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計時簡史 (Catch-On)
愛因斯坦、霍金沒告訴過你的時間文化史
《週日泰晤士報》年度文化類選書
《觀察家》週刊年度最佳科學書籍
透過文化的鏡頭，
一探人類如何干擾鐘擺速率，操控時間秩序；
對時間愈發瘋狂的執著，又引發了哪些奇情怪癖？
過去，人們仰望天空，依據太陽活動感知時間的推移；現在，我們強迫性地不停檢查手機、電腦確認時間，網路發達更確保徹底的不夜世界。我們渴望準時，但我們厭惡最後期限。我們在時間的威嚇與嘲弄之下，注定被時間掌控生活，嚴重到我們總是擔心永遠趕不上時間的腳步。或者更糟：我們跟上了，卻是以其他事物為代價。時間持續以極微刻度顯現、介入，「時間永遠不夠」的意識推動我們快馬加鞭地「過生活」。
我們對於時間的執著與渴望，如何讓它成為生活中揮之不去的支配力量？
世界總是說，時間是公平的；但我們從沒想像過，我們能不能擁有「自己計時的權力」？
本書全面性探索工業革命之後的250年間，「時間」為何、如何逐漸主宰我們的生活；檢視人們對時間愈發瘋狂的執著，如何藉由測量、控制、販售、拍攝、表演等手法，感知、保存與節省時間；以及時間對歷史文明乃至個人生命所產生的各種作用力。
本書要談的是時間的實際作用，而Ç
《週日泰晤士報》年度文化類選書
《觀察家》週刊年度最佳科學書籍
透過文化的鏡頭，
一探人類如何干擾鐘擺速率，操控時間秩序；
對時間愈發瘋狂的執著，又引發了哪些奇情怪癖？
過去，人們仰望天空，依據太陽活動感知時間的推移；現在，我們強迫性地不停檢查手機、電腦確認時間，網路發達更確保徹底的不夜世界。我們渴望準時，但我們厭惡最後期限。我們在時間的威嚇與嘲弄之下，注定被時間掌控生活，嚴重到我們總是擔心永遠趕不上時間的腳步。或者更糟：我們跟上了，卻是以其他事物為代價。時間持續以極微刻度顯現、介入，「時間永遠不夠」的意識推動我們快馬加鞭地「過生活」。
我們對於時間的執著與渴望，如何讓它成為生活中揮之不去的支配力量？
世界總是說，時間是公平的；但我們從沒想像過，我們能不能擁有「自己計時的權力」？
本書全面性探索工業革命之後的250年間，「時間」為何、如何逐漸主宰我們的生活；檢視人們對時間愈發瘋狂的執著，如何藉由測量、控制、販售、拍攝、表演等手法，感知、保存與節省時間；以及時間對歷史文明乃至個人生命所產生的各種作用力。
本書要談的是時間的實際作用，而Ç
329 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 29, 2016
201 people are currently reading
2301 people want to read
About the author
Simon Garfield
36 books331 followersSimon Garfield is a British journalist and non-fiction author. He was educated at the independent University College School in Hampstead, London, and the London School of Economics, where he was the Executive Editor of The Beaver. He also regularly writes for The Observer newspaper.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 207 reviews
October 12, 2016
I spend a lot of time (hah) thinking about how little we understand the way people in the past actually lived, day to day, simply because technology that we now take for granted has changed things we don’t even think about. I take it for granted that I can know the precise time, as we currently measure it, all the time. I take it for granted that I can flick a switch and have light even in the middle of the night. These things mould and shape my perception of our world, but they are artifacts of the present society, not inviolate states of being. Timekeepers looks at our fascination, or our obsession as the subtitle bills it, with time, and the way this obsession has evolved hand-in-hand with technologies.
Simon Garfield’s name rang a bell when I saw this on NetGalley. Plus, it’s a book about time! How could that go wrong? I might have been more hesitant had I remembered the other Garfield book I’ve read is On the Map . Nevertheless, I’m a sucker for those free books, so I dove into Timekeepers hoping to learn some interesting things. And I did. But I was also bored. I do, however, appreciate Canongate Books and NetGalley for making this ARC available to me.
I’m starting to hate reading non-fiction on my tablet. I have no idea, on my tablet, how far I am through a book. With a physical book, this is not a problem, obviously. Even with a novel in ebook form, the natural arc of the narrative means I can guess when we’re approaching the end. I know that ereader apps tend to tell you how far you are through the book (or how much is remaining), but that is just a number to me; it doesn’t give me a good sense of how much progress I’ve made. With non-fiction, this is a problem; I start feeling bogged down, and if the book is not really compelling me to read on, I drag my heels. This was my experience with Timekeepers.
Some of the individual chapters here are fascinating. I genuinely enjoyed Garfield’s discourse on the reasons why movies have different frame-rates from television and, in the beginning, even variable frame-rates. That was a cool tidbit of knowledge. Similarly, Garfield discusses the way our ability to precisely measure time has contributed to such phenomena as world records (the “4-minute mile”) and mass production (the assembly line and scientific management). All of these are interesting phenomena that are worth (and have had books written about them) in their own rights.
And that’s really where Timekeepers fails to deliver for me: the subject matter here is just too varied. It’s a smorgasboard of subjects that are all vaguely connected to time in some way, but they are not connected to each other. Some of the chapters are short, others quite long—or in the case of Garfield’s digression into watchmaking, he gives the subject two chapters. This is not a linear or chronological history, and while Garfield makes that quite clear in the preface, the subtitle of this book—How the World Became Obsessed With Time—suggests otherwise. I was all on board with his promise to jump around and look at the issue thematically, but now, at the end of the journey, I’m wishing there were some kind of chronological thread to tie everything together.
I don’t want to be too hard on Timekeepers, because it is not a bad book. It is well-written, well-researched, and interesting. Yet it is also long. It could have benefited from some more rigorous (read: ruthless) editing to restrain some of Garfield’s more enthusiastic tangents. This is not the type of pop culture non-fiction book I enjoy, the kind that grabs me and makes me want to keep reading because there is just so much to learn from it. As with On the Map, I feel like this is partly because of an incompatibility of styles, and so you might enjoy this book just fine and find nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
The anecdotes and history related in this book have given me some ideas for books I want to read next, for sure. But whatever good will or fascination Timekeepers fostered with each fact it squandered on the stamina required to simply get through it. Reading this kept reminding me of the six-part series from BBC, How We Got to Now, hosted by Steven Johnson. Each episode focused on a specific topic, which provided a good way to take a non-chronological look at history. Perhaps this book would fare better as a such a miniseries. Take it to Netflix, Garfield, and I’ll give it another go!
Simon Garfield’s name rang a bell when I saw this on NetGalley. Plus, it’s a book about time! How could that go wrong? I might have been more hesitant had I remembered the other Garfield book I’ve read is On the Map . Nevertheless, I’m a sucker for those free books, so I dove into Timekeepers hoping to learn some interesting things. And I did. But I was also bored. I do, however, appreciate Canongate Books and NetGalley for making this ARC available to me.
