Ken Grimwood

Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn't know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again -- in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle -- each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: "What if you could live your life over again?"

Replay

Compelling plot, but the characters barely change and the last third is melodramatic af. Would watch the show though. 

Jess Rez

3.50 of 5 stars

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This kind of idea about characters reliving their lives over and over has probably been done a lot, though I haven't had a chance to read one myself. But this kind of premise would absolutely become one of my most favorite interesting and fascinating premises out there, especially the particular way Ken Grimwood did his own. It was solid and decent, the flow of the story juggling between slow and fast pace, absolutely intriguing. This book would make you see your life differently from the way you normally saw it, how short it actually is. It would make you sit and wonder for a while and reflect on the choices you've made on your life until now. The regrets, the pain, the decisions, the wasted opportunities, the lost time. Everything that comprises your life. It would make you realize how this fragile thing called life has much more to offer yet it was easily taken for granted. This book is a whole lot deep than I expected and this is definitely a worth read.

Dana Kraft

Here's a good lesson. If you hear about a book on NPR, be prepared to wait for it at the Austin public library. I think I requested a hold on this bad boy sometime during the Bush presidency. Nice, easy read. A good book for vacation. A guy repeats part of his life over and over. Sort of like Groundhog Day but it lasts longer than a day, and there's no Chris Elliott character.

KADY BURNS

I had never heard of this book until an episode of the podcast Overdue. While I am not one for fantasy, I really enjoy time travel books and movies. I really liked this book, and I am rounding up to 4 stars, but it did feel like a bit of a trudge to get through at times. There were scenes that felt like they were unnecessary and I did get confused in a few spots.

Melody Izard

Replay is a very interesting treatment of time travel with a Buddhist twist. It challenges you to consider what “living your life to the fullest” actually means and how you would go about deciding what is most important to you. It also made me sit up and take notice just which horse wins which high stakes race and who wins the world series in which year just in case I need that information in a parallel universe.

Alexia

Jeremy Anderberg

Whereas Blake Crouch's Recursion gets heavy into the science of memory and even the governmental ramifications of altering memory on a mass scale, Grimwood’s novel from 1988 is almost entirely honed in on the personal level. If there’s a fixed point in time where you know you’ll die and go back 25 years to another fixed point in time, over and over again, how would you live?

In Jeff Winston’s first “replay,” he makes some big bets and seemingly risky investments and makes a lot of money. Wouldn’t we all do that? As the reader expects, that existence turns out to be pretty empty. It feels like an obvious story arc at first, but the reality of being able to make an almost unlimited amount of money would likely be all-too-tempting in the moment.

So over the course of his many other “replays,” Jeff easily makes enough to live, but then attempts to figure out what it is that makes life worth living. How can he exist in a way that doesn’t leave him feeling stagnant at the end of it all? Does it involve trying to change history? What about finding love and having a family? Maybe creative pursuits and simple living are the answer. Jeff explores all of this, while also keeping an eye out for other people experiencing the same thing.

I hadn’t heard of Replay — or Ken Grimwood — before a reader of my newsletter recommended it to me. The premise alone was enough to reserve it at the library right away, and I’m sure glad I did. It’s a fun book with relatable characters; it’ll have you thinking about what choices you’d make differently, both on a grand scale and day-to-day, if you had a few 25-year replays in your back pocket.

Michael Hessling

Arun

Kyle McDonald

High Fidelity

Katja Evertz

Jamie R

Floris Verloop

Adam Goehrig-Bawany

Jeff Winston's life is not how he imagined it would be. An unhappy marriage and unrewarding job - and then he died. Aged forty-three. And woke up again, back in his college room, in 1963, aged eighteen. With all his memories intact. If he applies those memories, he can be rich - he can have anything he wants - in this new chance at life. Until he dies at forty-three and wakes up in his eighteen-year-old body again . . . and again in a continuous twenty-five year cycle each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, make a fortune or remedy past mistakes. And then, in one replayed life, he meets a woman who knows all too well what he is experiencing. REPLAY is a novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: 'What if you could live your life over again?'

Replay

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