Time travel

Please check out the last six of my April book purchases. While I managed to find six from my list of “hopefuls” at the Annual Library Book Sale, there were still quite a few I wanted. So I headed over to Thrift Books.

See anything you like?

We have two Japanese women authors, recommended through Instagram if the viewer liked Haruki Murakami:

Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi – a Tokyo café offering its customers a chance to travel back in time.

The Memory Police – Yoko Ogawa – “A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss.” (goodreads)

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio – A possible murderer released after ten years, revisits the circumstances of young Shakespearean actors that led to one’s death.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize Winner. “A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story” (goodreads) – a young man’s story told now, in the chaos of 1975 Saigon.

And now … The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker is exquisite historical fiction, taking place on the Lower East Side in 1899. It is one of my top favorite books of all time, and I bought it for my “permanent” bookcase for books I would read again.

The Hidden Palace is the sequel Wecker wrote seven years later, with the golem and the jinni still the main characters as their intertwined tale evolves. I bought this to read, and cannot wait.

Anything for you? Check your library and/or visit Thrift Books – what will keep you up into the night is there.

I’m really enjoying this book … it’s one that I feel drawn to when I’ve finished whatever else needed to be done during the day and when I have some time and space to relax with a book.

Written in 1970, Time and Again does not have the fast-paced style of some of our current novels; Finney is no Dan Brown, but … he has a great story — within a story, as it turns out — and he has my attention. I am about mid-way through and my interest is only picking up. Our main character Simon Morley has committed to a top-secret government mission to see if people can travel back to points in time, to particular locations, and return with information. A good portion of the beginning of this book details Morley’s being approached, his being interviewed, and then prepared to step back in time.

He returns to February 1882 in New York City to observe a particular transaction between 2 men which seems to have precipitated the financial ruin and suicide of one of them. One of the project’s directives when Morley enters an earlier time is that he not take any action which might change future events. The question we see, when he is in his third visit is, is this possible? And this is what will be revealed as I read on.

Another attraction in this story is that it takes place in NYC. Being familiar with the Dakota and the 72nd St. entrance to Central Park, knowing its proximity to the much-loved Museum of Natural History, having been in Trinity Church more than once, and having worked in the tangled web of narrow streets that is the Wall Street area is, in itself, a big draw for me. But reading his in-depth descriptions of what this all was like in 1882 … is riveting. As an artist, Morley sketched the areas of the city that he saw and some of the people he met … and these all appear in the book.

I think what may be the clincher in this story is that while reading it, and it’s written in the first person, it is absolutely believable that Kinney/Morley is writing not fiction, but a first hand experience of his involvement with the project and actual regressions into 1882.

So while the book’s writing style may be a bit dated, it’s a real attention grabber nonetheless. And I always like a book I can’t wait to pick up again.

12/11/10 – FINISHED! I finished reading this last night, and it lived up to – and even beyond – my expectations. Although a bit long when Morley is on the run from the police, it soon changes into several unexpected scenarios, primarily a great final twist. Like time travel? A good mystery? A good read!