I’m starting to hate reading non-fiction on my tablet. I have no idea, on my tablet, how far I am through a book. With a physical book, this is not a problem, obviously. Even with a novel in ebook form, the natural arc of the narrative means I can guess when we’re approaching the end. I know that ereader apps tend to tell you how far you are through the book (or how much is remaining), but that is just a number to me; it doesn’t give me a good sense of how much progress I’ve made. With non-fiction, this is a problem; I start feeling bogged down, and if the book is not really compelling me to read on, I drag my heels. This was my experience with Timekeepers.
Some of the individual chapters here are fascinating. I genuinely enjoyed Garfield’s discourse on the reasons why movies have different frame-rates from television and, in the beginning, even variable frame-rates. That was a cool tidbit of knowledge. Similarly, Garfield discusses the way our ability to precisely measure time has contributed to such phenomena as world records (the “4-minute mile”) and mass production (the assembly line and scientific management). All of these are interesting phenomena that are worth (and have had books written about them) in their own rights.
And that’s really where Timekeepers fails to deliver for me: the subject matter here is just too varied. It’s a smorgasboard of subjects that are all vaguely connected to time in some way, but they are not connected to each other. Some of the chapters are short, others quite long—or in the case of Garfield’s digression into watchmaking, he gives the subject two chapters. This is not a linear or chronological history, and while Garfield makes that quite clear in the preface, the subtitle of this book—How the World Became Obsessed With Time—suggests otherwise. I was all on board with his promise to jump around and look at the issue thematically, but now, at the end of the journey, I’m wishing there were some kind of chronological thread to tie everything together.
I don’t want to be too hard on Timekeepers, because it is not a bad book. It is well-written, well-researched, and interesting. Yet it is also long. It could have benefited from some more rigorous (read: ruthless) editing to restrain some of Garfield’s more enthusiastic tangents. This is not the type of pop culture non-fiction book I enjoy, the kind that grabs me and makes me want to keep reading because there is just so much to learn from it. As with On the Map, I feel like this is partly because of an incompatibility of styles, and so you might enjoy this book just fine and find nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
The anecdotes and history related in this book have given me some ideas for books I want to read next, for sure. But whatever good will or fascination Timekeepers fostered with each fact it squandered on the stamina required to simply get through it. Reading this kept reminding me of the six-part series from BBC, How We Got to Now, hosted by Steven Johnson. Each episode focused on a specific topic, which provided a good way to take a non-chronological look at history. Perhaps this book would fare better as a such a miniseries. Take it to Netflix, Garfield, and I’ll give it another go!
December 7, 2016
Time is one of those entities that we cannot buy nor store; it just grinds inexorably on; tick, tock; second by second, and once gone can never be had again. And yet we still never have enough of it. In the days before clocks, we timed our lives by the rising and setting of the sun, working and resting as the light came and went. Even your cheapest wristwatch is incredibly accurate when compared to the timepieces 100 years ago. But in this modern age we now have access to the some of the most accurate and precise measurements of time available; an atomic clock will only lose one second every 15 billion years.
Drawing together all manner of subjects on the ticking clock he tells us why the CD is the length it is, how to make a watch, how the French messed up the calendar, how the trains changed time everywhere and tries to fathom out time management systems. He gazes at some frighteningly expensive watches in the home of time, Switzerland, and learns about taking your time to eat from the slow food movement.
Garfield has a knack of getting to the very essence of a subject and has written another fascinating book, and this is no exception. Being an engineer, I particularly liked the chapters on the technology used to make a timepiece these days, just the way that they assemble these tiny mechanical marvels is particularly special. The whole book is full of curious facts, amusing anecdotes and subtle observations on the passage of time. Written in his usual entertaining style, is a delight to read as were his other books. Great stuff.
Drawing together all manner of subjects on the ticking clock he tells us why the CD is the length it is, how to make a watch, how the French messed up the calendar, how the trains changed time everywhere and tries to fathom out time management systems. He gazes at some frighteningly expensive watches in the home of time, Switzerland, and learns about taking your time to eat from the slow food movement.
Garfield has a knack of getting to the very essence of a subject and has written another fascinating book, and this is no exception. Being an engineer, I particularly liked the chapters on the technology used to make a timepiece these days, just the way that they assemble these tiny mechanical marvels is particularly special. The whole book is full of curious facts, amusing anecdotes and subtle observations on the passage of time. Written in his usual entertaining style, is a delight to read as were his other books. Great stuff.
August 28, 2016
'Timekeepers' by Simon Garfield
4 stars/ 8 out of 10
I have heard good things about other books by Simon Garfield, especially 'Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World', so was interested in reading his latest book 'Timekeepers'.
In 'Timekeepers', Garfield is exploring our obsessions with time.
Garfield has written an interesting book, looking at all sorts of aspects, both historical and current, relating to timekeeping. These range from the standardisation of national times, resulting from the development of train travel; through the connections between the composing and playing of music and the contemporary recording methods; to watchmaking and timekeeping. I was especially interested in the sections on Time and Motion, and on Movies. My favourite section was that on photography and what is termed the 'decisive moment'.
This is a well thought out, well structured and well referenced book, which contains a lot of interesting information. I enjoyed Garfield's wry sense of humour.
I look forward to reading further books by Simon Garfield.
Thank you to Canongate Books and to NetGalley for an ARC.
Read
January 22, 2021This book is, essentially, not about time, but rather how humans track time. How we talk about it, measure it, and think about it. Garfield looks at the history of clocks, calendars, cameras (which capture and freeze forever an instant of time like nothing before), movies (including the famous scene where Harold Lloyd hangs from a clock on a tower), conveyor belts in factories and the associated "punching the clock", and other ways in which our society has become increasingly concerned with time. Of primary importance, of course, was the rise of travel by railroad, and he looks at the impact of train companies on the standardization of time, and timekeeping.
He has a brief survey of the burgeoning industry in books that aspire to help you budget your time wisely, stop wasting it, get enough of it, and so on. He goes to Switzerland to take a course on clock repair and assembly. He takes a look at the ever-escalating price of luxury timepieces in recent decades. He looks at Roger Bannister's breaking of the 4-minute mile. He looks at the ever-accelerating rate of complaints about the ever-accelerating pace of life, and how long we have been complaining about this (it's been centuries).
In the end, this isn't a book which is going to make a big change in how you view time, or timekeepers. It is, however, well-written, and an entertaining and informative way to spend a few hours.
He has a brief survey of the burgeoning industry in books that aspire to help you budget your time wisely, stop wasting it, get enough of it, and so on. He goes to Switzerland to take a course on clock repair and assembly. He takes a look at the ever-escalating price of luxury timepieces in recent decades. He looks at Roger Bannister's breaking of the 4-minute mile. He looks at the ever-accelerating rate of complaints about the ever-accelerating pace of life, and how long we have been complaining about this (it's been centuries).
In the end, this isn't a book which is going to make a big change in how you view time, or timekeepers. It is, however, well-written, and an entertaining and informative way to spend a few hours.
September 21, 2016
3.5
Simon Garfield has written some great books and I particularly love his editing of Mass Observation Diaries. He picks some really interesting subjects to write about, so I was excited to receive an ARC of this book courtesy of Net Galley.
It's a bit curate's egg. I enjoyed the mix of personal anecdote and what was clearly extensive research The book starts off with Garfield having an accident on his bicycle and feeling that 'time stood still' as he flew over the handle bars onto the road - he then goes on to explain why certain traumatic events in our lives do feel as if everything has slowed down.
