A Book In Time: Winner of the 2020 Page Turner Award for Fiction

Unbelievable writing and such a clever premise. The book's journey from the first edition (the first ever made) is the most fascinating. It changes hands from book lovers, famous writers, exploiters, a restorer, where it is nurtured and loved or used and abused. The way it feels and sees its surroundings, sight, hearing, touch, all set in such rhythmic language you'd think it was not only a living breathing character, but something otherworldly. By the time I finished the novel, where it carried all the blemishes of life, I began to see just how much this precious book changed as a result of all its adoptions. There's a message there for those of you clever enough to find it. Read the book and find out. I can't praise this book high enough. Probably the best Sunday afternoon read of all time!

This is the story of a book that was written by an older woman who never bore children. She loved the book, a series of poems inspired by the Biblical Song of Songs, as if it were her own human child. Over the course of 200 years, the book was handed off to one carefully selected guardian after another, each of whom treasured the book as much as if it were a human being. A Book in Time is in itself a library: of time periods, writers and other creatives, historical events, book genres, and philosophies. It's part fan fiction and part speculative fiction. It is all over the place and thoroughly focused all at the same time. My favorite aspect of the book: the notions that books are immortal, have integral worth, and are of huge benefit to the people who read them are not new to me; they have always been held close to my heart; however, the concepts that books have souls and are resurrected are ones I had not previously considered but which will be held just as tightly because I find they fit in very well with what I believe about what comes after this earthly existence. Perhaps the most relevant message of this story is that good books are meant to be treasured and we lose much when we forego the touch and smell of gorgeously tooled or illustrated volumes, their pages smudged with the fingerprints and perhaps tear stains of their readers. Each tells a story of those who held them, read them, and learned and felt all that their creator would have them know and feel. Ah! Such is the power of books!

While the title of this book sounded promising and while the description projected interest in my imagination it didn't turn out to be what was expected. Kind of boring really - but at least I made it through to the finish.

Good reading!

A delightful read. I looked forward to crawling into bed each night and picking up this book and losing myself in the story. It's a warm story from a book's point of view: exquisitely written for the most part, hopeful, sad, happy, elements of suspense, historical, not like anything else I've read.

I really liked this book. It was a unique point of view as the book narrating. I highly recommend it. I even enjoyed the history that was part it.

It’s was ok

I’m not much on religion, but it’s part of our history, and Mark Stibbe does a fantastic job of incorporating both religious traditions and historical context in, “A Book in Time”. I really enjoyed the first person perspective from a book’s insight, not to mention the many characters along the way! Two hundred Centuries pass as the book tells us a story of its Mother and the longing to find a safe place. This book places a spin on religion towards the end, which I definitely found refreshing. Love abounds and it is an important part of our lives. Even though the voice of a book! Well done indeed.