Replay | 
 enlarge | Author: Ken Grimwood
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  302 reviews
Sales Rank: 2159
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 068816112X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780688161125
ASIN: 068816112X
Publication Date: August 5, 1998
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Condition: **COVER WEAR/CREASES AND GENERAL SIGNS OF USE** Cover wear, creases, page edge wear and/or markings. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.
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Product Description
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?"
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| Customer Reviews: Read 297 more reviews...
 What Would You Do Differently? October 9, 2008
In 1988 Jeff Winston is 43-years-old and stuck in a hum-drum life and a joyless marriage when he dies of a heart attack at his desk...and then is resurrected moments later as himself in 1963 when he was a freshman in college. He is fully conscious of his previous life and how he strayed from the dreams of his youth. At its most basic level "Replay" asks the question, "If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?"
Jeff gets resurrected multiple times and gets to answer that question in several different ways. Does he get married to the same woman? Doe he change careers? Does he try to stop the Kennedy assassination and influence other world events?
I am a sucker for time travel stories so when I saw this book displayed I could not resist. I don't know how this book could have escaped my notice for over 20 years, but I am glad I finally caught up to it. This is a great book that I will probably take the time to read again someday.
When I finished "Replay" I was sad that is was over. Sure, there are a few flaws with this book (interesting plot lines that go no where, and some purely selfish choices that I would like to believe a person of 100 years experience and knowledge would not make), but I definitely wish there were more books as entertaining and thought-provoking as "Replay."
Replay will be read again and again October 6, 2008
Simply put, this book is the best "time book" I have ever read. It caught me from the first page to the last and I will read it again and again many times throughout my life I am sure. A must read.
Replay, reread and revisited October 5, 2008
Prior to having my recent bypass surgery, I bought a copy of my favorite book, Ken Grimwood's REPLAY, to re-read. [...], but I thought it would be especially interesting to re-read now in light of (a) I am now past the age of Grimwood when he wrote the book, (b) I am roughly the age of its main protagonist, Jeff Winston, and (c) I was in some small danger of dying, either through a heart attack before I ever got on the operating table or there itself.
Even though I knew the twists and turns of the plot, the narrative continued to hold me. I had loaned the book to a close female friend in recent years who had commented that it had a lot of sex in it (which somewhat turned her off, as it was a very male-centric view of sex), which I hadn't remembered, but which I was aware of this time through. It definitely was male-centric, as it is Winston who provides the internal awareness throughout the first half of the book, and in one of his many replays he goes through a very hedonistic phase. Now that I'm over forty, Winston's actions actually seem more realistic than when I read it in my twenties. There's a reason for the June-December romance in our culture, where women are attracted by older men for their money--Winston, in his replays, is always able to make enough quick bets on sporting events to have a sizable bank account in his youth, which enables him to attract such women earlier in his life. What is revealing here is not that Winston seeks out sex in such a way, but that Grimwood makes it a point that such a lifestyle is as hollow as his first replay, where he simply accumulated a vast amount of wealth and prestige. When Winston discovers that there is someone else in the world who is replaying like him, he seeks her out and over time they become many-lives-long soul partners because of their shared experience.
Grimwood also was somewhat prescient about the U.S., terrorism, and how the latter could easily turn the former into a fascist state, by giving us one replay where Winston and Pam actually reveal themselves to the world, only to be co-opted by the government who disbelieves in their story, but keeps them under lock and key, including torture techniques, to get them to reveal the "secrets" of the world. Even though Jeff and Pam provide details that remove certain strong-man governments from power (in the 80s, when this was written, Grimwood's target was Qaddafi in Libya), new terrorist groups form based on the covert U.S. actions, thus starting an overall change in the timeline that Jeff and Pam are unable to provide any details for because it is unlike any replay they've been through. For me, that's the profound illustration of my objection to Bush's tactics since 9/11. Rather than capitalizing on the world sentiment and sympathy for that horrible day to truly direct world opinion against such meaningless violence, Bush and his advisors instead chose the worst possible options of vengeance (in Afghanistan) and pre-emption (in Iraq; let me remind you that Hussein had no use for Al Quaedi, nor that group for him, which seems to continue to be lost in the nattering nabobs of 24-hour opinion news). The atrocities committed in the name of the U.S.'s revenge have only strengthened terrorism, undermined our legal system, and removed any sympathy the globe may have had for us. It may have even contributed to our recent economic troubles, as the continued cost of the occupation of Iraq has been an awful drain. Grimwood saw such a possibility in the 1980s.
Ever since reading REPLAY for the first time, I've said that this is the most "life-affirming" book I know of, and it remains so. Winston's discovery through his many lives (and constant deaths) is that life is worth living right in the moment, but by that Grimwood doesn't mean "for the moment." The motto of this book is not carpe diem, but carpe vitam. It's an important distinction. The former is the refuge of people who think of nothing beyond themselves, in a sense that every day must be conquered and enjoyed and provide fulfillment. Grimwood says, yes, but a day by itself means nothing if it's not surrounded by a life that has meaning, typically shared with others.
SPOILER WARNING
That ending remains as powerful as ever, as Winston dies over and over and over again before the change, and the denouement is as open to interpretation as is the epilogue. If anything, it's that ending, which could not be anything else, that makes this book so fulfilling, so much so that I hadn't even remembered the one page epilogue. Obituaries stated that Grimwood had been working on a sequel to REPLAY when he died, and now I can see what possibilities he had open to him for such, as an exploration of a time and place and a character that was more distant than Jeff Winston and the U.S. of the 1980s. It would have been a difficult book to write well, but I'm sure Grimwood wouldn't have published it if he didn't believe in it. I'm saddened that we'll never see that book.
Ken Grimwood... Thank You... September 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Thank you Ken for sharing this book with us...
I bought this book based on the reviews written here and once I started it I couldnt stop reading it... Its very well written and very thought provoking...
If you have time please read the book... It will make you stop and wonder about life and how you are living it...
 Not as good as the hype September 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I did it again. I fell for the pro reviews. It was an o.k. read but not great.
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