Here are 92 books that Time fans have personally recommended if you like
Time.
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Throughout my life, I’ve moved around quite a bit, and in the process, members of my family and I have encountered many wildly strange people and things. The universe itself is a wild place when you delve into the more exotic aspects: black holes, quantum physics, and measurable differences in subjective realities. It’s hard to say what the real boundaries are, and so I look for stories that stretch my ability to conceive what could be–and that help me find wonder in all the darkness and strangeness around me.
This book by Franz Kafka may well be the OG book in the pursuit of weirdness in long-form fiction. Telling the harsh and anxious story of Joseph K’s unexplained arrest, Kafka brilliantly creates a universal allegory for the way we often feel like we must defend ourselves against a world that feels impossible to understand.
"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested." From its gripping first sentence onward, this novel exemplifies the term ""Kafkaesque." Its darkly humorous narrative recounts a bank clerk's entrapment — based on an undisclosed charge — in a maze of nonsensical rules and bureaucratic roadblocks. Written in 1914 and published posthumously in 1925, Kafka's engrossing parable about the human condition plunges an isolated individual into an impersonal, illogical system. Josef K.'s ordeals raise provocative, ever-relevant issues related to the role of government and the nature of…
I have been fascinated by the Gulag since reading the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in high school and then living for several months in Magadan, Russia, one of the “capitals” of the Gulag. The Gulag combined utopian dreams and stark violence; it was shrouded in many layers of secrecy; and it served, ultimately, as a microcosm of the Soviet Union. It is one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century, and its legacies are alive and well in Vladimir Putin’s Russia today. It can be an emotionally draining topic at times, but it also illustrates, through thousands of individual stories, humankind’s capacity for resiliency, goodness, love, and hope.
The book that shocked the world! The classic account of the Gulag! I deeply admire Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived several years of imprisonment and then interviewed hundreds of former inmates while lobbying the Soviet government to abandon its use of repression. The interviews and his own experiences form the basis of this three-volume book of over 1,500 pages (don’t worry—there’s an abridged edition!) that chronicles nearly every aspect of Stalin’s forced labor camps.
I love how Solzhenitsyn infuses his writing with righteous indignation—punctuated by dark humor—at what he and millions of others endured. I find him particularly effective at entering the prisoner’s mind to explore a range of morally fraught decisions that must constantly be made in the oppressive labor camps. Not to be missed!
Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.
“The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever leveled in modern times.” —George F. Kennan
“It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century.” —David Remnick, The New Yorker
“Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece. . . . The Gulag Archipelago…
I was 14 years old when my dad was imprisoned by the communist police of ex-Yugoslavia. My dad spent his childhood working as a shepherd in a small Macedonian village with 11 inhabitants. Later, he became a poet, and he belonged to the last group of political prisoners in the former Yugoslavia. When my dad was sent to prison, my family and I dealt with great trauma.
How do we master trauma? Some books say that I should repeat what I already did, and other books say that I should choose something new. But this small book explains that both decisions are bad.
This book has taught me that neither repetition nor choosing the new heals. I should choose the recollection over the repetition. I already have all the knowledge I need to overcome it, which is already within me.
'The love of repetition is in truth the only happy love'
So says Constantine Constantius on the first page of Kierkegaard's Repetition. Life itself, according to Kierkegaard's pseudonymous narrator, is a repetition, and in the course of this witty, playful work Constantius explores the nature of love and happiness, the passing of time and the importance of moving forward (and backward). The ironically entitled Philosophical Crumbs pursues the investigation of faith and love and their tense relationship with reason.
Written only a year apart, these two works complement each other and give the reader a unique insight into the breadth…
I was 14 years old when my dad was imprisoned by the communist police of ex-Yugoslavia. My dad spent his childhood working as a shepherd in a small Macedonian village with 11 inhabitants. Later, he became a poet, and he belonged to the last group of political prisoners in the former Yugoslavia. When my dad was sent to prison, my family and I dealt with great trauma.
