Timeshare
Registered by Ghost_Dog of Merrimack, New Hampshire USA on 8/17/2020
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
2 journalers for this copy...
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Welcome to BookCrossing! This book you found is now yours to read, enjoy, keep or pass on to another reader.
The BookCrossing ID, which you entered in the "Enter a BCID" box on the website, is unique to this copy of this book. We would be delighted if you would make a journal entry to say you have found the book.
BookCrossing is FREE to join and a great deal of fun, completely confidential, and you may remain anonymous. If you choose to join please consider using me Ghost_Dog as your referring member.
Journal Entry 2 by Ghost_Dog at Little Free Library, Twin Bridge Park in Merrimack, New Hampshire USA on Friday, August 21, 2020
Released 3 yrs ago (8/21/2020 UTC) at Little Free Library, Twin Bridge Park in Merrimack, New Hampshire USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Enjoy!
I found this book in the Little Free Library while dropping off some books of my own, and thought it sounded intriguing.
I enjoyed this one more than I expected to - it mixes aspects of a typical time-travel story with some unusual twists, and I liked the way it all played out.
The book opens with a demonstration of the rather casual way in which protagonist John uses his time-travel abilities to take a quick dance-vacation in the '70s and then hop back to 1949 to retrieve some time-traveling clients who've failed to return on schedule. There's some explanation here of how it all works (well, leaving out the whole "how time travel might work" bit, which is hand-waved); basically, the agency takes paying clients (presumably very, very high-paying clients) and sends them to one of a number of carefully-vetted times/places, where they can do such things as see the first sneak-preview showing of "Gone With the Wind" or just spend a week in a time and place that's free of the modern-day trials and tribulations. [The protagonist's present-day - set in 2006, not that long after the book itself was written - is described as pretty awful, with rising costs and crime, plus massive unemployment, putting lots of people into desperate straits, making the trips to the past (even not-that-great pasts) seem refreshing by contrast. This resonated all too strongly given the actual state of things in 2020; I wonder if the author's still around to appreciate that...]
John finds his errant tourists, but their reasons for wanting to stay - primarily for the sake of their kids - win him over, and he agrees to help them out. Another example of playing rather fast and loose with the time-travel concept - but the book does touch on the idea of whether and to what degree the time-travelers can change history. [Spoiler: they can, and they do, but - so far - the changes are minor on a global/historic scale, though the effects on some people are quite significant.]
From there the story proceeds in flashbacks, largely via John's testimony at a sudden Senate hearing, which feels very ominous: have his actions triggered something nasty, and is he about to take the fall for the agency? At first it seems benign enough; he describes his hiring at the agency, his initial trips (he was the first human subject, as far as he knows), and a delightful if complicated trip to 1940 Hollywood, where he was tasked to get a small part in a movie (by way of providing evidence of having changed the timeline). In the process he meets an array of movie stars of the day, befriending several including John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart (whom he brings together, convincing them to do a film together - Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" yet; while I'd have loved to see that, I was less pleased at the premise that John Wayne might have taken Aldo Ray's part in the delightful "We're No Angels"). John also falls in love with a British actress who's on the point of moving back to the UK to join the WAAF. He has a wonderful time hanging out with the celebrities - though it does take him a while to get used to the way everybody smokes, drinks, and devours high-cholesterol and meat-heavy dishes - but eventually he starts talking, dropping tidbits about future events that attract the attention of people with high-level military connections. [Yet again, he's playing with the timestream in a pretty significant way; his views of his actions later are a mix of "I probably couldn't make much of a change as I'm just one guy" and then "but the changes that did come about were good ones, right?" The story's on the "lite" side, philosophically, as for every "win" due to these changes, there were undoubtedly lives lost and fortunes ruined for others, but the book doesn't go into that.]
Eventually, John - who never gets over his lost love - gets to meet some of his own family members, makes plans to insure that they (and he) are financially sound [the invest-early-with-foreknowledge method of becoming fabulously wealthy], and works in a few hints that he hopes will prevent some emotional pain in their futures.
The thing is, several characters - including his lady-love and his family members - work out pretty quickly that he's Not Of This Time, and he's pretty quick to admit it while giving lip-service to "but don't tell anybody". How this works out is quite a spoiler so I won't say more, but I did find the climactic scenes near the end very satisfying, if over-the-top!
The whole thing's something of a fairy tale, really; the real-world ramifications of what John and other time-travelers have been doing are glossed over except where they can be highlighted as "really good thing" or "really funny change to pop-culture". But taken as is, it's an enjoyable read, quite diverting. [There seem to be a couple of sequels, which I may hunt up just to see how things work out; maybe the author will dig a little deeper into his mess-with-the-timestream ideas...]