However, I began to get thoroughly bogged down with learning about watches - although the chapters on how advertising manages to persuade us to part with huge sums of money for a fancy watch that we don't really need was very interesting.
Simon Garfield has written some great books and I particularly love his editing of Mass Observation Diaries. He picks some really interesting subjects to write about, so I was excited to receive an ARC of this book courtesy of Net Galley.
It's a bit curate's egg. I enjoyed the mix of personal anecdote and what was clearly extensive research The book starts off with Garfield having an accident on his bicycle and feeling that 'time stood still' as he flew over the handle bars onto the road - he then goes on to explain why certain traumatic events in our lives do feel as if everything has slowed down.
However, I began to get thoroughly bogged down with learning about watches - although the chapters on how advertising manages to persuade us to part with huge sums of money for a fancy watch that we don't really need was very interesting.
March 29, 2021
A collection of essays on time, from hanging from the minute hand in a movie to the art of watchmaking. I found this a fascinating read and Simon's quirky humour really adds to the book. A sign of a good book is when I spend ages telling people about bits I've learnt, I had some great discussions about when we adopted modern time and the influence the railway had on that, living in this day it is really difficult to imagine the chaos of time in different cities around the UK.
Time also seems to have been affected in this book, the start mentions a moment when the author fell off his bike and when the same scene is mentioned in the epilogue it felt really weird so much time seemed to have passed.
The epilogue is the weakest part of the book, the last chapter ends perfectly, a long quote by the great Carl Sagan and some very moving words about death and that we don't have time to mourn properly these days, it was a fine ending and then the epilogue, a few pages about some bizarre watches, seemed a very odd way to end things, I don't really get it.
This is a top book on a topic many would find boring, give it a go, you don't have to read the whole thing in one go, dip in and out reading a chapter now and then, you'll take plenty from giving it a go.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...
Time also seems to have been affected in this book, the start mentions a moment when the author fell off his bike and when the same scene is mentioned in the epilogue it felt really weird so much time seemed to have passed.
The epilogue is the weakest part of the book, the last chapter ends perfectly, a long quote by the great Carl Sagan and some very moving words about death and that we don't have time to mourn properly these days, it was a fine ending and then the epilogue, a few pages about some bizarre watches, seemed a very odd way to end things, I don't really get it.
This is a top book on a topic many would find boring, give it a go, you don't have to read the whole thing in one go, dip in and out reading a chapter now and then, you'll take plenty from giving it a go.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...
October 23, 2016
Rather than an in-depth study of time or a chronological history, Timekeepers is more like a collection of essays inspired by timekeeping in one way or another.
I already knew a little about how the railways forced Britain to nationalise time and the chapter concerning them filled in some gaps for me. I wonder if the act stating that clocks on public buildings must be kept accurate is still in force? Elsewhere Simon explores how artists have portrayed time and used clocks in their work, branching off to tell us about some of the more unusual calendars people have tried to adopt in the past.
I particularly liked the chapters regarding time in film and photography. There’s Muybridge (best known for his photographs of a horse galloping) and Nick Ut (famous for a single photo from Vietnam) and it talks about how photography manages to stop time. The early cinematographers could change the speed of time by their hand-cranking of the films…and then the projectionists could change it again when they showed the film. I had never realised that early film reel was turned by hand, no wonder it sometimes looks out of time.
I didn’t know that the Doomsday Clock was actually the cover of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, introduced in 1947 to symbolise how close we are to nuclear disaster. The minute hand has moved back and forward ever since, showing how at peace the world is. You can check out the current time on their website if you’re intrigued…
Like many of these sort of books, there’s parts that appealed to me more than others. I skimmed over some of the bits describing Swiss watches, it was more about their appearance, materials and marketing than how they actually go about keeping time. The parts about modern time management just made me glad I wasn’t one of those kind of people (and some of the mantra’s seemed a bit too similar to puppy training to be taken seriously).
Review copy provided by publisher.
I already knew a little about how the railways forced Britain to nationalise time and the chapter concerning them filled in some gaps for me. I wonder if the act stating that clocks on public buildings must be kept accurate is still in force? Elsewhere Simon explores how artists have portrayed time and used clocks in their work, branching off to tell us about some of the more unusual calendars people have tried to adopt in the past.
I particularly liked the chapters regarding time in film and photography. There’s Muybridge (best known for his photographs of a horse galloping) and Nick Ut (famous for a single photo from Vietnam) and it talks about how photography manages to stop time. The early cinematographers could change the speed of time by their hand-cranking of the films…and then the projectionists could change it again when they showed the film. I had never realised that early film reel was turned by hand, no wonder it sometimes looks out of time.
I didn’t know that the Doomsday Clock was actually the cover of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, introduced in 1947 to symbolise how close we are to nuclear disaster. The minute hand has moved back and forward ever since, showing how at peace the world is. You can check out the current time on their website if you’re intrigued…
Like many of these sort of books, there’s parts that appealed to me more than others. I skimmed over some of the bits describing Swiss watches, it was more about their appearance, materials and marketing than how they actually go about keeping time. The parts about modern time management just made me glad I wasn’t one of those kind of people (and some of the mantra’s seemed a bit too similar to puppy training to be taken seriously).
Review copy provided by publisher.
Read
October 8, 2016I'd always vaguely meant to get round to Garfield's previous book about typefaces, while at the same time suspecting that unlike some friends I'm not *quite* enough of a font fiend for it. But perhaps I would have been better off with that than this, precisely because I'd know less of the material. The progression from the railways via Greenwich (no, not Paris - sux2BU, France!) towards globally harmonised timekeeping, the horror of the French revolutionary calendar and the even shorter-lived ten hour day, the reason CDs have the capacity they do...these are trivia standards. Still, plenty of other stuff was new on me, whether that be the ingenious marketing approaches modern watchmakers use to keep profiting from a device which most people no longer need, the story surrounding Roger Bannister's four immortal minutes, or the debate over the speed at which classical music should be performed. And it's all interesting, but seldom quite interesting enough. The prose is fine, but only very occasionally more than that. It was the chapter on the popularity of quick-fix books about time management which enabled me to put my finger on the problem: this is the sort of stuff Oliver Burkeman does in the Guardian magazine, and does better at that. As a magazine column about things somehow connected to time (and what isn't?), Garfield's musings would be fine, but they never quite make the leap from magazine-interesting to book-interesting.
Also, he uncritically repeats the idea that Thoreau was in splendid isolation for his time at Walden, which I thought was now commonly known to be an early example of self-help authors' mythmaking. Which inevitably then slightly shakes my trust in everything else here. And talks about 'the end of history' as if it were still a current idea, rather than a much-mocked one from two decades back. The book slowly winds down through hand-wringing chapters about slow food and the British Museum (which are both sort of relevant, but do serve to remind how baggy a topic this is), laced with generic Luddite moans such as "We used to have time to think, but now instant communication barely gives us time to react". All of which leaves a worse taste in the mouth than the book as a whole really deserves.
(Netgalley ARC)
Correspondences to Jerusalem, because they seem to arise in every book I finish while reading Jerusalem: come on, this one's easy - it's a book driven by an authorial fascination with time.
