Books About Time Travel Worth Reading

Reading books about time travel is one of my guilty pleasures. I love many genres, including mysteries, thrillers, sci-fi books, books about vampires and zombies, but when it comes to time travel books, my whole mind, body and soul feels like it's on another level altogether.

Maybe it has something to do with our curiosity about other times and places, where realistically we can never go to, maybe it's about our search for immortality, but whatever it is, when I'm reading a book involving time traveling, you can't get me away from the books, not even for eating lunch.

Below is a list of my most favorite books on this topic, some including

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon a favorite in the genre

So I will keep the list open and add to it more books as I read and find more worthwhile including. If you do have some other favorites that are not mentioned here, please let me know in the Guestbook section below, so I can read, review and list them if they're good. I'm always looking for some more books about time travel worth reading!

by Audrey Niffenegger

I've read and owned over time countless books on time travel. I've given most away or traded them at places like Bookmooch.com. However there is one book that I will keep in my personal book collection and re-read as many times as I feel the urge to: The Time Traveler's Wife.

It is one book that touched me so deeply that I enter a different state of consciousness even when I hear the name of this books. I've also watched the movie that came out several years later, and it was great, but still, I think it can not compared with the actual book.

It is a time travel romance novel about Henry and Claire who's love and passion transcends time. Henry is a librarian who has a strange disorder which makes him travel to other times without him actually wanting to do so. However those times and places are known places, he can only travel to places he's actually in real life before. He meets Claire when she is 6 and he is a grown up guy.

The story is non-linear, it goes back and forth in time, but it is always about Claire and Henry. She basically grows up with him, but he only knows her for a few years.

One thing I have to warn you: it is a book that will make you cry and there's no shame in crying when the story has such a pull. If you don't at least shed one tear when reading this book (especially the end), this book was not for you at all. And even knowing that I'll cry again and again, I'll still keep this book to read over and over again. It's just so good!

It was a great movie, a wonderful one in fact, but I still love the book more :)

Visiting the past or the future has been in the dreams of people since the dawn of time. We've been all fascinated by things that happened in the past, or what can happen in the future that we might never see in this life time, but we'd dearly love to know anyway.

Countless books have been written on the topics, and maybe just as many movies and TV series have been created to feed this need of knowing an curiosity of people all over the world. Including mine.

Time travel is a topic that I can't stop reading about, and even if the book is as boring as it can be - which I might close it without reading it in other circumstances, when it comes to books about time travel, I'll read it no matter what. I don't have to like it, but I'll read it nevertheless.

I think the first time I got exposed to the idea of time travel was through the movie "Somewhere In Time", which in those days i had no idea that it was made from a book by Richard Matheson called Bid Time Return.

That movie opened in me that fascination with time travel, maybe this genre one of my most favorites ever.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one. The idea that we can use science to build a time travel machine and learn about the hidden secrets of the universe, to possibly meet our ancestors face to face, to see what the future holds in store for our children and grandchildren, is very appealing to pretty much everyone around.

Many people feel that they've been born in the wrong decade, or possibly century. Some have a strong pull of the Victorian times, without fully understanding why. Others would love to learn about scientific explorations of the future, maybe in times where cancer and HIV are fully cured. And others are simply curious.

What is your fascination with time travel?

image credits: my own copy of the Time Traveler's Wife

by Diana Gabaldon

The Outlander is a series of 8 huge and heavy books by Diana Gabaldon. When I started to read the first book, I had no idea it is the first in the series. So imagine my surprise when I realized at the end of the book that I will have several other monster tomes to read. I was overjoyed!

The whole series is a huge story, and each book is really a chapter in it, that's the best I can describe it. And it is another book that has a main character with the name Claire, just like in The Time Traveler's Wife :)

The story starts in 1945 when Claire, a nurse during the war, comes back home when the war ends to resume her life. During her second honeymoon with her husband in Scotland, she goes one day hiking, where she accidentally goes through a stone circle, only to wake up 200 years before her time.

And just to make it more interesting since she's just come home from WWII, she is thrown smack in the middle of a small war between the English and the Scots. As a nurse she heals a Scot names Jamie and, well, let's just say, they fall in love. Hard.

I don't want to give the entire story away, but it's awesome. And it's also a historical fiction novel with some great description of both her time and the one where she lands during her trip back in time. And the romance is so hot - without being overly cheesy.

If you like time travel romances with a dash of history, you'll love this book, heck you'l love the entire series. And don't let the fact that the books are huge put you off from reading. They're fast reads.

by Ken Grimwood

Replay is another book about time travel that is on my top 5 list. I've written a short review about it on my blog back in 2007, it was shortly before giving the book away (as I usually do with books I've read, I donate them) to the local church charity bookshop.

It was another book that touched me just as deeply as The Time Traveler's Wife did.

The story is about Jeff Winston, a 40ish old guy who is talking on the phone with his wife while he is at his office. And dies while on the phone.

Only to wake up 25 years younger, in his college dorm with a major difference: he has the mind of the 40 years old, he remembers his life, but he's stuck in the body of his younger self.

If this is scary enough, let's up it a notch more: he relives his life over and over again, every time gaining new insights that he will use in his next life, right until he is 42 again, when he will die once more to wake up as a younger him.

While this book is about time travel, it is not a sci-fi book by any means. It has no science fiction gadgets, no time travel machines, it just has a guy who for some reasons repeats his life in a loop from 18 to 42 until....

I won't give away the plot, but I highly recommend reading it. It might even change you, the way it did change.

Here's the official trailer to the movie - not everyone liked it, but I loved it. Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that I adore Gerald Butler!

This is the very movie that introduced me to the concept of time travel, opening my eyes to a whole new world out there.

Here are a few more books on the topic of time travel that I've read and I think are great enough to be worth mentioning. Might not make my top 5 list, but they're good.

* I'll have to start with a book I'm reading right now, called The Tenth Saint by D.J. Niko. It's the first book in a new series called Sarah Weston Chronicles, and it's part archaeological mystery, part time travel, part adventure, and part history. It's a wonderful new beginning of series, and I can't wait for the second one to be also published.

* 11/22/63 by Stephen King. A very good book which is very different from the usual thrillers and horror stories written by Stephen King.

* Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It is a good book, it is about time travel, but I wouldn't quite put it at the top 5. It is actually the first book in a series called Oxford Time Travel.

* Time and Again by Jack Finney. I actually loved this book, it's a lovely hidden gem that needs discovering. For some reason these days it's quite hard to find, so if you get hold of a copy, keep it and read it.

* Lightning by Dean Koontz. I love all Dean Koontz books (except the Odd Thomas series) and this is worthwhile checking it out. It is pure time travel romance where the main character, Laura, gets saved at crucial times in her life by someone called Stephan, who simply appears when she needs him, only to disappear again once the crisis is gone.

* The Highlander series by Karen Marie Moning. It is a paranormal romance series for those who love this kind of book. I enjoyed it, but was not my most favorite series to read. I do like the covers for the the series, especially the hardcover ones (like the one I have below). Just yummie!