Time Travel discussion

"Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Fiction (2022)
What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story."

This is a popular book, so check your library for availability. You might have to get in queue now for your favorite format.

I am really looking forward to reading this! I hope it is good.

Got it. :)

I am a bit over halfway through. For me, Part 1 was boring. Got much better in Part 2.

I agree part 1 was a bit of a contemporary fiction slog. It did improve as it went along.

A vacation to my past would be me at 19 visiting my grandparents in Pittsburgh and taking a huge notebook with me and lots of notes about our family history!

Was there a book series you read and loved as a kid?

That proposal was brutal. I can’t fathom why someone would get married to someone they weren’t 100% comfortable with? Are people that desperate to have children?

No, they're that desperate to not be alone. Alice considered saying yes because she's upset that her father has only her to visit him in the hospital.

Well, ok, some do think they need children. But Alice was pretty ambivalent about that.

There's definitely a lot to discuss in this book. Unfortunately I was reading it at an awkward time and didn't make enough notes.

" Alice imagined a graph that showed how much people's personalities shifted after high school on one axis and on the other, how many miles away from home they had moved. It was easy to stay the same when you were looking at the same walls. Layered on top would be how easy your life was along the way how many levels of privilege surrounded you like a tiny glass object in a sea of packing peanuts."

True for me and for my brothers!

This book is obviously about characters... but NYC and the milieu are characters, too. I like how Alice has her own definitions of affluence and privilege. Like, it's ok that the children of staff and faculty get privileged access to Belvedere... whereas what about scholarship kids? And like, L.L.Bean is supposedly the cheaper stuff... whereas what about those of us who can't afford it, and shop thrift stores and JCPenney?

I don't understand this bit, from p. 213-4 of the hardcover:

" Alice thought of all the articles she had ever read, and the self-help books, every stupid piece of advice about women having it all, and how only counting the things that one was trying to balance in a single life was actually a cosmic lowballing. She'd never even considered all the things she could have, or all the things she couldn't."

So, looking up lowballing and finding "Verb. 1. lowball, underestimate, estimate, gauge, approximate, guess, judge. usage: make a deliberately low estimate; "The construction company wanted the contract badly and lowballed" doesn't help me.

Can you?

"Despite having to be aware of every man within a block radius and how close they were to her body, the inner radar that every woman naturally possessed, Alice loved to walk alone at night."

Do you who are men understand this? Is it possible you actually feel this yourselves?

I want to read the books invented for this story. I want to give the podcast 'The Universe is Your Boss!" a listen. I want the motto 'Joy is Coming' to not already belong to evangelical Christians so I can use it. I like the Meta aspect, in that the characters use what they know of TT to try to figure out what's going on.

I very much enjoyed this story and will give it four stars when I review it.

lowballing = underestimating

The other day I was talking to my husband about how I wanted to get more exercise and I considered driving to the park and taking a walk on the trails before I picked up our kids from school, but then had second thoughts because I would be by myself in the woods and there could be creepers there who might follow me.

Samantha wrote: "lowballing = underestimating

But what is Alice saying there in the book?

The other day I was talking to my husband about how I wanted to get more exercise and I considered driving to the park and taking a walk on the trails before I picked..."

Yes, indeed, every woman is careful, vigilant. Aren't men, too, though, at least in some situations?

I think she is saying she was underestimating what her life could be because society told her what a single woman could do an accomplish and she just went with that.

This story is really sparking my imagination. If I woke up on my 16th birthday, what would that look and feel like? It was not long before my parents got divorced, before my dad's heart attack, only months before I met my husband. I had recently broken up with my boyfriend. It was a month before an epic summer when I didn't have any summer school and I didn't yet have a job, so I stayed up late watching old movies and reading books on the topic and waking up late to do it all over again. My cat Paige was still alive and young. It would be a fantastic place for me to revisit, except for my mom. Dealing with her again would be a nightmare.

I would much prefer my 17th birthday to my 16th. My 16th was just too chaotic and stressful. I would certainly make some different choices.

There's a lot to like/enjoy about this one. I hope more of you get a chance to read it, even if not until next year! ;)

I read it and liked it! I also gave it 4 stars.

I think it was somewhat predictable in that it was very similar to a lot of the more well-known time travel stories BUT I don't consider that a bad thing. I enjoyed it! It really got me thinking about my life choices and the kind of butterfly effect that may occur if I were in this situation. I'd definitely be interested in checking out more from this author but I bet this is her best because it's written with such deep emotion stemming from her real life relationship with her dad and his mortality. I can feel the passion in it!

Good point; it really does have a lot of passion, heart, and that's probably the biggest reason I liked it so much, too.

I liked it a lot also. My "review" covers some of the things I liked about it. It was emotional but not overwhelmingly so. Happy New Year! :)

I'm glad you enjoyed it. And Happy New Year to you, Glynn, and all of you!

I'm looking forward to this one.

I hope you like it. Discussions never close!

Books like this really hit home the message and we should try to be present in every moment of our lives, because one day the mundane won't be mundane, and unlike the people in this book, we don't have a way to time travel outside of our own memories.

Samantha wrote: "Books like this really hit home the message and we should try to be present in every moment of our lives, because one day the mundane won't be mundane, and unlike the people in this book, we don't ..."

Absolutely :)

Yes. I think that's one of the reasons that I read TT, to remind me of that. Good point, thanks.

I grew up in NYC and hated to walk alone at night. I was alert to every man on the street and never walked near the building lines. I tried not to make eye contact. Maybe it's better now (I'm talking about the 1970s). I then moved to a small town in the midwest and was shocked when strangers said "hi" to me when passing!

Cheryl wrote: ""Despite having to be aware of every man within a block radius and how close they were to her body, the inner radar that every woman naturally possessed, Alice loved to walk alone at night."

Do yo..."

Cheryl wrote: "I hope you like it. Discussions never close!"

Thanks! I finally got around to reading this book in January. I liked it, although it took me a little while to get into it.

Since I grew up in NYC, I appreciated all the descriptions of the city. I loved the humor, such as avoiding dog and horse feces when walking. I never knew about Pomander Walk , and found this fascinating! I also related to the relationship between Alice and her single father, the author. Time travel within a time-travel novel! Alice consulting with TT authors at a convention!

I liked her various alternative lives, as well. Marriage with two adorable kids?! Hmmm..... Seeing how the other half lives? Hmmm....

I'm so glad you found it worth the wait, Steven! And, yes, this one has some humor... sorely lacking in a lot of adult fiction the tends to take itself so seriously.

I just started reading this one , so many books, so little time :)

So far I am feeling that this is exactly the kind of time travel book I love, not heavy on the science, but playing the idea with what would you do with a "do-over"

Oh, I'm glad to hear you were able to make time. I hope you continue to enjoy it, and let us know more of your thoughts.

The book starts off slowly, but has a way of drawing you in so you will finish. The use of the offspring of an author as the narrator was a good device. As a fiction writer who dabbles in time travel it gave me a great deal to think about in refining the devices, if any, I have used or will use in future writing.

I'm glad it was worth your time, Bob; thanks for posting!