Also, he uncritically repeats the idea that Thoreau was in splendid isolation for his time at Walden, which I thought was now commonly known to be an early example of self-help authors' mythmaking. Which inevitably then slightly shakes my trust in everything else here. And talks about 'the end of history' as if it were still a current idea, rather than a much-mocked one from two decades back. The book slowly winds down through hand-wringing chapters about slow food and the British Museum (which are both sort of relevant, but do serve to remind how baggy a topic this is), laced with generic Luddite moans such as "We used to have time to think, but now instant communication barely gives us time to react". All of which leaves a worse taste in the mouth than the book as a whole really deserves.
(Netgalley ARC)
Correspondences to Jerusalem, because they seem to arise in every book I finish while reading Jerusalem: come on, this one's easy - it's a book driven by an authorial fascination with time.
May 30, 2019
Now more than ever, we are bound by the constraints of time. Time regulates every aspect of our daily lives – whether it is school, work, public transportation, catching a flight, or cooking. Garfield presents many interesting facts and stories on the topic of time, ranging from the invention of the French 10-hour day, and how trains started to keep time, to Swiss watch-making.
The book was well-written and very informative and included many interesting stories, as well as curious and unusual facts about time. However, sometimes it was hard to get into the stories, so this book is probably best read bit by bit, like a collection of short stories, rather than in one go. At times the author goes off on lengthy tangents of personal anecdotes or goes into minute detail in some stories. This made the book seem longer than it actually is. My rating is closer to 3.5 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley, Simon Garfield and Canongate Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The book was well-written and very informative and included many interesting stories, as well as curious and unusual facts about time. However, sometimes it was hard to get into the stories, so this book is probably best read bit by bit, like a collection of short stories, rather than in one go. At times the author goes off on lengthy tangents of personal anecdotes or goes into minute detail in some stories. This made the book seem longer than it actually is. My rating is closer to 3.5 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley, Simon Garfield and Canongate Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
December 11, 2023
You'll never look at time the same again after reading this book. We all know that time keeps moving forward, but if you want a full breakdown of time, this is your book. You will learn the history and vagrancies of time.
A fun book with lots of interesting facts.
A fun book with lots of interesting facts.
January 10, 2018
‘We work all hours so that we may eventually work less. We have invented quality time to distinguish it from that other time.’
Many of us are obsessed with time. People like me, for whom punctuality is a virtue of the first order, are continually dismayed and occasionally stressed by those for whom time is a relaxed, relative concept. We measure time, apportion it across the tasks we need to complete, try to allocate enough for human functions like eating and sleeping and, if there is any minute left unallocated, find some other activity with which to fill it. Or, perhaps that is just me?
‘Timekeepers’ was a perfect read for me. It gave me some insight into how (and why) we’ve become fixated on increasingly accurate measures of time. I learned about the French Revolutionary Calendar (and having read about it, can understand why I’d never heard of it before), found out more about the art and science involved in watchmaking than I’ll ever need to know, and wondered about the timing that Beethoven really wanted for his 9th Symphony.
Mr Garfield has included a lot of interesting information in this book. While I knew about US Senator Strom Thurmond’s 24 hour 18 minute speech in August 1957, I didn’t know that the Beatles recorded their first LP (excluding the singles) in less than one day in 1963. There is information as well about developments in recording music: those of us old enough to have heard recordings on the old 78 rpm records will know how much has changed!
‘Time once passive is now aggressive. It dominates our lives in ways that the earliest clockmakers would have surely found unbearable.’
As I read this book, I wondered about a few aspects of timekeeping. When did accuracy become so important? Was it necessary before the advent of train timetables? Has increasingly accurate measure of time driven timetabling, or is it the other way around? Is the level of accuracy in timekeeping required for (say) aircraft and train scheduling as important in other aspects of life?
I was reminded, too, how time can feel different. If you’ve waited in an emergency ward, or waited for a telephone call, minutes can feel like hours. If you’ve been in an accident, it often feels like everything is happening in slow motion. On the other hand, if you’ve been to an enjoyable event, hours seem to pass like minutes. Yes, I guess that time can be relative as well as absolute.
I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in time, and how we measure it.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Canongate Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Many of us are obsessed with time. People like me, for whom punctuality is a virtue of the first order, are continually dismayed and occasionally stressed by those for whom time is a relaxed, relative concept. We measure time, apportion it across the tasks we need to complete, try to allocate enough for human functions like eating and sleeping and, if there is any minute left unallocated, find some other activity with which to fill it. Or, perhaps that is just me?
‘Timekeepers’ was a perfect read for me. It gave me some insight into how (and why) we’ve become fixated on increasingly accurate measures of time. I learned about the French Revolutionary Calendar (and having read about it, can understand why I’d never heard of it before), found out more about the art and science involved in watchmaking than I’ll ever need to know, and wondered about the timing that Beethoven really wanted for his 9th Symphony.
Mr Garfield has included a lot of interesting information in this book. While I knew about US Senator Strom Thurmond’s 24 hour 18 minute speech in August 1957, I didn’t know that the Beatles recorded their first LP (excluding the singles) in less than one day in 1963. There is information as well about developments in recording music: those of us old enough to have heard recordings on the old 78 rpm records will know how much has changed!
‘Time once passive is now aggressive. It dominates our lives in ways that the earliest clockmakers would have surely found unbearable.’
As I read this book, I wondered about a few aspects of timekeeping. When did accuracy become so important? Was it necessary before the advent of train timetables? Has increasingly accurate measure of time driven timetabling, or is it the other way around? Is the level of accuracy in timekeeping required for (say) aircraft and train scheduling as important in other aspects of life?
I was reminded, too, how time can feel different. If you’ve waited in an emergency ward, or waited for a telephone call, minutes can feel like hours. If you’ve been in an accident, it often feels like everything is happening in slow motion. On the other hand, if you’ve been to an enjoyable event, hours seem to pass like minutes. Yes, I guess that time can be relative as well as absolute.
I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in time, and how we measure it.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Canongate Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
August 29, 2021
When I first picked up Timekeepers, I wasn't convinced. In his introduction, Garfield came across as being quite dismissive of things that I love like time travel stories and the science behind them. In fact there are more than a couple of suggestions that the author is a grumpy middle-class bloke with some rather antiquated interests.
However, as I read this collection of interconnected essays, I soon looked past all that. While I may not be completely interested in the history of British railways or the inner-workings of analogue watches, I found a few quirky facts that I gleefully added to my repertoire.
For instance, did you know that most watch advertisements feature the approximate time of 10:10 so that the hour and minute hands suggest a smile on the clock face? Did you know that, before train timetables were officially settled, areas across England operated by their own individual time zones? Did you know that Nick Ut snapped his famed photo The Terror of War because his fellow photographers were too busy reloading the film for their own cameras?
Garfield's style distils broad histories into focused nonfiction that entertains as much as it educates. I would put it on par with the approach Bryan Talbot takes in Alice in Sunderland, only with less showmanship.
Of course, not every chapter was gripping and some ran on much too long for me. Timekeepers is very much a chocolate box of temporal facts, some satisfying and others quite bland. Nevertheless I would say this is a book worth leafing through, to pass a couple of hours at least. I recommend Timekeepers to those who like to thoroughly examine everyday objects and find out just what makes them tick.