Why should I read a book written by two neurologists from the end of the 19th century? It is very simple. I love this book because it is the first description and extended explanation of female traumas.
The book answers very important questions. What is trauma? What is an ego? Does normality exist? What is pain? What is shame? What is desire? What is childhood? And the most important question of all, which this book answers, is: Can words heal?
The cornerstone of psychoanalysis,and legacy of the landmark Freud/Breuer collaboration,featuring the classic case of Anna O. and the evolution of the cathartic method, in the definitive Strachey translation. Re-packaged for the contemporary audience with what promises to be an unconventional foreword by Irvin Yalom, the novelist and psychiatrist who imagined Breuer in When Nietzsche Wept .
I have been fascinated by the concept of time travel since I was a kid wishing to return to simpler times; the days before computers, huge metropolises, and before people protested everything. Some of these books achieve that, others do not claim to. I have no expertise in the science of time travel; no one does. While “time travel” is real (check out “time dilation”), to travel through time as writers like me profess is impossible. Or maybe it’s possible, given an opportune gravitational wave... Enjoy my recommended books! You’re in for a treat.
I write about time; the ticking of the clock and the passage through it. But when thinking about time zones and what time it is here or there, I still have to rely on imagining the sun at noon, here at home, and where in the sky that sun would be in the place in question. Time, the fourth dimension, is a confusing concept! While this book may shed some light on that concept, it asks more questions; about circadian rhythms, global regulation of time, and time as a social, and thus temporary, function. Not an easy read, Why Time Fliesmay take you some to complete, but it is worth the effort.
“An insightful meditation on the curious nature of time…A highly illuminating intellectual investigation” (Kirkus Reviews) explaining the sometimes contradictory ways we experience time.
“Time” is the most commonly used noun in the English language; it’s always on our minds and it advances through every living moment. But what is time, exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when we’re bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly?
“Erudite and informative, a joy with many small treasures” (Science), this witty and meditative exploration by award-winning…
Throughout my life, I have been fascinated by humanity’s place within deeper time. As a boy, I collected rocks and fossils, and at university studied geology. The long term has also been a theme running throughout my journalism career at New Scientist and the BBC, and it inspired my research during a recent fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. I believe we need to embrace a deeper view of time if we are to navigate through this century’s grand challenges – and if we can, there’s hope, agency, and possibility to be discovered along the way.
Vincent is a social anthropologist who spent a number of years in Finland completing a truly fascinating piece of fieldwork: he studied the people involved in planning the spent nuclear waste depository at Onkala.
This is a huge undertaking and responsibility, requiring its architects to project their minds tens of thousands of years into the future. Through his fieldwork, Vincent drew out various broader lessons for how to think longer-term.
What’s striking about Onkala is that the people involved in the planning are simply normal Finnish people tasked with an extraordinary job. To me that shows that deep time can be accessible to everyone, and indeed this is a theme that Vincent explores himself: seeking out long-term time in everyday experience can be cathartic, he argues.
A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth.
We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn…
I love books. All kinds of books. Growing up, I didn’t have many friends outside of books. It’s no wonder that as an adult reader/writer/editor/book coach, I still read widely and voraciously. I believe all stories are magical, but I’m especially drawn to books that contain emotionally engaging characters and fun magical elements. I’m also a huge fan of good KidLit and getting a chance to see and explore other cultures and worlds, both real and imagined. (I even co-host a podcast: Coaching KidLit.) So, I read a ton of magical stories and a lot of KidLit. That’s how I discovered the books on this recommended reading list.
This is such a fun book, filled with fascinating characters, unusual creatures, and a camera that can freeze time. I loved hanging out with the main characters, Otto and Sheed. They are smart, fun, and relatable. Their adventure is both exciting and humorous, and their relationship is realistic and heartwarming. I love a good adventure, especially one where the characters are forced to set aside their differences to work together toward a single goal.
