This will easily land on my list of Best Books I've Read in 2014. Throughout the craziest and scariest time in my life this summer, it was this book I could turn to in order to be completely distracted. It certainly helped that this was filled with authentic photos from the 1800s and illustrations.

Known as one of "the" time travel books, with even Stephen King proclaiming its greatness, Jack Finney happens to also be the author of The Body Snatchers (which was retitled Invasion of the Body Snatchers when the film was made), but you never would have guessed it with this beautiful and iconic tale of time travel between the 1970s and 1880s New York City. No zombies in this one, I can assure you. (Not that I would have minded.) Time and Again is a whirlwind of visual delights as Simon Morley accepts an opportunity to work with the government to travel back in time to January 1882 in order to track down the source of a mysterious letter his girlfriend's family has always had, but never understood. To follow the trail, Simon must completely immerse himself in a time that not only is different in culture and dress, but also in the very land that New York sits on. To see a farm in the heart of Manhattan doesn't seem like that ever could have been possible, but it was, and it is this essence of combination and simplicity that lures Si in. To fall in love with a woman who would already be dead by his own time in the 1970s was unexpected and Simon is faced with a multitude of concerns, most especially ethically. Can he change the future? Should he?

If you're like me, you love a good time travel story, and this one ranks right up there. I loved everything about this book. Descriptions of the "Ladies' Mile," a section of New York regularly walked by the ladies to window shop was fantastic, and every description of clothing, mode of transportation, and food resonated with my inner desire to time travel. I wouldn't mind partnering up with Simon Morley, a comprehensive and thoughtful character, to revisit these long-forgotten times and enjoy comparing the differences. And while successful at purely time travel, the vivid imagery of a time past both beautiful and romantic, Time and Again also brings up several political questions Finney, and many others, contemplated at that time: Have we hurt the earth too much with our pollution, have we lost the authentic taste of food because of too many hormones and chemicals we inject into the animals or put onto the plants? Not withstanding these implications, Finney's Time and Again is not a political novel, but it certainly asks these questions in certain scenes, and is timely enough for today. If they asked these questions forty-plus years ago, how much further have we advanced, or how poorly do we match up with it today?

Highly recommended. I'd actually recommend you run out now and grab a copy.

Publisher: Touchstone, a Division of Simon & Schuster

Release Date: Originally published in 1970, reprinted by Touchstone April 2014

Pages: 477

Passages of Note:

...I'd usually sit down with one of the stereoscopes - the viewers - she had, and one of several big boxes loaded with old stereoscopic views, mostly of New York City. Because I've always felt a wonder at old photographs not easy to explain. Maybe I don't need to explain; maybe you'll recognize what I mean. I mean the sense of wonder, staring at the strange clothes and vanished backgrounds, at knowing that what you're seeing was once real. That light really did reflect into a lens from these lost faces and objects. That these people were really there once, smiling into a camera. You could have walked into the scene then, touched those people, and spoken to them. You could actually have gone into that strange outmoded old building, and seen what now you never can - what was just inside the door. (p.16)

We sat in absolute silence then. I was stunned. I was, and I knew it, an ordinary person who long after he was grown retained the childhood assumption that the people who largely control our lives are somehow better informed than, and have judgment superior to, the rest of us; that they are more intelligent. Not until Vietnam did I finally realize that some of the most important decisions of all time can be made by men knowing really no more than, and who are not more intelligent than, most of the rest of us. That it was even possible that my own opinions and judgments could be as good as and maybe better than a politician’s who made a decision of profound consequence. Some of that childhood awe and acceptance of authority remained, and while I was sitting before Esterhazy’s desk - the room silent, everyone watching me, waiting - it seems presumptuous that ordinary Simon Morley should question the judgment of this board. And of the men in Washington who agreed with it. But I knew I had to. And was going to. (p.464)

About the Author (from the book)

Jack Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1911 and lived in California. He wrote stories for magazines such as Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, and McCall's, and is the author of several novels, including the science fiction thriller The Body Snatchers, later published as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which served as the basis for multiple film adaptations.  He passed away in 1995 in Greenbrae, California. 

When the author reached out to review her book, my first inclination was to decline it simply because I have an almost 100% decline record in the past six months (resulting in an almost 100% pressure-free blog site). After all, I like reading books I want to read, old or new. However, what convinced me to accept this new Young Adult book was not the dystopian adventure of a world in which only 20,000 survived a virus in the United States, or that these survivors now live in walled cities within each state. It wasn't that the country was now run by the Company, who provides daily vaccines to keep the virus at bay. It also wasn't because there was time travel and a revolution led by kids. What convinced me to accept this book for review immediately was that the protagonist, a young sixteen-year-old girl named Clover, was autistic.