However, as I read this collection of interconnected essays, I soon looked past all that. While I may not be completely interested in the history of British railways or the inner-workings of analogue watches, I found a few quirky facts that I gleefully added to my repertoire.
For instance, did you know that most watch advertisements feature the approximate time of 10:10 so that the hour and minute hands suggest a smile on the clock face? Did you know that, before train timetables were officially settled, areas across England operated by their own individual time zones? Did you know that Nick Ut snapped his famed photo The Terror of War because his fellow photographers were too busy reloading the film for their own cameras?
Garfield's style distils broad histories into focused nonfiction that entertains as much as it educates. I would put it on par with the approach Bryan Talbot takes in Alice in Sunderland, only with less showmanship.
Of course, not every chapter was gripping and some ran on much too long for me. Timekeepers is very much a chocolate box of temporal facts, some satisfying and others quite bland. Nevertheless I would say this is a book worth leafing through, to pass a couple of hours at least. I recommend Timekeepers to those who like to thoroughly examine everyday objects and find out just what makes them tick.
January 18, 2019
I admit it. I am obsessed with time. I am retired (sort of) and have been since my company was bought out in 2009 and I decided (at the ripe old age of 36) that I didn't want to undergo complete life upheaval to work for a vast behemoth in a vast city. Since then I've moved back to the area where I grew up, gotten married, gotten two bonus kids in the bargain, and had a child. I stay at home - which is to say I'm never home, I'm always driving someone somewhere or fetching something forgotten and delivering it or shopping for something we've run out of yet again. But in theory, my day is less regulated than it ever was - yet I'm more obsessed with time than I ever was at any point in my career in office buildings.
Weird, to say the least. But apparently, I'm not the only one - as this delightful collection of stories, anecdotes, and life lessons couched as stories and anecdotes informed me. Through a series of exceedingly interesting and seemingly random tales about the relationship between people and time, Simon Garfield has managed to simultaneously make me more comfortable with my obsession and more worried about it - in the best possible way in both regards. This is an entertaining, well-written, collection of fun facts and thought-provoking ideas, and was an excellent find.
My review copy was provided by NetGalley.
Weird, to say the least. But apparently, I'm not the only one - as this delightful collection of stories, anecdotes, and life lessons couched as stories and anecdotes informed me. Through a series of exceedingly interesting and seemingly random tales about the relationship between people and time, Simon Garfield has managed to simultaneously make me more comfortable with my obsession and more worried about it - in the best possible way in both regards. This is an entertaining, well-written, collection of fun facts and thought-provoking ideas, and was an excellent find.
My review copy was provided by NetGalley.
August 18, 2017
Patchy collection of essays inspired by timekeeping
This is a difficult one to review, as being a collection of essays, some I found fascinating, others I couldn’t wait to finish. It's a great subject and there’s some great “wow I didn’t know that!” moments, but also some that you feel could have been shorter.
Overall some great facts, but did find it somewhat of a chore to finish.
Thanks to netgalley for the review copy
This is a difficult one to review, as being a collection of essays, some I found fascinating, others I couldn’t wait to finish. It's a great subject and there’s some great “wow I didn’t know that!” moments, but also some that you feel could have been shorter.
Overall some great facts, but did find it somewhat of a chore to finish.
Thanks to netgalley for the review copy
January 26, 2022
i thought this book would delve into the idea of time, some historical aspects, some philosophical aspects, etc. but it does nothing to challenge time as a concept. it simply goes into historical and anecdotal stories of the way people measure time in different contexts such as in music, trains, etc. this book is really not as interesting as it could've been.
October 5, 2021
Guys don’t buy this book, just go through its pages in the library 🤐
February 27, 2018
An expanded version of this originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
---
When it comes to non-fiction reads, there are a number of ways I tend to judge them (rightly or wrongly) -- first (always first): Is it well-written? Does the writer know what he's doing? Even if I end up learning a lot from a book, if it's not well-written, I'm not going to like it. Secondly, is it informative? Do I actually learn something, or is it a re-hash of things that any number of books have said (do we really need that many biographies of Abraham Lincoln?)? Thirdly, does it make me think of something in a new way, or challenge my preconceptions (does this examination of Don DeLillo make me re-think White Noise? (I know of no book like this, but would love to read one)). Fourth, this is not essential -- but is the book entertaining? It gets bonus points for that.
Simon Garfield's Timekeepers, clears the bar for every one of these standards. Since he does it more succinctly than I could, I'll let Garfield sum up the book:
Let's get to the writing itself. Garfield has a way with words -- the number of sentences that I highlighted because of his use of the language is pretty high. If I quoted every one that I wanted to, this post would quickly move into the tl;dr range -- and into the copyright infringement range not long after that. It wasn't just his style, the book simply displays some well-crafted writing. It's not perfect -- but it's good. I'll freely admit that not every topic he covered really interested me, but his writing kept me reading -- and I was rewarded pretty frequently. Even when my interest waned, his writing would stand out here and there so I could appreciate the how he said it, even if the what didn't interest me. Rarely, the topics that did grab me would have a paragraph or so that didn't rise to that level, however. I'm not going to go into specifics on this point, though -- I didn't bother to note those, and I bet that comes down to taste and others won't think of those passages the same way, and they were brief moments, so they didn't detract from the whole.
Did I learn something from the book? Much more than I expected to. The chapter on the French experiments alone probably taught me enough to justify the whole book. I didn't/couldn't stick with the details of watch-making (I have a hard time visualizing that kind of detail), but even that was fascinating and informative on the surface. Most topics broadened my understanding and taught me something. Also, the sheer amount of trivia that I picked up was great (the amount of time spent recording the first Beatles LP, why pop music tends to be about 3 minutes long, etc., etc.
But it's not just about the information gained -- it's what that information means (both in terms of the book's argument(s), but in how the reader considers that information in the light of what they already know and personal experience. Every time that Garfield moves from the "here's what happened" or the "here's how this works" bits to the "because this happened" or "because this works" bits, it was something I don't know that I'd spent too much time thinking about previously. Sometimes those took the form of quick "huh," moments -- but occasionally he brushed against profundity, which I really appreciated.
And yes, Garfield picked up bonus points for entertainment. After the first paragraph in Chapter 1, my notes read "Between the Introduction and this paragraph, I've laughed four times. Am going to dig this book." Later on, I wrote that I didn't care about the content, really, I was having too much fun reading it to worry about it being right.
There's room for improvement, I think. If there's a design to the organization, I'm not sure I see it. He appears to hopscotch around between his topics. I'm honestly not sure how he could have arranged them to flow from one to another, but I do believe it could've been done. I think he could've lessened the detail occasionally (and increased it in a spot or two). But generally, this is me being nit-picky for the sake of not being a push over. There's really almost nothing to complain about.
Garfield scores across the board with this one, however. I do think the survey hops around a bit too much without obvious connections between the ideas so that the cumulative punch is less than it could be. In his concluding thoughts, Garfield raises some issues and asks some pointed questions that could be more forceful, more pointed if the preceding chapters had been more clearly linked. Nevertheless, the points were made and I, like most readers (I suspect), had to give some serious thought about my relationship to time and what I actually value. I'll have to continue this thinking for a while, actually -- the fact that I have to -- and want to -- is because of this book forcing me to consider things I've taken for granted about time and how my life is governed. I suspect I am not alone in this.
