The Time Keeper - by Mitch Albom

This fable about "Father Time" was a bit too sappy for my taste. I normally like a bit of fantasy in which worlds collide, as was the case with this book, but the religious overtones, the way in which everything was wrapped up a bit too tidily in the end left, in addition to a rather obvious moral left me feeling uninspired by this work. It is the story of Dor (Father Time) who is sentenced to an almost-eternity of listening to others beg for more time for his "crime" of being the first chronologist. Eventually released from his prison he finds himself in a time (2012) he could never have imagined, in which everyone is obsessed with time. He also is bequeathed an hour glass which allows him to slow time to an almost stand still so that he can explore things in this new world, and catch up on 6,000 years, at his leisure. He makes use of his hour glass at a library in Madrid, Spain "reading more than a third of the volumes. He read history and literature, studied maps and oversized photo books. With the hourglass turned this took mere minutes, although in real time, decades would have passed."

This was a quick read, and it was good to have along at the conference I attended over the weekend since it has a lot of natural breaking points, so I could read bits of it between sessions. I imagine it will have some appeal to others, beyond the fact that it has a library in it.