9/23/11

A question about reviewing books for Time Slip Tuesday, when saying there's time travel is a spoiler

I didn't get the review up today I wanted to. Sigh. The pile grows. But I do have a question for all you readers of Timeslip Tuesday. When I review a book for Timeslip Tuesday, it's obviously a time travel story. But sometimes to make that clear from the beginning is to spoil the book--a case in point is When You Reach Me, which I assume enough people have read by now so that spoilers don't matter so much. No one should go into that knowing that time travel is the answer to the mystery, which is one reason I didn't review it ages ago.

At Book Expo America, I was given an ARC of a book by its author, and I just read and enjoyed it lots. I want to review it this week, but to review it under the Timeslip Tuesday banner would be a de facto spoiler. I'm thinking I'll have to cunningly review it on another day, and sneak it into my Time Travel list later...but I hate to waste a nice Tuesday book. I don't have so many time travel books in the queue that I can comfortably afford to let one slide. And I think knowing that there was time travel involved (I would, of course, be very cagey with details) would actually make the book more appealing to a lot of you.

What do you all think?

5 comments:

  1. brinkka2011 says: Hi, I love your weblog. Is there some thing I can do to obtain updates like a subscription or some thing? Im sorry Im not acquainted with RSS?

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  2. I'm not the audience for the surprise. If I like Timeslip books - and I do - I'll seek them out, but I needn't be surprised by them, and keep in mind that your blog is a service for parents, booksellers, and librarians -- people who recommend books to kids, whom they know will enjoy a timeslip...

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  3. That's always a tough one - I'm still conflicted about Never Let Me Go, which I probably wouldn't have read without being spoiled for but I feel like the spoiler actually substantially damaged the way I read the book. Still, I'd say go for it - you can always be ambiguous about the exact nature of the time travel, anyway.

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  4. Thanks guys! I'm still brooding about it....I have two more days to decide!

    The same thing happened to me with that same book, Jen! And I think I would have liked it better if I had read it as the author intended me too.

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  5. That is a hard one. Of course I want to know what the timeslip book is NOW, but I can deal with you slipping it in cleverly.

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