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.

Having read and loved Just My Type by Simon Garfield, I decided to give this a go as it sounded interested. It's not about the chronological history of time and timekeeping, rather it is a collection of essays that has time and the obsession with time (be it the most accurate of watches, the 4 minute mile Roger Bannister is famed for, how photography captures a moment in time). While I did find parts of it interesting, I was slow to read it. I don't know if it was because I was reading an ebook (I think I would have concentrated better with the physical book) or if it was maybe because the essays are too vaguely connected. I felt a bit bogged down in details at times (like the part about the Swiss watches) and it made it less compelling to read. An interesting book but it made time go slowly for me

I am disappointed it took me so long to read this book. Weird and quirky historical topics are some of my most favorite reading experiences. Timekeepers covered a wide range of topics that spanned throughout human history, all leading back to humanity’s obsession with time. I highly encourage anyone and everyone, especially those who enjoy reading nonfiction of about the arts and sciences, to pick this up and get ready for a fun ride into the past.

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. 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.

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.

I really wondered if I'd like this book when I began it. I started it feeling that I MUST read it, even though I wanted to read something else. It was the perfect book for the time! I read this over the holidays that span New Year's Day, a time when we all think about time and its passing. What is time? Where does it come from and where does it go? Why do we live so bound by it?

This was an amazing book and while all those questions I had were not answered in it, I found that there were many more questions I had never thought to ask. Why is music written the way it is? How long should a song be? How is our calendar come to be the way it is? What happens when a sports record is broken? What makes watches different from one another and how did they develop? How fast does one need to work on an assembly line and what happens if mistakes are made?

Money can even purchase temporary happiness, but it cannot buy time. We are each allotted an amount in this life that we can't determine in advance. Since we don't know how much we have, we dare not waste it. I once read that one cannot kill time without doing damage to eternity. How do we best spend the time we have?

The opening introduction is absolutely priceless! It shows the futility of not understanding what the goal in life should be and how one chooses to spend ones time profoundly affects his immediate as well as long-term happiness.

I have mixed feeling about the book. One hand I really enjoyed it, but there were several occasions I just wanted to get through some part because it was a bit slow.

In the 21st century, time controls our lives. Garfield's explorations of time in the modern age start with his own experiences during a bad bicycle accident when time slowed down and then exploded in a "flashbulb moment." He investigates modern watches and historical time-related moments: Roger Bannister's four-minute mile, Storm Thurmond's infamous filibuster which lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes. A thought-provoking, entertaining book, encouraging us to consider the place of time in the modern world.

Timekeepers fulfils Simon Garfield’s intentions – to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts. It covers a wide variety of topics, all in one way or another about time – how it’s been recorded, the development of the calendar, the standardisation of time to aid with railway timetables, and aspects of time management, for example.

The chapters vary in length and some are more interesting than others. The one that interested me most was Movie Time, with an account of how the silent film, Safety Last! was made in 1923. Harold Lloyd climbs the outside of a department store, obstacles falling on him as he does so, until he reaches the giant clock at the top, grabs hold of it, and dangles above the street below. Garfield recalls that for the first audiences time just froze, some went into hysterics and others fainted. Garfield’s focus is on the concept of time that the movies portrayed and goes on to explain how films were originally produced and shown when the timing depended on the cranking skills of the cameraman during filming and the projectionist during showing.

I was also interested in the chapter on performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a long and complex piece of music involving a large orchestra, solo singers and a chorus, where Garfield’s focus is on the tempo of the music and the differences made by different composers’ interpretations; and also in the chapter on Nic Ut’s photograph of children fleeing after a napalm bomb had been dropped on a village in Trảng Bàng, Vietnam. Garfield’s focus here is on the fraction of a second when the photograph was captured that brought the story home to its viewers.

Several other chapters also interested me but I wasn’t taken with those on the technicalities of time measurement, time management,or the production of clocks and watches, that Garfield describes in great detail. The book jumps about from topic to topic with, as far as I can make out, no chronological order. But it is full of facts, and going off the Further Reading and Acknowledgement section it is well researched. A book to dip into rather than read straight through.

Thanks to Canongate Books and NetGalley for my copy of this book for review.

I wish that I could say I enjoyed this book but it was very slow - I love time, and all things related to time, but this but needed to move faster!

I wish that this book had lived up to what I thought it would be, but sadly, for me, it didn’t. The chapters felt disjointed and while they all related to time in some way, they had no relation to each other. It almost felt like I was reading a trivia book about time rather than what the book seemed to have promised.

I am not sure if another reader would find this more appealing than I did. Possibly someone who finds completely shifting gears between chapters less jarring would be able to get more out of the book. I didn’t find the writing itself to be as distracting as the subject matter.

