What I Am Reading - The Time Keeper

The Time Keeper

Mitch Albom

Read it in quaint paperback at 224 pages.

October's selection went to Shelly-the-don and saw us reading Mr. Albom's The Time Keeper.  While Mr. Albom is more widely known for Tuesdays With Morrie.  None the less, a tale of time indeed.

Among the first men, there was Dor.  Dor has a thing for keeping track of things, most notably, duration.  This infatuation leaves Dor in abandonment.  Through that abandonment he loses his wife but gains the understanding for time, in essence, Dor is the father of time which he inherited through his incessant measurement of it.  As penance for its creation, wise god locks him up, only to release him with a task in modern time.  Dor's task is to find one who wishes to have more time, and one who wishes to have less.  Through this task, Dor finds Sara and Victor.  This is the story of Dor, Sara, and Victor.

Overall it was a pretty simple tale read quickly.  Albom does a good job of writing short chapters that keep things moving and convey a point, without getting bogged down all that much by pesky details.  This short book was designed to express time and not explicitly for building drawn out sequences to prove his message or give you too much character building to question any of the characters motives throughout, they simply are and exist as part of a greater framework to prove Albom's point(s) about time.

-Potential Spoilers Below-

So how did it fare among us picky, and tried readers.  With a scoring model of 1-10, one being tissue to be disposed of after blowing your less desirable contents on and a 10 being the gospel of life:

Shely-the-Don: 7

Th3ee: 7

BoozyCoug: 4

G$$: 7

Hylen: 7

Tech Tom: 7

Dust: 4

SS: 3

Mech Dave: 7

Baby Deer: 10

We had ten readers complete with an average score of 6.6, which really wasn't all that shabby considering the three people who felt Albom's efforts where a miss.  Those three among us generally felt that Dor's discovery of time was impractical, and some just couldn't suspend belief on that front.  A tricking thing the quantification of time.

For the most part, Dor was an instant favorite, with a call-out for poor Sara (Shely felt compassionate for what transpires in her situation, namely the loss of a hopeful mate which is the Sara sequence of the book and primary character plot points.) A call out as a favorite for the god character and of course one for rich Victor.  Our favorite and least favorite moments vary and for many are interchangeable which for me is always a sign that we have a decent book among us.

As much as we all enjoyed it, I wonder how long Ablom's tale will stay amongst us and if perhaps in review if it would hold its 6.6 average.  I say this based on the lack of pesky details I mentioned above.  Without a level of detail, I find retention of a novel, especially one like this, tends to sway beyond its initial shiny object fixation.  Oh well, we leave that for the year in review.