Tag: to read

books, Fantasy, fiction, genres

Time Travel Novels

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I think I have a problem with time travel romances.  I love time-slip novels – like Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series – which have two parallel narratives set in different times.  I love straight historicals.  But I can’t think of a time travel romance – or even time travelling novel that I loved – unless you’re including Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (a couple of hours on the Time turner doesn’t count in my book) or the Thursday Next Series (which is more dimension jumping than time travel).  And after reading a time-traveller the other week, I started to wonder why.

Fundamentally, I think that I find it very hard to believe there’ll be a happy outcome – and that’s what you want in romances – because one is either going to have to go back to their own time and be miserable, or one is going to have to stay where they are, and I never believe that that will continue to be happy past the last page.  After all, one member of the duo is living out of their time – either with a massive amount of knowledge about the future and the advances there are or with a massive gap in their knowledge of the modern world – and on top of that, everyone they ever knew/loved is either dead or not yet born and thus they’ll never see them again.  I text my sister daily, and speak to my mum at least twice a week – and can’t imagine voluntarily chosing to put myself out of contact with them permenantly – and leave them wondering what has happened to me.

And that’s before you get to the fact that I’ve watched a lot of Scifi and fantasy TV over the years – from Star Trek to Crime Traveller and most of the variants in between – and have had it drilled into me that when you’re messing around in the past it’s very easy to change the timeline of the future and destroy the world.  And most books just ignore The Implications and don’t mention it or skim over it somehow.

Am I over thinking this?  Probably.  But that’s the kind of person I am.  I once spent 20 minutes crying on my Grandma’s lap because I’d just realised that Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria’s grandson – and wouldn’t she have been so upset if she’d realised he’d started a war against his grandma’s country.  Yes.  I was a strange 8 year old.  But that gives you a clue as to how my mind works.

So in the spirit of the New Year, does anyone have any really good time travel recommendations for me?  Books that I won’t buy and then ignore in favour of everything else ever because I’m convinced I’m going to hate them?  Because I got a copy of the first Outlander 18 months ago because everyone else was raving about it – and I still haven’t read it.  I took it on holiday with us back in 2014 as one of my paperbacks – and The Boy started reading it instead of me (he never takes enough books with him, but that’s another story) and he didn’t finish it either.  It sat under our coffee table for another year after that.

Go on.  Change my life. I dare you.

books, The pile

Three Month Progress review

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Well.  Three months ago I posted a picture of the to-read pile as part of my efforts to get myself to shrink my stockpile of books waiting to be read.  Here’s how it looked:

The to-read pile back in May
The to-read pile back in May

So here we are, in August and I thought it was time to report back on my progress in my quest to reduce the backlog.  Brace yourself:

Books
The current state of the to-read pile

So I think it looks a little better.  Of course this is partly because I’ve had a rationalisation of the library book stock pile and taken a lot back.  But even taking that into account I don’t think that the pile has got any bigger – and if you compare the photos you’ll see that although some of the same books are still there there’s also a fair few that have changed.  So I’m not too discouraged – but there is still a lot of work to do.

books, The pile

The status quo

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I’ve girded my loins.  I’ve taken a deep breath. I’ve done some dusting.  Here is a photo of the to-read pile and the library book bag.

To-read pile

It looks bad doesn’t it? I know.  It’s out of control.  And the eagle eyed amongst you may notice that there’s two Jasper Fforde books from the same series on there too (breaking a rule of the to-read pile) and that’s because I spotted The Fourth Bear in a charity shop this morning for a pound and it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.  I haven’t worked out an excuse for the Mrs Bradley mystery and the Frances Osborne which I bought in a different charity shop five minutes later.  I’ll get back to you on that.

 

 

 

books

The Rules of the To-Read Pile

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I know, I know.  Considering that the pile is so outlandishly large, the idea that it has rules seems ludicrous.  But it does – although they are few and somewhat flexible.

The principle rule is No more than one book per author on the pile: I’ll admit this does get broken frequently (although I’m getting better at keeping to it) and for two main reasons – firstly when The Works have lots of books by the same author in one of their offers and secondly when an author writes more than one series – for example Charlaine Harris currently has three books on the pile – two Aurora Teagardens (from The Works) and one Harper Connelly (the last two Sookie Stackhouses are in the library book bag – different rules apply to library books).

The second is Don’t buy hardbacks.  I’ll admit that this rule does mean I end up behind the curve on some authors. But its born from experience – I just don’t get around to reading hardbacks – they’re big, they’re heavy and they won’t fit in my handbag. They end up sitting on the shelf for months and months even when they’re something I’m really keen to read.  I am sometimes given hardbacks, but I don’t usually put books that are only out in hardback on my gift lists. Most books come out in paperback in the end – and the few that don’t are usually books that I can buy for borrow from my mum.

The third is Don’t buy series out of sequence. This is because they end up sitting on the pile for ages waiting for me to buy/borrow the books leading up to it because I hate reading series in the wrong order in case I spoil a major plot point (it’s happened before I don’t want it to happen again).

Most of the sins of my to-read pile can be put under one of those headings.  As I’ve said before, I’m terrible for discovering a series and then reading it through from start to finish (as I’m doing at the moment with the Tales of the City series) but the rules mean I usually only buy one book in the series at a time – although there are exceptions – like when I’m trying to get over a free delivery threshold – or those Works multi-buys again.