The Bookish Time Travel Tag!

Time is an illusion. – Albert Einstein

Hello! Anyone else love time travel? 🙂

Basically, I’ve come up with ten questions around the theme of time travel about books and I thought I’d try and turn it into a book tag. Here are the rules:

• Answer as many of the questions as you can/want.
• Tag other people – as many as you like. Share the love!
• Please leave a link to this post/blog. 
• Tag the post as “Bookish Time Travel”.
• Feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments!
• Explore! Try and visit other people’s Bookish Time Travel posts and leave a comment.

 

The Questions:

1. What is your favourite historical setting for a book?

The Victorian era – I find it fascinating! The weird culture and social rules, the rigid class system, the rapid expansion of industry, poverty, gender inequality, the clothes (I wish I could wear a top hat as part of my everyday wardrobe)… Plus, there’s lots of good historical fiction or even fantasy/paranormal set in this time period and quite a few of my favourite classics are from the Victorian era as well.

2.What writer/s would you like to travel back in time to meet?

The Bronte sisters. I’ve read some of their work and loved it, so I feel like they’d be really interesting people to meet and have a cup of tea with. 🙂

Also, Shakespeare. I’d thank him for his sonnets, ask him to write an autobiography so we could know some half decent facts about him that aren’t all vague conjecture, and steal an unpublished copy of one of his plays so I can magically “find” it in the future and become rich.

3.What book/s would you travel back in time and give to your younger self?

*hides face in shame* The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I haven’t read it yet. Or, more accurately, I read the first twenty pages of the first book and gave up about two years ago.

I wish I’d been given it when I was about ten/eleven-ish – I feel that version of myself would have loved it a lot more than this version of myself. Not that I think books should be restricted to certain age groups – I still read children’s books with 0% shame – but I feel like different versions of ourselves like/liked different things or appreciate them more. At that age I was just beginning to fall in love with books, especially fantasy, so I feel younger me would have loved The Lord of the Rings. When I tried reading it a few years ago, it just wasn’t clicking – I kept thinking about how I wished I’d read it sooner, so I think the regret/nostalgia kind of ruined the experience. However, I do want to give Lord of the Rings another go – as a lover of fantasy, it seems a bit bizarre that I haven’t.

4.What book/s would you travel forward in time and give to your older self?

Weird question, I know. But what I meant by it was more along the lines of – what book do you want to remind your older self of because it was really important to you? For me, it would be Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It’s been one of my favourites for years; I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve reread it. I think it’s important to never stop being curious or exploring – once that’s gone, you’ve lost your sense of wonder and that’s just too precious to lose and I feel that Alice really captures that.

5.What is your favourite futuristic setting from a book? E.g. Panem from The Hunger Games (said no one ever).

 

This one’s tricky, because most futuristic societies are corrupt/evil, but I’m picking the setting from Sarah Crossan’s Breathe/Resist Duology. I mean, sure there’s hardly any oxygen left, but it seems pretty cool otherwise?

 

 

 

6.What is your favourite book that is set in a different time period (can be historical or futuristic)?

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It’s set in Nazi Germany. Narrated by Death. It’s amazing. I cried. Repeatedly. Go read it.

 

7.Spoiler Time: Do you ever skip ahead to the end of a book just to see what happens?

….Very occasionally. I used to do it a lot more when I was younger and impatient, but now I only ever do it with books that I’m not enjoying all that much and want to finish quickly to see if it’s worthwhile continuing with it. Last time I did this was with Emma by Jane Austen, which I unfortunately didn’t like because I clearly have no taste in good literature, and I reviewed here.

 

8.If you had a Time Turner, where would you go and what would you do?

For understandable reasons, everyone’s tempted to go kill Hitler. But I’d make a shit assassin, so I think I’ll leave that up to someone else.

Personally, I kind of stumped myself with this question. There’s obviously things I regret or wish never happened, but if I changed them would I not be changing a bunch of other stuff as well by accident? Like if I went back and stopped ten year old me from splitting her head after falling off her chair because she was swinging on it, would I have learned to stop swinging on my chair? What if because nothing bad happened I kept on doing it and ended up getting hurt worse later on? Problems!

So I guess I wouldn’t change anything, but I would use it like an interactive history lesson instead and go back to the Victorian era. Just take notes. Wear a top hat.

 

9.Favourite book (if you have one) that includes time travel or takes place in multiple time periods?

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. Such. A. Great. Book! This one is a favourite of mine and is actually six novellas that all sort of follow the main character, Holly Sykes, but from differing viewpoints (only the first and the last POVs are Holly’s). Each novella occurs in a different time period.

 

 

 

10. What book/series do you wish you could go back and read again for the first time?

I was trying to think of something to say other than Harry Potter, because it’s so popular and I think a lot of people would want to go back and read it again for the first time, but I can’t. So, my answer’s the Harry Potter series, for reasons that will be obvious for anyone who’s ever read it.

 

 

 

I’m Tagging:

• Inside My Minds 
• travellingthroughwords
•  If Mermaids Wore Suspenders
• Teenbooklit101
• llady literary
• Living In Fiction
• Chapter Talk
• The Staircase Reader
• Lit & Love
• My Book Sense
• abooknation
• Rather Quite Lovely
• Fantastic Books and Where to Find Them
• Adoptabookaus
• Thoughts of a Writer and Avid Reader

If I’ve tagged you and you don’t want to take part – that’s totally okay! I just thought it would be fun to attempt to start a book tag of my own, especially because I love the theme of time travel. Also, if I haven’t tagged you and you want to take part – do it! Just make sure you leave a link to your post or blog in the comments so I can find it. 🙂

HAPPY TIME TRAVELLING,