Claudia Hammond

Non-fiction

Difficulty level: easy

Claudia Hammond’s Time Warped: Unlocking The Mysteries Of Time Perception is a non-fiction book that explores how humans perceive time and our relationship with it. This book covers a wide variety of topics about time, from discussing a number of varying factors that can effect our perception of time (such as emotion), to why our perception of time changes as we grow up, which I’m sure some of you may have experienced. While the book mainly focuses on the psychology behind time, it of course links in to other topics such as philosophy, physics and even the poetry of time, introducing angles to these problems from entirely different fields.

The introduction of the book starts of with a true story, which immediately pulled me in and had me interested and invested from the very beginning, and this is a pattern throughout the book; The author introduces a vast amount of studies and scenarios which she links to the number of findings she walks us through. Many of these studies are quite drastic and wild, a lot of the time going to extremes to discover and understand time perception, which certainly keeps the book entertaining. Although Non-fiction, Claudia Hammond’s use of humour and writing style gives the book an informal feel, making the read more engaging and personal. Once more, As mentioned By the author in the introduction, you can choose to read from whatever chapter you wish, with no real need to read them chronologically. To help with this, the author even gives you a small description within in the introduction of what each chapter will discuss. This choice gives the freedom, and adds to the personal feel of the book.

I would mainly recommend this book to those studying psychology A Level who want to see psychology applied a to very different, but incredibly intriguing field, time. I would say this book isn’t for those looking to broaden their knowledge on A Level topics, although it does certainly relate to the topic of memory. For those generally interested in Psychology, I would certainly say it is an interesting read, and the writing style make it easy to understand. Overall, I’d say that If you find time to be a really fascinating topic, this book does an incredible job of displaying and investigating it’s many mysteries through the mindset of a psychologist.