Thought-provoking, interesting, educating, well-written and generally entertaining -- Timekeepers really covers all the bases and covers them well. You'd do well to check it out.
Disclaimer: I received this eARC from the swell folks at Canongate Books via NetGalley in exchange for this post -- thanks to both for this. I'm very sorry this posted after the release date, my notes had that in March.
---
Time, once passive, is now aggressive. It dominates our lives in ways that the earliest clockmakers would have surely found unbearable. We believe that time is running away from us. Technology is making everything faster, and because we know that things will become faster in the future, it follows that nothing is fast enough now. . . But the strangest thing of all is this: if they were able, the earliest clockmakers would tell us that the pendulum swings at the same rate as it always has, and the calendars have been fixed for hundreds of years. We have brought this cauldron of rush upon ourselves. Time seems faster because we have made it so.
When it comes to non-fiction reads, there are a number of ways I tend to judge them (rightly or wrongly) -- first (always first): Is it well-written? Does the writer know what he's doing? Even if I end up learning a lot from a book, if it's not well-written, I'm not going to like it. Secondly, is it informative? Do I actually learn something, or is it a re-hash of things that any number of books have said (do we really need that many biographies of Abraham Lincoln?)? Thirdly, does it make me think of something in a new way, or challenge my preconceptions (does this examination of Don DeLillo make me re-think White Noise? (I know of no book like this, but would love to read one)). Fourth, this is not essential -- but is the book entertaining? It gets bonus points for that.
Simon Garfield's Timekeepers, clears the bar for every one of these standards. Since he does it more succinctly than I could, I'll let Garfield sum up the book:
This is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to beat it. . . The book has but two simple intentions: to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts.He begins with telling the well-known (at least in brush strokes) story about the invention of time zones -- but man, did I not understand really how this came about. Then he covers the experiments with the calendar, the clock, etc. tried following the French Revolution (and how some of those experiments live on). We get a couple of chapters on time and the cinema. Music (Beethoven, The Beatles, recording and more), photography, filibustering, the work day, and other sundry topics are covered as well. You can't forget watch-making, watch-marketing, watch-design, watch-capabilities, watch-symbolism, and a few other watch-related notions that I can't think of at the moment.
Let's get to the writing itself. Garfield has a way with words -- the number of sentences that I highlighted because of his use of the language is pretty high. If I quoted every one that I wanted to, this post would quickly move into the tl;dr range -- and into the copyright infringement range not long after that. It wasn't just his style, the book simply displays some well-crafted writing. It's not perfect -- but it's good. I'll freely admit that not every topic he covered really interested me, but his writing kept me reading -- and I was rewarded pretty frequently. Even when my interest waned, his writing would stand out here and there so I could appreciate the how he said it, even if the what didn't interest me. Rarely, the topics that did grab me would have a paragraph or so that didn't rise to that level, however. I'm not going to go into specifics on this point, though -- I didn't bother to note those, and I bet that comes down to taste and others won't think of those passages the same way, and they were brief moments, so they didn't detract from the whole.
Did I learn something from the book? Much more than I expected to. The chapter on the French experiments alone probably taught me enough to justify the whole book. I didn't/couldn't stick with the details of watch-making (I have a hard time visualizing that kind of detail), but even that was fascinating and informative on the surface. Most topics broadened my understanding and taught me something. Also, the sheer amount of trivia that I picked up was great (the amount of time spent recording the first Beatles LP, why pop music tends to be about 3 minutes long, etc., etc.
But it's not just about the information gained -- it's what that information means (both in terms of the book's argument(s), but in how the reader considers that information in the light of what they already know and personal experience. Every time that Garfield moves from the "here's what happened" or the "here's how this works" bits to the "because this happened" or "because this works" bits, it was something I don't know that I'd spent too much time thinking about previously. Sometimes those took the form of quick "huh," moments -- but occasionally he brushed against profundity, which I really appreciated.
And yes, Garfield picked up bonus points for entertainment. After the first paragraph in Chapter 1, my notes read "Between the Introduction and this paragraph, I've laughed four times. Am going to dig this book." Later on, I wrote that I didn't care about the content, really, I was having too much fun reading it to worry about it being right.
There's room for improvement, I think. If there's a design to the organization, I'm not sure I see it. He appears to hopscotch around between his topics. I'm honestly not sure how he could have arranged them to flow from one to another, but I do believe it could've been done. I think he could've lessened the detail occasionally (and increased it in a spot or two). But generally, this is me being nit-picky for the sake of not being a push over. There's really almost nothing to complain about.
Garfield scores across the board with this one, however. I do think the survey hops around a bit too much without obvious connections between the ideas so that the cumulative punch is less than it could be. In his concluding thoughts, Garfield raises some issues and asks some pointed questions that could be more forceful, more pointed if the preceding chapters had been more clearly linked. Nevertheless, the points were made and I, like most readers (I suspect), had to give some serious thought about my relationship to time and what I actually value. I'll have to continue this thinking for a while, actually -- the fact that I have to -- and want to -- is because of this book forcing me to consider things I've taken for granted about time and how my life is governed. I suspect I am not alone in this.
Thought-provoking, interesting, educating, well-written and generally entertaining -- Timekeepers really covers all the bases and covers them well. You'd do well to check it out.
Disclaimer: I received this eARC from the swell folks at Canongate Books via NetGalley in exchange for this post -- thanks to both for this. I'm very sorry this posted after the release date, my notes had that in March.
February 13, 2018
Simon Garfield's Timekeepers was very interesting most of the time. The collection of essays exploring how humans have "become obsessed with time" are clearly researched, often interjected with personal anecdotes, and a certain bit of humor. I admit I enjoyed some essays much more than others, but still found most to be informative and easy to read.
Thank you, NetGalley and Canongate for the opportunity to provide an honest review in exchange for the ebook.
Thank you, NetGalley and Canongate for the opportunity to provide an honest review in exchange for the ebook.
July 24, 2018
As soon as man freed himself from the vagaries of hunting-gathering and settled down for a sedentary life with agriculture, he became slave to time in the form of seasons and months. Accurate reckoning of time was necessitated for sowing and harvesting. The timekeepers were usually priests and astrologers who carved out a prominent place in society on account of the esoteric knowledge at their disposal. With his progress to urban life and technology, time continued to exert its mastery over man, but in lower chunks than before – in days, hours and even minutes! Clearly, the pace of life has speeded up over the ages in response to what is required from each person. Even though the standard of living has undoubtedly improved with each new wave of advance in technology and healthcare, it is questionable whether its quality has shown any upward trend. Forced to lead a mechanical life in sync with the tick of a clock takes away the vitality and intimacy of our everyday lives. This book examines the concept of time on human societies and analyses how people write the modern story of time in their own way. Simon Garfield is the author of several books and writes in newspapers and journals. He was named ‘Mind’ journalist of the year in 2005.
