it. My opinion. I hope it doesn't keep you from seeing the movie yourself because, like I said, it wasn't BAD. It just wasn't great."

I still stand by my review, and probably won't change my mind. But I haven't given the movie a second chance yet. I plan to rent it from Redbox soon and watch it a second time to see if anything has changed for me.