This uniqueness, rarely ever used in stories, was enough for me to accept immediately. And while I recently picked it up in anticipation for a much later July 30th review date, I ended up flying right through it in time to post today, the release date from The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group.

I was surprised by how swept up I was in the quest of Clover and her brother, West, to exist in this walled city. I was taken by West, who has been many things for Clover over the past few years, a combination of best friend, older brother, and guardian, especially as their mother died when Clover was a baby and their father now works for the Company. The relationship between the two is genuine, and West's ability to understand Clover at all times was a special indication of the protection he feels for her. I then became indignant and outraged by the bullies in the academy and their treatment towards Clover and her service dog, Mango, before she is then "drafted" into the Time Mariner program, destined for a life of time travel two years into the future to secure crucial details that haven't yet occurred. It's the only way to maintain a controlled society, yet also a safe one, as the details brought back provide details on everything to avoid the recurrence of the virus, or to protect a citizen from a violent crime. When Clover's brother is identified as a perpetrator of one of these violent crimes, it becomes up to Clover and a band of misfits, self-titled "freaks," to begin the process of building a revolution. While there were a lot of characters and relationships left unexplained, I trust this will smooth out in the next book.

Each chapter of this thrilling journey is led by a quotation from a former U.S. President sharing a theme of freedom, the foundation to their revolution. This creative story with an unexpected and natural hero is one I'll be looking forward to reading more of as the series continues.

Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group
Release Date: 7/2/2013
Pages: 315

FTC Disclosure: I received a paperback copy via the publisher, by request of the author in exchange for an honest review.

About the Author

Shaunta Grimes has worked as a substitute teacher, a newspaper reporter, a drug court counselor, and a vintage clothing seller. No matter which direction she strays, however, she always comes back to storytelling. She lives in Reno with her family, where she writes, teaches, and perpetually studies at the University of Nevada.

Visit the author:

• On her website
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

When a trusted fellow blogger of audiobooks, The Guilded Earlobe, writes that he loved an audio so much he'd give it "a manly bear hug without bothering to take a moment to glance awkwardly around for witnesses," I pretty much knew that I'd have to download Legion, a two-hour audiobook (free on Audible.com until the end of 2012) immediately. And he was so right!

I've not experienced Brandon Sanderson's work previously, but his epic fantasy novels are ones that I have on my list and cannot wait to dive into. In Legion, Stephen Leeds is a fixer of many things and is well-paid to do so. What separates him from the rest of the fixers and investigators in this sci-fi/time travel tale is that Stephen has the help of an excellent team who are experts in everything from psychology, body language, military survival tactics, history, and linguistics. The only thing is that each member of his crack team are all parts of his multiple personalities, or as he calls them, aspects. He can see them, they talk to him, they are fully developed characters, and they are awesome. When Stephen is hired to find a missing person who has taken something that could have greater implications for all of humanity, the truth behind all religion, science, and more, the race is on, and Stephen and his aspects travel all the way to Israel to uncover the truth.

At only two hours long and narrated by one of the best audiobook narrators I've ever listened to, Legion is escapism literature at its finest. When the aspects are much more fully developed characters than in chunkster books I've read, you know it's going to be one of those stories that you make excuses to spend one-on-one time with, and no breaks to stop the flow. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in trying sci-fi, time travel, and speculative fiction, but don't want one that is highly confusing with a lot of separate story lines that you have to keep track of. This was a perfectly easy story to listen to, with such a unique approach that I, like The Guilded Earlobe, just wanted more. I wonder if he'll ever branch this out into a full book? I can only hope.

Others said:

The Guilded Earlobe (audio review)

Publisher: Audible Frontiers

Audio Time: 2 hours, 8 minutes

Release Date: 10/2/12

Narrator: Oliver Wyman

FTC Disclosure: I download this from Audible.com for free with their offer to all members that will expire at the end of this year. Hurry up and download this!

Audio Notes: Click here to listen to the incredible sample of Oliver Wyman. He was incredible! My favorite character, or favorite aspect of Stephen's, was Tobias, an older gentleman full of wisdom and historical knowledge. Or maybe it was JC, the military survival guy, who was absolutely hilarious in several scenes. I can't pick! The story and characters were so well-written, and with Oliver Wyman knocking it out of the park on audio, I just can't do a virtual standing ovation long enough!

About the Author

Brandon Sanderson is an American fantasy author with almost a decade of published work. With the wildly popular Mistborn series I plan to dive into soon, he is also known for his stellar work in completing Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, another series I have on my list.