It is no wonder that time is the most commonly used noun in the English language considering its paramount importance to society. What is curious is the attempt at reform in time reckoning after the French Revolution. The French were obsessed with the metric system as a unit of measurement and wanted to extend its usefulness in computation to time as well. A new 10-hour clock was devised in the aftermath of the Revolution in which each hour was divided into 100 minutes. Quite unlike the system’s wide acceptance in the case of distance and weight, the 10-hour clock didn’t gain any traction whatsoever and was quietly dropped. Other strange contraptions like two minute-hands were also seen in the US.
The book gives a good description of the influence of railways in standardizing time in a country. Earlier, each city synchronized its local time with sunrise. Consequently, the time in Oxford was 5 minutes 2 seconds behind London time while Bristol lagged behind by 10 minutes. Evidently, such confusion was not acceptable to trains that ran between the cities. The railway companies adopted London time as the standard on which their timetables were set. Initially, this created problems as some of the wayside stations used their own time. Eventually, the ‘time’ of the idea had come and even the army too fell in line. London time was accepted as the standard in the entire country. In 1840, the Great Western Railway was the first to adopt the idea that time along its route should be the same no matter where a passenger alighted or departed. This task was made possible with the advent of electric telegraph the year before, with time signals from Greenwich being sent directly along trackside wires. In 1880, the British parliament passed Statutes (Definition of Time) Act which made it an offense to knowingly display the wrong time.
Any discussion on time wouldn’t be complete without a sampling of the finest watches made in the world. The Swiss watchmaking industry leads all the others for the exquisite appeal and unmatched technical perfection of its products. That explains why the Swiss watches constitute 58 per cent by value of all the watches sold worldwide, even though they come to just 1.7 per cent by number. After two centuries, they face the toughest challenge in the form of Apple Watch which is a smart device. The industry now focusses on the human aspects conferred by their watches, such as the indication of its owner’s income level which can afford that expensive watch, the expression of one’s unique personality and display of his appreciation of the finer things in life. Garfield addresses the interesting issue of why watch advertisements consistently show the time 10:10 on its face. This particular time ensures that the hour and minute hands pointing in opposite directions that makes the face resembling a ‘smile’. It also shows the position of the date without obstruction, doesn’t obscure the manufacturer’s label at the top of the dial and forms a pleasant and balanced appearance. It seems that setting this time by watch advertisers has nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln’s assassination which is the subject of an urban legend that says that Lincoln’s death had occurred around this instant.
Garfield reserves a large part of the narrative to examine interesting features of how time has influenced the visual arts. There are tiring details of 24-hour movies and documentaries that never end. Attempts to decouple people from the rhythm of eating by embracing a slow process are also catalogued. The information on these sections is no doubt useful, but only to a somewhat privileged group of English and American societies. Others would find reading through these chapters a laborious job. There are many interesting topics the author could’ve included. The origin of time zones and the history behind them would’ve been immensely appealing and doing justice to the book’s title. The complexities of timekeeping with atomic clocks should’ve been described as a counterpoise to how our ancestors kept time with their primitive devices. Overall, readers get an impression that the author has not fully utilized all the options available to him.
The book is recommended only to aficionados of how to weave time with art, particularly movies.
It is no wonder that time is the most commonly used noun in the English language considering its paramount importance to society. What is curious is the attempt at reform in time reckoning after the French Revolution. The French were obsessed with the metric system as a unit of measurement and wanted to extend its usefulness in computation to time as well. A new 10-hour clock was devised in the aftermath of the Revolution in which each hour was divided into 100 minutes. Quite unlike the system’s wide acceptance in the case of distance and weight, the 10-hour clock didn’t gain any traction whatsoever and was quietly dropped. Other strange contraptions like two minute-hands were also seen in the US.
The book gives a good description of the influence of railways in standardizing time in a country. Earlier, each city synchronized its local time with sunrise. Consequently, the time in Oxford was 5 minutes 2 seconds behind London time while Bristol lagged behind by 10 minutes. Evidently, such confusion was not acceptable to trains that ran between the cities. The railway companies adopted London time as the standard on which their timetables were set. Initially, this created problems as some of the wayside stations used their own time. Eventually, the ‘time’ of the idea had come and even the army too fell in line. London time was accepted as the standard in the entire country. In 1840, the Great Western Railway was the first to adopt the idea that time along its route should be the same no matter where a passenger alighted or departed. This task was made possible with the advent of electric telegraph the year before, with time signals from Greenwich being sent directly along trackside wires. In 1880, the British parliament passed Statutes (Definition of Time) Act which made it an offense to knowingly display the wrong time.
Any discussion on time wouldn’t be complete without a sampling of the finest watches made in the world. The Swiss watchmaking industry leads all the others for the exquisite appeal and unmatched technical perfection of its products. That explains why the Swiss watches constitute 58 per cent by value of all the watches sold worldwide, even though they come to just 1.7 per cent by number. After two centuries, they face the toughest challenge in the form of Apple Watch which is a smart device. The industry now focusses on the human aspects conferred by their watches, such as the indication of its owner’s income level which can afford that expensive watch, the expression of one’s unique personality and display of his appreciation of the finer things in life. Garfield addresses the interesting issue of why watch advertisements consistently show the time 10:10 on its face. This particular time ensures that the hour and minute hands pointing in opposite directions that makes the face resembling a ‘smile’. It also shows the position of the date without obstruction, doesn’t obscure the manufacturer’s label at the top of the dial and forms a pleasant and balanced appearance. It seems that setting this time by watch advertisers has nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln’s assassination which is the subject of an urban legend that says that Lincoln’s death had occurred around this instant.
Garfield reserves a large part of the narrative to examine interesting features of how time has influenced the visual arts. There are tiring details of 24-hour movies and documentaries that never end. Attempts to decouple people from the rhythm of eating by embracing a slow process are also catalogued. The information on these sections is no doubt useful, but only to a somewhat privileged group of English and American societies. Others would find reading through these chapters a laborious job. There are many interesting topics the author could’ve included. The origin of time zones and the history behind them would’ve been immensely appealing and doing justice to the book’s title. The complexities of timekeeping with atomic clocks should’ve been described as a counterpoise to how our ancestors kept time with their primitive devices. Overall, readers get an impression that the author has not fully utilized all the options available to him.
The book is recommended only to aficionados of how to weave time with art, particularly movies.
March 25, 2019
I am fascinated by time, and spend a lot of time thinking about how it controls our lives.
Some of the chapters were interesting, some vaguely interesting and some that I skipped because I really wasn’t interested.
The theme of ‘time’ throughout the chapters is very loose fitting - from the length of time a CD, how long The Beatles spent recording an album, how to make a watch and the creation of the train timetable.
I hate not finishing books but unfortunately this will not be finished.
📀📽⏳🕰
Some of the chapters were interesting, some vaguely interesting and some that I skipped because I really wasn’t interested.
The theme of ‘time’ throughout the chapters is very loose fitting - from the length of time a CD, how long The Beatles spent recording an album, how to make a watch and the creation of the train timetable.
I hate not finishing books but unfortunately this will not be finished.
📀📽⏳🕰
April 13, 2020
As tends to be the nature of books that collect musings on a large variety of aspects of a broad general topic, some parts were more, some less interesting. I learned a few tidbits that I found intriguing, but also found my attention wandering during other sections.