The Hardy Boys meets The Phantom Tollbooth, in the new century! When two adventurous cousins accidentally extend the last day of summer by freezing time, they find the secrets hidden between the unmoving seconds, minutes, and hours are not the endless fun they expected. Otto and Sheed are the local sleuths in their zany Virginia town, masters of unravelling mischief using their unmatched powers of deduction. And as the summer winds down and the first day of school looms, the boys are craving just a little bit more time for fun, even as they bicker over what kind of fun…
Mario Livio is an astrophysicist and author of seven popular science books, including the bestsellers The Golden Ratio and Brilliant Blunders. He worked for 24 years (till 2015) with the Hubble Space Telescope, and published more than 500 scientific papers. He lectures regularly to the general public, and has appeared on television programs ranging from 60 Minutes to NOVA to The Daily Show.
An enthralling, fictional description of a young scientist (Einstein) and his dreams/thoughts about space, time, relativity, and the nature of reality. The book fictionalizes Einstein’s dreams in 1905, his “Annus Mirabilis” (“Miracle Year”), in which he wrote four fundamental papers, including one on his theory of Special Relativity. While this is a work of fiction, the physics concepts are beautifully explained.
It is ten minutes past six by the invisible clock on the wall. The young patents clerk sprawls in his chair, dreaming about time. He is Albert Einstein, and in his dreams he imagines new worlds, in which time can be circular, or flow backwards, or slow down at higher altitudes.
Most people are surprised to hear I wasn’t a reader growing up. All the books I was assigned to read in school were too serious or sad. It wasn’t until I started reading comedy, that I really got into reading. Now, I read everything under the sun, but comedy is still what I love to write. I write the kind of books that I wish I had found as a tween. And to this day, the best compliment I receive is when a parent tells me one of my books made their kid laugh or better yet, turned their reluctant reader into a reader. As a writer, there’s no better feeling!
Imagine if you relived your 11th birthday over and over?
The answer is found in the pages of Wendy Mass’s delightful, sweet, and funny page-turner, 11 Birthdays! Pick up this book if you want to add a little magic to your day. It even has a little mystery to it. Bonus!
It's Amanda's 11th birthday and she is super excited-after all, 11 is so different from 10. But from the start, everything goes wrong. The worst part of it all is that she and her best friend, Leo, with whom she's shared every birthday, are on the outs and this will be the first birthday they haven't shared together. When Amanda turns in for the night, glad to have her birthday behind her, she wakes up happy for a new day. Or is it? Her birthday seems to be repeating itself. What is going on?! And how can she fix it?…
For many years, I’ve been creating visual nonfiction books for adults. These books are about climate change, indigenous sovereignty, and nuclear physics—not typical kids’ book fare. But because my books include artwork, everyone always asked me when I would write and illustrate a book for children. Once I had my own children, I was suddenly full of ideas. Children’s books are often underestimated. The best books of the genre are accessible enough to interest a young person, sophisticated enough to engage the adults reading them aloud, and multidimensional enough to reward countless re-readings. I believe books that meet this standard fit alongside civilization’s great works of literature.
I never tire of reading this brilliant book to my son. His imagination (and mine) goes to new places with each rereading. Each spread relocates the reader to another corner of the world, where we glimpse a snapshot of action: someone honks their car horn in a traffic jam in Mexico City, a volcano erupts in Papua-New Guinea, a woman drops a mysterious envelope on the sidewalk in Budapest.
For my son and I, the book has been as interactive as any game, offering endless possibilities for discussion and debate. Because each spread is a single moment, we can dream up our own interpretation of what might have led to this scene and what will unfold afterward. It’s wonderful to see wildly varied landscapes as we travel the planet.
Inspired by the question, "What are they doing right at this moment on the other side of the world?" this book focuses on natural and human events happening all over the world in the same second. Talking about the world and how it's so different in places but also so similar and shared, so incredible and surprising, the books takes us to New York, Chicago, Mexico, Portugal, Angola, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungry, Brazil, and South Africa, among others.
So, while you sit turning the pages of this book, things are happening everywhere. Somewhere, a wave is reaching the shore. Elsewhere,…