The book opens with a demonstration of the rather casual way in which protagonist John uses his time-travel abilities to take a quick dance-vacation in the '70s and then hop back to 1949 to retrieve some time-traveling clients who've failed to return on schedule. There's some explanation here of how it all works (well, leaving out the whole "how time travel might work" bit, which is hand-waved); basically, the agency takes paying clients (presumably very, very high-paying clients) and sends them to one of a number of carefully-vetted times/places, where they can do such things as see the first sneak-preview showing of "Gone With the Wind" or just spend a week in a time and place that's free of the modern-day trials and tribulations. [The protagonist's present-day - set in 2006, not that long after the book itself was written - is described as pretty awful, with rising costs and crime, plus massive unemployment, putting lots of people into desperate straits, making the trips to the past (even not-that-great pasts) seem refreshing by contrast. This resonated all too strongly given the actual state of things in 2020; I wonder if the author's still around to appreciate that...]
John finds his errant tourists, but their reasons for wanting to stay - primarily for the sake of their kids - win him over, and he agrees to help them out. Another example of playing rather fast and loose with the time-travel concept - but the book does touch on the idea of whether and to what degree the time-travelers can change history. [Spoiler: they can, and they do, but - so far - the changes are minor on a global/historic scale, though the effects on some people are quite significant.]
From there the story proceeds in flashbacks, largely via John's testimony at a sudden Senate hearing, which feels very ominous: have his actions triggered something nasty, and is he about to take the fall for the agency? At first it seems benign enough; he describes his hiring at the agency, his initial trips (he was the first human subject, as far as he knows), and a delightful if complicated trip to 1940 Hollywood, where he was tasked to get a small part in a movie (by way of providing evidence of having changed the timeline). In the process he meets an array of movie stars of the day, befriending several including John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart (whom he brings together, convincing them to do a film together - Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" yet; while I'd have loved to see that, I was less pleased at the premise that John Wayne might have taken Aldo Ray's part in the delightful "We're No Angels"). John also falls in love with a British actress who's on the point of moving back to the UK to join the WAAF. He has a wonderful time hanging out with the celebrities - though it does take him a while to get used to the way everybody smokes, drinks, and devours high-cholesterol and meat-heavy dishes - but eventually he starts talking, dropping tidbits about future events that attract the attention of people with high-level military connections. [Yet again, he's playing with the timestream in a pretty significant way; his views of his actions later are a mix of "I probably couldn't make much of a change as I'm just one guy" and then "but the changes that did come about were good ones, right?" The story's on the "lite" side, philosophically, as for every "win" due to these changes, there were undoubtedly lives lost and fortunes ruined for others, but the book doesn't go into that.]
Eventually, John - who never gets over his lost love - gets to meet some of his own family members, makes plans to insure that they (and he) are financially sound [the invest-early-with-foreknowledge method of becoming fabulously wealthy], and works in a few hints that he hopes will prevent some emotional pain in their futures.
The thing is, several characters - including his lady-love and his family members - work out pretty quickly that he's Not Of This Time, and he's pretty quick to admit it while giving lip-service to "but don't tell anybody". How this works out is quite a spoiler so I won't say more, but I did find the climactic scenes near the end very satisfying, if over-the-top!
The whole thing's something of a fairy tale, really; the real-world ramifications of what John and other time-travelers have been doing are glossed over except where they can be highlighted as "really good thing" or "really funny change to pop-culture". But taken as is, it's an enjoyable read, quite diverting. [There seem to be a couple of sequels, which I may hunt up just to see how things work out; maybe the author will dig a little deeper into his mess-with-the-timestream ideas...]
Journal Entry 5 by 
GoryDetails
at LFL - Haven St. (94) in Warwick, Rhode Island USA on Thursday, October 1, 2020
GoryDetails at LFL - Haven St. (94) in Warwick, Rhode Island USA on Thursday, October 1, 2020
Released 3 yrs ago (10/2/2020 UTC) at LFL - Haven St. (94) in Warwick, Rhode Island USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.I was pleased to find this Little Free Library, after seeing some recent releases there. (I spent the day making a loop around several Rhode Island and Massachusetts towns to leave books in LFLs; didn't have time to go after all the ones listed in Warwick on the Little Free Library map, but I made it to a couple!) Left this book and a couple of others here; hope someone enjoys them!
[See other recent releases in RI here.]
*** Released for the 2020 Tick Tock challenge. ***
*** Released for the 2020 You're Such an Animal challenge, for the embedded "hare" in the title. ***
*** Released for the 2020 Science Fiction challenge. ***
*** Released for the 2020 Keep Them Moving challenge. ***
