From the Bookshelf of 2015 Reading Challenge [Closed]…

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

Discussion: . Week 2: Romance

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. Week 2: Romance

* Week 2: Introduction
By Jessica · 43 posts · 618 views

last updated Feb 03, 2015 01:13PM

* Week 2: Progress Post
By Jessica · 54 posts · 221 views

last updated Dec 30, 2015 12:26PM

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What Members Thought

Jul 02, 2012 Audrey rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I see the appeal, but I just did not like it. Reading it was just unpleasant, so much so that I read about the first two-hundred pages and skimmed to the end, which is something I almost never do.

So let's start with what was good:

-The writing itself, the prose, was well done, and the author creates lots of pretty backdrops for the action.

-Kind of similar, but Niffenegger was very good at injecting realism in to a fantasy premise. And yeesh, I just kept imagining the big messy chart I'd have t I see the appeal, but I just did not like it. Reading it was just unpleasant, so much so that I read about the first two-hundred pages and skimmed to the end, which is something I almost never do.

So let's start with what was good:

-The writing itself, the prose, was well done, and the author creates lots of pretty backdrops for the action.

-Kind of similar, but Niffenegger was very good at injecting realism in to a fantasy premise. And yeesh, I just kept imagining the big messy chart I'd have to make to keep all the time jumps straight if I were writing this.

Here is what keeps me from liking it:

-I just could not connect with the characters. Which is really a feat, if you think about it, because it's nearly five hundred pages of just their lives. I don't know what it was. Maybe that they were so privelidged and rich, maybe just that they didn't seem very nice, maybe it's just my thing. But I just couldn't get myself to like them or sympathize with them. So then when all the bad things happened (view spoiler) I wasn't really sad, my reaction was more, "Ew, I wish I hadn't read the description of that."

-It was just too long. And I think the premise kind of makes the author write herself in to a corner, because the time travel makes things repedative and involves a lot of revisiting and stuff, and it FEELS repedative, too. I think it could have done with having a few hundred pages cut.

-The stereotype-ness of the minor characters made me kind of uncomfortable. Especially the "Mammy"-esque cook at Clare's house. I don't know, maybe that's consistent with real people the author had met, but to me, as a reader, it was like "Really? She's writing in the 21st century here, right?"

All in all, I see why some people like it, but for me it was a lot of pages of depressing with not a lot of payoff. ...more

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Aug 27, 2015 Lisa Michalski rated it it was amazing

Shelves: library, audiobooks, pop-sugar-challenge-2015

I'll be honest, going into this book I thought it was simply a love story with a little twist. WRONG. I had no idea I'd be sucked into a sprawling, beautiful, and complicated life story. The audio book was amazing, one of the best I've ever listened to. ...more

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