Visit the author:

• On his website
• On his LiveJournal
• On his main blog
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

About the Narrator

Oliver Wyman is an established audio narrator with an extensive selection available on Audible.com. Click here to see all of the options. He has voiced a wide range of options including sci-fi, fantasy, and even memoirs, particularly with Audie Award Winner It's Not About the Bike, by Lance Armstrong.

11/22/63. The day JFK was assassinated. A nation was devastated, stunned that a President was taken. Could it have been stopped? What if you could change history?

Let's get this out of the way. I loved this book. LOVED IT. There are 849 pages to this sucker, and not one page is a drag. (Look at me, I'm using lingo not quite current anymore, and it's all because I got sucked into this story and felt like I lived Jake Epping's time travel adventure in the late '50s, early '60s). This is a brilliant piece of work, and if I end up making a "Top 10 Books I've Read in 2011" list, this is going smack dab in the number 1 slot. (It's two days away from the last month of the year, so I feel pretty confident about my odds. I could be wrong, but...I don't really think so).

I've recently started reading Stephen King's work. I've been choosy, selecting ones considered King classics, so when 11/22/63 was being touted as the next best thing, I was hesitant. Selfishly, I wanted to wait until others read it.

But then I got a Klout perk, downloaded it to my iPad, and was snagged from the first page into this time travel adventure and read it just under a week. For me, that's insane.

Jake Epping, a small town New England teacher who recently went through a divorce from a struggling alcoholic, is introduced to this time warp by a good friend who invites him to help change history. In some freak of who-knows-what, there's some sort of wonky rabbit hole in his friend's diner that transports him from 2011 to 1958. The crazy thing is it always brings Jake to September 9, 1958, no earlier or later. Same time every time, and even crazier is that no matter how long Jake stays "in the past," when he returns to 2011, he's only missed two minutes. That's it. Whether he spends a day, a week, or  even a few years, whenever he returns, it is only two minutes later "in the present."

So what's a time-traveling good guy to do? The closest major event to 1958 is the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, which spiraled a flurry of events including Robert Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King, the Vietnam conflict. Some events could be associated with JFK's death, some maybe not...but it's up to Jake to take his friend's place and live five years in the past and, hopefully, save a President. While living "in the past," he meets a multitude of memorable characters (both good and downright troubling), obsessively stalks Lee Harvey Oswald, becomes attached to a community that makes him feel at home, and falls in love with the incredible and amazing Sadie.

Let's also address this: It is not a horror story. It is all time travel.

What I really enjoyed is that King doesn't waste time trying to explain the science or logistics of why there's a rabbit hole, and why it only deposits you on the same day and time in 1958, or even why only two minutes have passed when returning to the "present." It just is what it is, and that works just fine in this chunkster wallop of a story. I'm not the most experienced sci-fi reader, but I like to think I'm fairly logical. When a book presents me with some convoluted explanation on why something is happening scientifically, I tend to try to poke a hole in it. King, though, doesn't quibble over this, so as the reader I don't have to sit, wonder and worry if something really makes sense. It's as though I'm being told, "Look, the time/worm/rabbit-hole just drops you on September 9, 1958 every time. Why try to figure that out?" So I didn't worry about it.

What is important to discuss is something often debated with time travel: If you change the past, even just slightly, will it have a positive or negative effect on the future? It's that "butterfly effect" which is evaluated in depth and it made me wonder what I would choose to do. I sure am glad I don't have to worry about that.

I love this picture. (image source)

Stephen King is a MASTER. In the short time I've gotten to know his work, it's refreshing. He leaves the pompous BS alone that some storytellers can succumb to within their fiction, and just tells a story humbly and genuinely, which is probably why his horror is so scary and why his non-horror is also loved. It isn't fake. And in this book, it is simply Jake's story and he tells it all in the first person and describes how he takes on another identity in a time when he hasn't even been born yet, how he has to acclimate to the culture shock of living in a world he knows, but doesn't really know, and simultaneously battles an unseen presence that does everything possible to make sure that the past is not changed.

This is a multi-layered story of coincidences, along with Jake's struggles to stop awful events from happening to good people. All of this in the writing of another author might have gotten jumbled and lethargic. Instead, King deftly maneuvers through the story lines, successfully weaving in history and science-fiction, all the while taking you along for the ride so simple to understand that you're left dealing with the raw emotion of each event.

