This version of xlrd is currently pinned for testing on Travis in [requirements-test.txt](https://github.com/okfn/messytables/blob/3366a08e06ca19abcdb6c624069e1d28414a3363/requirements-test.txt#L4). Prior to v1.2.0, xlrd used the [`time.clock()`](https://github.com/python-excel/xlrd/pull/300) function inside `book.py` and this was [removed in Python 3.8](https://bugs.python.org/issue36895).