sexual assault

When my friends started raving about the TV series, Outlander, I was more, meh. It sounds a bit outlandish, frankly. A twenty-something combat nurse from England finishes her tour of duty in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. On vacation in the Scottish Highlands with a husband she barely knows, after having been separated for five years during the war, she gets sucked back in time to the 18th century. Great. Another military conflict. Only this time, being English, she's on the side of the occupier in occupied lands. She eventually falls in love with a hunky (and educated, and

I despised cheerleaders when I was a teenager. They were the ones who bullied my outcast friends and me. They were so—well—cheery. Didn't they notice that the world all around us is falling apart? I’m much older and somewhat wiser now, so I understand that it’s dumb to assume that all members of a group of people are the same. I comprehend that just because the particular cheerleaders I knew in high school were mean doesn't mean that all cheerleaders are mean. I mean, I try to stay open-minded. Still, cheerleaders. Blech. How superficial, boring, and dumb.  

Needless to say, I never noticed

I wish Kurt Vonnegut were alive to read this masterful literary homage. I'm not the only one who sees the connection. Margaret Wappler writes in the October 23, 2015 issue of the New York Times Book Review: "King’s devotion to a passionately experimental style, in a genre often beholden to formula, is inspiring. Kurt Vonnegut might have written a book like this, if he had ever been cyber-bullied on Facebook." 

I'm telling you: get your hands on this book. RIGHT NOW. Make yourself a drink and some snacks, grab your favorite blanket, and get ready for a sensational, surreal ride in which you