TTT: Top Ten Books that Would be on Your Syllabus if You Taught (Unconventional) Time Travel 101

/ beckmank

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday (TTT) brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish.

This weeks prompt is a little open: “Top Ten Books That Would Be On Your Syllabus If You Taught X 101.”

My initial thought for this was going to be “British Mysteries 101.” But seriously. Take a look at the graphic below.

British Mysteries 101

Now please don’t get me wrong. These are all fabulous books. I love them all, and I recommend them all! But…It feels the same as so many of my TTT lists recently – favorite authors, read the most books from, auto-buy, I’m sure the list goes on. And I’ve only been doing these since March. So for me to pick British Mysteries 101 makes this topic a snooze fest, right?

BreakfastClub

Never fear, my TTT friends! Instead, I’ve decided to go with “Time Travel 101.” I should warn you, though. My class is not your traditional time travel…

Ten Books Needed for (Unconventional) Time Travel 101

Students, please make sure you’ve acquired the following ten books before our class begins.

Independent Reads

These first seven books you’ll be reading independently throughout the semester.

TTT_TimeTravelPart1

  1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling – because everyone needs a Time Turner.
  2. Timebound by Rysa Walker – What happens when someone travels in time and changes something? What if someone realizes they can use time travel for personal gain? What happens when it threatens to change not only your way of life, but your very existence?
  3. Landline by Rainbow Rowell – A magic phone connects 2013 Georgie McCool to her 1998 (not yet) husband Neal. Is the magic phone real, or is it all in Georgie’s imagination? If it is real, is she supposed to change something? Fix something in her marriage? Make something happen? Is she messing things up? Is this the way it happened all along?
  4. 11/22/63 by Stephen King – What if you found a rabbit hole in time that would give you the chance to go back in time and prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas?
  5. The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens – The Emerald Atlas isn’t your ordinary book. Drop a picture onto a page, and the book transports you to not only where, but when the picture was taken.
  6. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – If you could re-live your life and make a small change somewhere, what affect would it have? Each time Ursula Todd dies, she is reborn again on that snowy day on 11 February 1910 to try again.
  7. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – Time travel courtesy of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to help Ebenezer Scrooge learn the values of kindness and generosity.

Group Reads

These last three books on the list will be read as a group during class. (Because your instructor has not yet read them either. 😉 )

TTT_TimeTravelPart2

  1. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  2. The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson
  3. Hourglass by Myra McEntire

Extra Credit

Some people yearn for opportunities to go above and beyond the standard class materials. For extra credit, please watch and analyze the following television shows and films:

  1. Blink – Doctor Who, Season 3, episode 10. (2007) My favorite Doctor Who episode, I love the way time travel is used in this story. Here’s a clip:
  2. Back to the Future (1985) Time travel via DeLorean.
  3. Midnight in Paris (2011) Each night at midnight, Gil finds himself inexplicably in 1920’s Paris.

What do you think? Would you sign up for my class? What unconventional time travel books did I miss? What subject did you choose for your TTT Syllabus? Comment away and as always, link up to your own TTT. I look forward to taking your class!

74 thoughts on “TTT: Top Ten Books that Would be on Your Syllabus if You Taught (Unconventional) Time Travel 101”

  3. Brilliant post! I was this close to doing mine on time travel, but then I remembered I’ve already done a similar post. 🙂 I would definitely want to be in this class!

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  4. This sounds like it’d be a lot of fun. I don’t have the most experience with time travel books – but the ones I’ve read I’ve really liked. Have you read All Our Yesterdays? I found that to be a very unique time travel book. I’m definitely interested in Timebound but I’ve not heard much about it, so I’m really glad to see it on your list. And, time travel via DeLorean is without a doubt a classic. Great list!

    My TTT

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    • Timebound is a trilogy – the third book is coming out this year. I need to catch up with #2. Timebound is really fun. I haven’t read All Our Yesterdays, thanks! I will look it up. 🙂

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  5. I would definitely take this class! (And probably do all of the extra credit) I love Blink! When I tried to get my husband into Doctor Who, Blink was the episode I showed him.

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  6. I’ve read a lot of time travel books with my kids – the Magic Tree House series, Time at the Top / All in Good Time, the Sixty-Eight Rooms series, the Green Knowe series. Time travel is BIG in MG books. 🙂

    I had mixed feelings about The Time Traveler’s Wife. In the one hand the time travel was super cool and interesting. Henry and Claire meeting out of order reminds me SO much of River Song and the Doctor (Stephen Moffat admits as much). On the other hand, there were some odd racial stereotypes and quite a few extremely dislikeable characters.

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    • I’ve heard mixed reviews on The Time Traveler’s Wife. Obviously I need to read it if we are having it as class material. 😉 Thanks for the recommendations, my boys and I are always looking for new books to read together. They love Magic Treehouse, but we haven’t explored the others you mentioned!

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  8. I am signing up, although I feel like a cheater as I am about halfway through the syllabus AND the extra credit already! I would add Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World, although that is more parallel universe than time travel.

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  9. Awesome list! I agree with you about the lists feeling a little repetitive lately. I’m trying to come up with something new for today. I’m still working on it.
    Since you like unconventional time travel, you might like The Skin Map by Stephen R. Lawhead. I read about half of it, and then had to stop for some reason. It feels like an interesting take on the genre, but like I said, I haven’t finished it yet 🙂
    I love Blink, but my favourite is The Angels Take Manhattan. The time travel aspect of that episode totally manipulates the emotions! Also, I’m a Rory/Amy fanatic.

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  21. Any class where watching Blink is extra credit is definitely a class for me! Now I want to go rewatch it. I’m looking forward to reading (or maybe listening) to Landline and am planning on reading/listening to The Christmas Carol this December. I would definitely take this class. Definitely sounds like there’s be some interesting discussions. And I’d probably take the British mystery class too!

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  25. Love the incorporations of The Breakfast Club and Doctor Who!! 😀 I read Life After Life this past winter and absolutely loved it. I haven’t gotten around to reading the sequel yet, but it’s definitely on my TBR!! Awesome list! 🙂

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  28. Blink is probably my favorite Doctor Who episode ever. So amazing. I love time travel in fiction, and you have a few that I really enjoyed here, like Landline, Harry Potter, The Bookseller, and The Time Traveler’s Wife. Since I feel the need to mention Outlander at least once a day, I’d just add that the Outlander series is built around time travel and uses it so well! Really great list and topic — well done!

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  31. As others have said, The Time Traveler’s Wife is a wonderful read (but skip the movie). I also agree that reading the Outlander series is a must, and I would add and strongly recommend Michael Crichton’s Timeline.

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  33. TIME TRAVEL! What a wonderful top ten Tuesday post, I really enjoyed this. I love Doctor Who, and that episode is one of my favourites as well! Even if it did freak me out and give me nightmares when I was 13/14 years old.
    I need to read more time travel books so this was a great post for me to read.
    xoxo 💋

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