How to stop time
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history--performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life. So Tom moves back his to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher--the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city's history first hand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present. How to Stop Time is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
5mentions
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2020–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Please read ‘How to Stop Time’ by Matt Haig
It’s a beautiful short novel exploring this idea.
- Anything Neal Stephenson. I've read them all. Multiple times.
But some other stuff that people haven't yet mentioned that I enjoyed:
- Matt Haig: The Humans, How to Stop Time
- Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon trilogy
- Ramez Naam: Nexus Trilogy
- Hugh Howie: Silo series
- Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice
- Ernest Cline: Ready Player 1
- Some books that I have really liked:
- Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss(waiting on the third book....)
- Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (also waiting on the rest of the series...)
- The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu - the first book was ok but I really liked the second - The Dark Forest
- Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
- House In the Cerulean Sea
- How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Others that I like: The Rosie Project, The Books of Babel, A long way to a small Angry Planet, Wool/Shift/Dust, Lockstep, All the Light We Cannot See, Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, Earth Abides, Project Hail Mary, The Martian
Also, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/
- Thanks for sharing this. I take goodread reviews very lightly, especially for new books which I figure are either done by folks who get early access, book bloggers, etc.. (which I assume comes with their own bias at the pleasure of early access) and now throwing in 'bots' into the mix..gross!
I did enjoy 'The Humans' and 'How to stop time' but would never mark either of them as 5 star books, mainly because I would count books like 'Madam Bovary' or 'Rebecca'or 'Crime and Punishment' as a 5-star book. Nonetheless the praise for Midnight Library irked me before I even took a look at it. Folks are so keen on jumping to 5-stars without a critical approach to it.
Rather than a single 1-5 star system, a questionnaire with 1-5 stars for aspects of a book could be a better way to rate.
From 1-5 how would you rate: 1. the plot 2. enjoyability 3. character development 4. etc...
and then average out the scores across each aspect to get the user's score on the book.
Obviously there is incentive for goodreads to push for 5-star reviews all around, for the most part, because who wants to buy a 1-3.5 star book from Amazon? Also a larger scale or more options to choose from with rating would lead to lower conversion of rating submissions.
I won't claim to be perfect about rating books either, but its appalling when a book like 'The Midnight Library' (4.3 as of this time) has a higher rating than 'Crime and Punishment' (4.2).
- The novel "How to Stop Time" by Matt Haig is a recent addition to this genre, and is built on this very premise. It is a fun read. (And, unlike most "eternal life!" type books, has no vampires)
