AlexandriaLibraryVA discussion

As I count down the days to the season two premiere of Outlander(April 9), I am distracting myself with a list of all the best time travel books. My intro to time travel books was Jude Deveraux's A Knight in Shining Armor. That book also convinced me that reading about history is a lot more fun then living it, especially if you were a peasant. If you have a favorite add it to the list.



Lynn Kurland's A Garden in the Rain was another good one.



The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley

One of my favorites is To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.



In elementary school, I discovered Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer, which I am now going to read again.

My first and favorite time travel book is Jack Finney's Time and Again, which Stephen King called "THE great time-travel story."

Connie Willis has several books based around Time Travel, including "Doomsday Book", "Blackout" and "All Clear" all based around the adventures of history students at a future University of Oxford. There are also several short stories in the same series. All three of these books and the aforementioned "To Say Nothing of the Dog" won Hugo Awards for best SciFi Novels.

The Time Traveler's Wife is pretty good, although the time travel is a little unconventional. The Time Traveler's Wife

Hey Rachel,

I did enjoy the Time Traveler's Wife. I liked that the travel was linked to his genes so was more believable than in other books.

I have not read Connie Willis or Jack Finney. I will have to look into them.

I've enjoyed reading almost the entire chapter series of the Magic Tree House Books with my little one and space traveling to different times and places. Oh, and it's supposed to be educational as well! We've traveled back in time with Jack and Annie during the Revolutionary War with George Washington. We are currently reading the book where they travel back in time to San Francisco in 1906 and its great earthquake.

I loved the Magic Tree House Books when my daughter was young too! Such fun!

I am also about to start the second book in Deborah Harkness' All Souls Trilogy, which has time travel. The first book A Discovery of Witches was really good.

About 30 years ago I read The Mirror, which has been memorable though lightweight. It did leave me with a weak spot for this device. I enjoyed the Outlander series, though it's wearing thin. I like the history leavened with fiction. Oh, also Timeline was good. Maybe influenced by Mr Peabody's Way Back machine on Bullwinkle!

If you want a good time travel / steampunk book, try Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates. What fan of reading wouldn't want to go back to visit with Coleridge and Byron, and a host of some of the craziest characters you'll meet in literature.

I second Jack Finney's Time and Again. A sweet and easy - and presumably well-researched - read that brings you back to another era in New York City. My mom gave it to me to read in high school and I liked it then. I re-read it a few years ago as an adult and still liked it, highly recommend for anyone who wants a good time travel story!

Octavia Butler has a good one called Kindred. The main character is a black woman who travels back to the time of her slave ancestors. Reading it as a teen it opened up to me the conditions of that society. The main character also gets a rude awakening, and an education.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...