10 Books Driven By Time
I don’t always manage to do a Top Ten Tuesday post but this week’s prompt was a good excuse to go digging into my archives.
The topic is books with titles that include units of time. That could be seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, eternity. Our lives are so governed by time that maybe it’s not surprising how often a term relating to duration is used in book titles. Even so I was startled to find how many books I’ve read that fitted the prompt.
The first book that came to mind was 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak, which if you haven’t read it yet, I urge you to remedy that pronto. It’s a wonderfully evocative and spellbinding tale of the last moments in the life of Tequila Leila, an Istanbul prostitute. The novel’s title and first half describe the last moments of Leila’s consciousness as she crosses from life into death.
Here are my other choices of books I’ve read with units of time in the title. All the hyperlinks take you to my reviews.
The Hours by Michel Cunningham
Three Hours by Rosamund Lipton
One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard
Twelve Nights by Urs Fans
Three Days and a Life by Pierre Le Maitre
Five Days At Memorial by Sheri Fink
The Cruellest Month by Louise Penny
Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules and the list of topics visit the Top Ten Tuesday page on her blog.
I have a copy of The Hours but am wondering whether I ought to read Mrs Dalloway first. Any advice?.🙂
I don’t think it ruins The Hours to read it without having first read Mrs D though it would certainly enrich the experience if you knew how Cunningham used Woolf’s text.
Thank you.
Neat list! I have read 3 (Lemaitre, Penny, and Murakami), all 3 amazing books.
https://wordsandpeace.com/2022/06/07/top-ten-books-with-a-unit-of-time-in-the-title/
They were all good in different ways
The Age of Innocence through me for a spin but it is ‘age’ that is reflective of time’s eternity? I would never review this book but I used to read it yearly. Since my mind is conscious driven, I don’t enjoy reading it now… the title is Nine and A Half Weeks by McNeill.
“Age” is a recognised division of time so we get the “stone age” “ice age” “iron age” etc
Here’s a couple by Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights, cheers, Lisa
Drat, I forgot Midnight’s Children which is a surprise considering how much I struggled with that book.
I recently read Salman Rushdie’s Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights (weird until you realise/he tells you it’s 1001 Nights)
I’m glad he makes that clear because I wouldn’t have got it if left to my own devices, arithmetic not being one of my strengths
Good list–I had forgotten the rest of title for the Murakami book. Five Days at Memorial will likely never leave me.
Five Days is one I will remember too. I hope the crisis response has improved in the intervening years
Lovely to see Twelve Hours given a mention here. A brief novella that packs quite a punch and beautifully written.
I thought you might appreciate that one…