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Top 5 (or 10) Wednesday


Athena

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The topic for this week is Books that Feature Time-Travel.

 

I've read a few of those, I'm going to think about it.

 

(Yes, I know, it's only Monday.. but :P).

I've just finished an excellent 2 book series, Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis, set in Oxford 2060 and during the Second World War, mainly the Blitz. A little different in how time travel is managed and discussed and if you are interested in WWII it is full of lots of interesting information too.

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That sounds pretty different :).

 

Here's my list:

 

Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife

Guillaume Musso - Het Grote Gemis (Seras-Tu Là?)

Scott Meyer - Magic 2.0 2: Spell Or High Water

Joe Haldeman - The Accidental Time Machine

H. G. Wells - The Time Machine

Ken Grimwood - Replay (is this time travel? It's reliving one's past, I'm not sure if that counts as time travel or not.)

 

Special mention to a series that involves time travel, on my TBR:

 

Diana Gabaldon - Outlander series

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The topic for this week is: Biggest Book Hangovers

 

I am not totally sure what to answer to this. I suppose it is when you finish a book but then can't start another one yet, because you're still thinking about the one you just finished. I'll have to think about it.

I'm going to pick books from this year and last:

1) Jodi Picoult's The Pact

2) Ronald C. Rosbottom When Paris Went Dark

3) Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree

4) Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven

5) Uwen Kapan's Say You're One of Them

 

 

Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife

 

 
 

That's the only one that comes to mind for me.  Oh!  Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time.

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I thought of Time Traveller's Wife too.

 

Also:

 

Just one damned thing after another by Jodi Taylor (or any book in this series, but I've only read that one so far)

The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley

The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier

Cross Stitch/Outlander (as mentioned above) by Diana Gabaldon

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I've just finished an excellent 2 book series, Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis, set in Oxford 2060 and during the Second World War, mainly the Blitz. A little different in how time travel is managed and discussed and if you are interested in WWII it is full of lots of interesting information too.

 

She has written two others as well:  The Doomsday Book, about travelling back to the time of the Black Death, and To Say Nothing of the Dog, travelling back to Victorian times (where they see the original Three Men in a Boat, hence partly the title).  Both are really good reads, especially, IMO the latter, which is more light hearted than the other three.  Connie Willis's background research is a bit wobbly in places (e.g. the Jubilee Line in WW2, spending 20p pieces in a telephone box etc - and her language is not particularly British (muffler for scarf all the way through Doomsday, to say nothing of the perennial 'gotten' and so on), but the stories are worth reading. A couple of short stories too.

 

They would have been in my top 10, but I'll leave them and list the following:

 

Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens  (travelling forward and back to various Christmases)

A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur - Mark Twain

A Traveller in Time - Alison Uttley

Tom's Midnight Garden - Phillipa Pearce

Time Enough for Love - Robert Heinlein

The Many Coloured Land - Julian May (Saga of Pliocene Exiles - haven't read the rest yet)

Blitzed!  - Robert Swindell

King of Shadows - Susan Cooper

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde (and subsequent books)

11/22/63 - Stephen King

Edited by willoyd
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I was going to mention Replay, The Time Machine and Tom's Midnight Garden!  

 

I must mention The Ghosts by Antonia Barber (filmed as The Amazing Mr Blunden).  :) 

 

It's a genre I really like, so there must be others but I can't think of them off the top of my head!

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The topic for this week is: Fictional Items You Want (Invisibility Cloak from Harry Potter, Amplifiers from the Grisha trilogy, etc). (* these are the examples of the original creator of the topic, Lainey)

 

I've never really thought about this, so I'll have to give it some thought ( :giggle2:).

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I'd like Lizzy Bennet's Mr Darcy, but don't tell Peter!  :D  :giggle2:

 

Rather than a Cloak of Invisibility I'd like a Portkey.   Imagine being able to go anywhere in the blink of an eye.  Imagine how many BCFers I'd be able to visit!  :)

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This week's topic is: Books You DNFed (did not finish) / Books You Abandoned.

 

I'm sure some of you will have an answer for this one. I don't tend to keep a list of them, until this year, and I'm going to think if I want to make the top 5 by using the books I enjoyed the least and abandoned, or the books I abandoned but getting the furthest in them until I abandoned them (if that makes any sense?).

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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale - DNF

Music and Silence by Rose Tremain - DNF

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant - DNF

The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes - got halfway through, skim-read the rest

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd - skim-read

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There are far too many to recall :blush: I'm not one to hold on to a book if I don't find it satisfactory! 

Same here, I used to use the 100 page rule but I can normally tell pretty quickly if a book isn't for me, The Slap I think only took half a dozen pages! Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks always sticks in my head though, I have tried at least 4 times to read it but I never get more than half way, and I don't really know why as it really is a book I should like! 

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Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant - DNF

I read that for my Book Club.  I expected not to enjoy it (I don't really do historical novels) but I ended up loving it.  :)

 

I didn't finish Don't Look Down by Nick Hornby last year (or maybe the year before) or Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton this year.   I also gave up on The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend and one of Jilly Cooper's books (I forget the title but it was set in a school and felt about a million pages long!) - both lent to me by friends.   

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This week's topic is: Least Favorite Book in Your Favorite Series. I presume you can name 5 books then, but they all have to be from different series? I'm not sure of that one.

 

My picks don't neccessarily include my top 5 favourite series because with some all books are just as nice so they don't suit this week's topic (also.. I couldn't choose only 5 series as my top 5 favourite series). But they are at least all series I really liked. My picks:

 

- A couple of books in the later middle of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series (one of my favourite series; I can't remember what happens in which book so I can't pick one specifically. Possibly either book 8, 9 or 10, I think.)

- J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (I abandoned this book several times before I, at a later age, was finally able to read it and fully enjoy it)

- Veronica Roth - Divergent 3: Allegiant (I liked Allegiant a bit less than the first two books, if I had to choose)

- The Hunger Games 3: Mockingjay (I liked Mockingjay a bit less than the first two books, if I had to choose)

- Sophie Kinsella - Shopaholic 7: Shopaholic to the Stars (I liked this one quite a bit less than the other books in the series)

- John Flanagan - Ranger's Apprentice 3: The Icebound Land (I liked this one less, probably because I was disappointed it didn't really end)

 

Okay, I know, that's 6 books.. but since the first one wasn't totally specific I thought that would be okay. It's just what I first thought of. I know I could think of more if we could do more than 5 books.

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I agree with Allegiant, I also have to site Firefight by Brandon Sanderson from The Reckoners trilogy,the second book from the Legend series by Marie Lu- Prodigy. The last book of The Made Runner I didn't like either, The Death Cure. Oh! And from Philippa Gregory's Cousins War series, The Lady of the Rivers was pretty bad in comparison to the others in the series

Edited by Anna Begins
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This week's topic is: Books You DNFed (did not finish) / Books You Abandoned.

 

 

 

A bit late, but couldn't resist.  Only one or two a year, really reserved the most intensely disliked.  I'll often skim through the ending with even the worst, but they are still incompletely read.  The 'worst' in the past three years have been:

 

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Dinner by Hermann Koch

Starter for Ten by David Nicholls

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

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A bit late, but couldn't resist.  Only one or two a year, really reserved the most intensely disliked.  I'll often skim through the ending with even the worst, but they are still incompletely read.  The 'worst' in the past three years have been:

 

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

 

I hope you don't mind my curiosity, willoyd, but why did you dislike this particular novel? I personally really liked it and it's a rather popular novel, so I'm really curious about what you have to say about the novel :) 

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