Very easy to dip in and out of as a series of linked stories. Informative and intetesting read! Wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did

Fascinating, fun look at time

The book really isn’t about time; it is more a collection of stories that have time as a background. Each chapter is independent and some are closely related to time, some less so.
Sometimes the stories drift far away from time, e.g., the parts on the Beatles, but no matter how far the drift, the book is always entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Read the footnotes too; they are excellent.

Timekeepers is a vivid exploration of the ways we have perceived, contained and saved time over the last 250 years. . As managing time becomes the greatest challenge we face in our lives, this multi-layered history helps us tackle it in a sparkling new light. It is extremely interesting in how time and keeping time has evolved over the ages and how it affects us.

A highly entertaining collection of essays loosely connected on the theme of time and how we keep track of it. It's not a science book, but a pop culture entry, mostly, except not very pop-y. The author takes workshops on how to build a watch and fails miserably but with delight. He explores themes of clocks in old movies and the individuals associated with them and film speed and how it affected movie history. It's not a disciplined exploration of the concept of time, with entropy and disciplined social science. But it was fun and a little luxurious to take the time to sink into this.

I got a copy to review from Net Galley.

Timekeepers is the perfect gift for your nerdiest friend or relative. In a variety of chapters Garfield explores many aspects of time – how it’s managed, seen in other cultures, accounted for by instruments, intersects with technology, etc. The chapters are relatively brief but detailed. Footnotes can provide further amusement/ enlightenment. I found myself skimming the chapters that were a bit too detailed and reveling in the more quirky ones. But I believe that is a perfect way to approach this subject matter. Focus your time on the chapters that are most engaging. Later, there will be time to explore the ones you initially skipped. Ha! I am glad that Garfield managed his time to explore a subject that impacts all out lives, past, present and future. Recommended.

This title expired before I could finish reading it. Unfortunately I could not get into this book as I hoped. From what I did end up reading I enjoyed. Maybe some day I'll get back to it.

I wanted to read this book because the cover was fantastically intriguing. Like the cover the book itself was fascinating and a good read. I appreciated the fact that the book was not like other books I had read about using my time wisely. It was not a self-help book, it was factual, filled with interesting tidbits of history, not advice-driven. It was just great writing. I enjoyed Timekeepers by Simon Garfield. my only critique is that it might have been a little long for the average person, however, I am not the average reader. :)

Time is something both universal and personal, we all experience it differently yet are largely bound to the same clock. This excellent examination of time and timekeeping delves into the past as well as looking to the future. Well researched and clearly and concisely written in a manner designed to appeal to the casual reader , this book takes the reader to some unexpected places along the way, such as the influence of time on music performance and recording, and the development of the assembly line model of factory work. Informative and educational, a recommended read.

This book is one man’s fixation on time through the ages, something that neither diminishes his interesting stories and bits of time-related histories, nor prevents the discovery of fascinating notes begging to be shared. I also appreciate how the impact on different classes of people is not neglected though this is lost in the thought of time as the great equalizer. It fails to recognize how the wealthy do buy extra time by outsourcing routine tasks to others, who still have to do their own tasks as well.

Whether it’s the planned community of Poundbury that turns back time or a 24-hour movie formed of clips such that any clock on screen is matched to the movie run time, if it has to do with our relationship to time, Timekeepers has a word or two about the topic. The precision placement of watch gears moves to the precise timing of an automobile assembly line and on to the obsession with time management. Nor is perception neglected as the author explores the extended minute that occurs in an accident or at the last stretch of a race.

Did you know every village or town in England used to have its own time zone? They set the time by their clock tower, regardless of the times set for their neighbors. Train schedules brought this tradition to a halt though acceptance came grudgingly and took a while. The trains ran on railway time rather than addressing the local time because too far a variance in the drivers’ watches could result in collisions.

Timekeepers is the perfect blend of interesting tidbits and an overarching theme. It has come up in numerous conversations since I started reading the book, and another reviewer recommended it for the same reason. Garfield’s intent is to demonstrate how time has become a key element, and sometimes the only element, by which we organize our lives and judge our worth, along with why this is problematic.

Ultimately, the book is a sometimes-chaotic exploration of the relationship between time and humanity. It contains many fascinating anecdotes, interviews, and portrayals of key people in the narrative, covering everything from watch mechanics to the imposition of false and stressful urgency with a touch on pretty much in between.

Timekeepers is the kind of book to prompt discussion and the urge to share some factoid the reader just learned. I don’t remember my expectation in starting the book beyond my own fascination with geared watches, but I’m pretty sure it had little in common with the reality, a fact I do not regret.

Whether you’re obsessed with time or merely governed by it, Timekeepers is likely to expand your understanding while offering a fair amount of entertainment along the way.

P.S. I received this title from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.