The bottom line is there's a lot to tackle in this book, what with Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK, and the other events Jake tries to change along the way. And then there is also the other side of living, the human side of love, loss, and regret. It's beautiful and I will not lie, I choked up towards the end. When that last page comes, I felt like I was punched in the gut that it was all over. I hated leaving these characters. Do you remember when you were younger and when you read a book you loved, you hated that the story ended not because it was a good book that was now over, but because you had to suddenly face the reality that the characters you fell in love with really didn't exist? I don't know about you, but I experienced that when I was a kid, and I felt that tonight when I finished the book. I loved Jake, Sadie, Deke...every single one of the good guys. I miss them already.

Favorite line

"Goose walked over my grave, I guess." (Sorta like getting goosebumps).

Regrets?

That I'm a new fan of Stephen King so when he brings back a character from a prior book, I don't realize it at all. I instead just like the character and then I find out from friends that so-and-so is from such-and-such, and man, did they love them. It bums me out that I couldn't experience fan-girl joy when a character returns. It's probably a lesson I should read King's work in the order of when it was published.

About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty novels, including The Stand, The Dark Tower, It, The Shining, oh...what more can be written that one doesn't already know? So here you go, click here to visit this cool author's official website.

Time travel. Fear. Confusion. Could I be describing the premise of a contemporary novel flying off bookshelves faster than Amazon sales rankings can keep up with? Perhaps.

Or, these could be a few words to describe the sixth out of the 93 Persephone Books reprinted thus far, (an independent publisher in England that reprints neglected classics by mostly 20th century women). The Victorian Chaise-Longue, by Marghanita Laski, was first published in 1953 and at only 99 pages, this tiny book is creepier and more uncomfortable than many Gothic books published today. I sat transfixed in the short time it took to read it. Eerie. Creepy. Uncomfortable.

The young wife, Melanie, suffers from tuberculosis and is confined to her room, hoping that she will survive with her doctor's help and can return to a normal life with her family, most especially with the baby she has yet to hold. When her family decides that she should move from one room to another in the house, the Victorian chair that Melanie purchased the very day she was diagnosed with tuberculosis is situated in the room. While resting upon the ugly chair, Melanie wakes up in a world almost 100 years before. Also ill with tuberculosis in this earlier time, Melanie is now surrounded not by a caring husband, but by a sister who holds a secret with her, and the clean room that she fell asleep in has now become a dirty, smelly, and unkempt room. Nothing is the same, save for the Victorian Chaise-Longue and Melanie's mind.

Can you imagine?

Then a sound, a door opening (but it took a long time to translate the noise into comprehension), and a woman said, "Well, Milly? Are you ready to wake up now?"

A common voice, a cruel voice, assured and domineering. Not a voice to be conquered with superior strength but the nightmare voice that binds the limbs in dreadful paralysis while the danger creeps and creeps and at last will leap. I am asleep, said Melanie, ordering her wakened brain to admit this and be still, her closed eyes to not see even the ugly green and scarlet and yellow patterns under too tightly pressed eyelids, and then there was heavy weighted rattle and almost simultaneously another, and consciousness of light shot through the closed lids and forced them open. (p. 24)

Descriptive and engaging, Marghanita Laski's story is one that showcases this author as a brilliant strategist, one who crafts a powerfully Gothic punch with each unsettling moment, and in the shortest amount of time. Melanie's new body is much weaker, and the sordid decor and pungent smells of the Victorian time are no dream. It is real, it is happening to her, and she cannot gather her strength to get out of this tangled mess. She is trapped in a body not her own, imprisoned within the shell of a weak and sick woman, and she is without the family that she believes she has left behind. Without question, it is a classic of monumental significance, and one that has led me to become a new fan of Persephone Books.

Happy Reading,

Natalie, the Coffee and a Book Chick

FTC Disclosure: My husband got me two Persephone books for Christmas and I meant to read them right away. I didn't and now that I've finished this one, I'm kicking myself that I waited this long. I'm currently reading the second one he gave me, Marghanita Laski's Little Boy Lost.

About the Author (from the Persephone Books website)

Marghanita Laski was born in 1915 to a family of Jewish intellectuals in London; Harold Laski, the socialist thinker, was her uncle. After working in fashion, she read English at Oxford, married John Howard, a publisher, and worked in journalism. She began writing once her son and daughter were born: among her six novels were Little Boy Lost (1949), The Village (1952) and The Victorian Chaise-Longue (1953). A well-known critic, she wrote books on Jane Austen and George Eliot. Ecstasy (1962) explored intense experiences and Everyday Ecstasy (1974) their social effects. Her distinctive voice was often heard on the radio on The Brains Trust and The Critics; and she submitted a large number of illustrative quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary. Her home was in Hampstead, where she died in 1988.

This picture is from The Guardian website, which listed The Victorian Chaise-Longue as one of the 10 Best Neglected Literary Classics.