August 15, 2022
3/5. Some interesting chapters such as railways (due to them being the main reason for standardisation of time because of timetables and crashes), filibustering (a mainly American political tactic based around wasting time), industry. The chapter about the large numbers of time management self-help guides was entertaining but not much worth remembering from it. But also, at least for my taste, some boring chapters. I skipped the chapter on music. I found the chapters on watch designs and watch sales to be boring. Some of the chapters didn't feel that related to time, such as cameras to not be that related to time. The writing was fine, a mix of history and present day stuff but not outright good. Like a Bill Bryson pop-history book but not as good. I feel like I didn't get that much out of the book, I was already aware of the stuff in the good chapters such as the railways (but the Strom Thurmond world's longest filibuster was new and interesting)
I paid £1 and for that I thought it was fine, but I will not be keeping it and I would struggle to recommend it unless you found a cheap copy.
I paid £1 and for that I thought it was fine, but I will not be keeping it and I would struggle to recommend it unless you found a cheap copy.
June 24, 2017
Si no tuviera unas expectativas previas este libro se habría llevado cuatro estrellas, pero como las tenía y fueron defraudadas pues sólo se lleva tres. Uno esperaba una historia del tiempo oficial y apenas hay un capítulo dedicado a ello, y es de un capítulo histórico muy reciente (la unificación de los horarios debido al nacimiento del ferrocarril). Por lo demás visitamos ferias de relojería y plantas de ensamblado de coches y le damos un buen repaso a la sección de autoayuda de la Barnes & Noble más cercana. Es entretenido, es interesante, es informativo, pero no es lo que yo esperaba. Aún así, muy recomendable. Garfield cuenta historias muy bien (aunque abusa de las anécdotas personales, que son tantas que uno tiende a pensar que se las inventa) y es capaz de mantener la atención del lector tratando temas tan abstrusos como la burocracia del Museo Británico. Léanlo, malditos sean.
March 20, 2018
OK. Thought it was going to be more narrowly focused on how we keep and conceive of time. But Garfield had a very wide net (for instance, a very long section about the advertising world of luxury watches). Some things were quite interesting: how fast Beethoven is supposed to be played, why a CD is 80 minutes (the last two items are supposedly not unrelated), how old-style movie projectionists would be told to wind certain sections of film at a lesser pace (time literally slowed down). Other portions of the work were less intriguing: Taylorism, the slow-food movement, Vietnam War photography. The last section about the Doomsday Clock was especially gag-inducing (hard to believe anyone takes that nitwit idea seriously). Still, a book worth reading through (quickly). I have also become interested in some of Garfield's other books, which may be appearing on Goodreads later this year.
March 9, 2018
This book does not set out to answer any deep questions about the nature of time, though it does subtly raise some questions about our interaction with time that we may not usually consider. In a series of historical anecdotes it shows us some of the ways we interact with time: with arrogance, precision, individuality, creativity, and so forth.
As the book says, stories are the best way of making sense of time, and I enjoyed this little jaunt through some of the ways we've attempted to make sense of time as humans.
(I received a copy of the book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, though due to technical difficulties with the download, the actual copy I read was from the library after publication. Regardless, I have shared my own honest opinions in this review.)
As the book says, stories are the best way of making sense of time, and I enjoyed this little jaunt through some of the ways we've attempted to make sense of time as humans.
(I received a copy of the book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, though due to technical difficulties with the download, the actual copy I read was from the library after publication. Regardless, I have shared my own honest opinions in this review.)
January 28, 2019
I was really surprised how well is the author informed about various areas of time-related knowledge. It seems that the time is an extremely interesting phenomenon for him, and although he often points out that it is too often that time manage our lives, it seems that this problem is mostly related to him. Nevertheless, the author have my admiration on excellent research work and tremendous knowledge of time.
The book contains some very interesting facts about time, as well as some little less interesting facts, which are not a major area of my interest. Still, for me as a historian, this kind of book was very interesting. Congratulations to the author.
The book contains some very interesting facts about time, as well as some little less interesting facts, which are not a major area of my interest. Still, for me as a historian, this kind of book was very interesting. Congratulations to the author.
June 19, 2022
There was too much pop in this pop science.
Which I grant is extremely rich coming from me, who hates reading anything with the data attached. And yet I wanted more and definitely more than the extremely vapid conclusions about how we spend our time that the book leaves us with.
The anecdotes were good, but the actual sense of it as a history of science was...well, exactly like someone stretched a longform journalism article into a book. Just not a good way.
Also, based on the amount of time this book spent on justifying the slow food movement as more than a bunch of weirdo hippies relative to the amount of time it spent acknowledging and grappling with British imperialism and colonialism, I got the impression I was not the imagined audience for this book.
Which I grant is extremely rich coming from me, who hates reading anything with the data attached. And yet I wanted more and definitely more than the extremely vapid conclusions about how we spend our time that the book leaves us with.
The anecdotes were good, but the actual sense of it as a history of science was...well, exactly like someone stretched a longform journalism article into a book. Just not a good way.
Also, based on the amount of time this book spent on justifying the slow food movement as more than a bunch of weirdo hippies relative to the amount of time it spent acknowledging and grappling with British imperialism and colonialism, I got the impression I was not the imagined audience for this book.
April 27, 2024
Simon Garfield has form in the quirky, ‘well I never knew that’ narrative non-fiction field, with many books to his name on subjects as varied as the first industrial colour (Mauve), UK professional wrestling in the Seventies and Eighties (The Wrestling) the history of fonts and typefaces (Just My Type) and umpteen other surprisingly fascinating topics. Timekeepers is partly a history of time and the ways we have found to measure and count it, but also a look at how time has driven society, culture and economics throughout human history. As such, it’s a book that is quite happy to whizz off in all sorts of surprising directions, some more interesting to this reader than others. Simon Garfield is a witty and entertaining guide throughout, however. He’s always worth reading.
March 27, 2018
Timekeepers is a book about why and how we are so obsessed with time. It doesn't acutally answer that question, it rather gives examples and explains things about timekeeping like how we got our time zones, how the watch industry works, etc. There where some really interesting facts but also some thingsthat were a bit offtopic and I didn't quite know why they are included in this book.
I liked the beginning very much and have to admit my expectation were really high after the first pages and the book could live up to this. Still it was interesting and I learned some cool facts.
I liked the beginning very much and have to admit my expectation were really high after the first pages and the book could live up to this. Still it was interesting and I learned some cool facts.
April 2, 2018
What was the point of this book? It had such immense potential but all was wasted on listing some random bits of information guised as chapters and the author’s own opinions.
The footnotes serve no real purpose and the writing style is drier than the Atacama desert.
I was hoping to find the answer to the question why the world is obsessed about time, instead I read about some uninteresting trivia. I am sure the answer is somewhere in there but the writing style is so boring that I don’t remember if it did.
Ironically, this book is a waste of time and since time is money, save both by not reading it.
The footnotes serve no real purpose and the writing style is drier than the Atacama desert.
I was hoping to find the answer to the question why the world is obsessed about time, instead I read about some uninteresting trivia. I am sure the answer is somewhere in there but the writing style is so boring that I don’t remember if it did.
Ironically, this book is a waste of time and since time is money, save both by not reading it.
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