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Fiction.
Literature.
Science Fiction.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel . . .
Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He??s been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It??s part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier.
But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right??not only to save the project but to prevent altering histor… (més)
amberwitch: A much darker book set in the same universe. This time the timetravel is to the dark middle ages instead of the gay Victorian era
Othemts: To Say Nothing of the Dog is a more light-hearted time travel adventure which is sort of a sequel to Doomsday Book. Both are excellent, enjoyable novels.
nessreader: College of Magics is a swashbuckling coming of age novel about a Ruritanian princess (who has a perfectly proper English friend, a demure witch with a passion for millinery) Jane, the English friend is the lead in the sequel, Scholar of Magics, which is a closer match for To Say Nothing..
Edwardiana, cream teas, and magic, in books told with a deft wit: that describes both To Say Nothing and Scholar of Magics.… (més)
nessreader: Both have a flavour of screwball comedy romance and wilful anachronisms abound while the unromantic lovers sort themselves out. Corrupting Dr Nice reminded me a lot of Preston Sturges' film, The Lady Eve.
My goodness this one was hilarious. Ned travels to the Victorian era from the future to help solve the problem of restoring Conventry Cathedral. Soon he finds himself boating down the Thames, navigating Victorian etiquette and trying to save a kitten. The supporting characters like his partner in crime Verity, Baine the butler, flighty Tossie, and the abominable Lady Schrapnell are what really make the book. I just loved it and I'm glad I read Three Men in a Boat first to get all the added references.
“History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats.”
“The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.”
“People will buy anything at jumble sales,' I said. 'At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table.” ( )
This book isn't as powerful as "Doomsday Book," Willis' other book involving time travel, but her plotting and research are just as meticulous. In short, the book to me seemed a cross between a serious SF time travel story and a P.G. Wodehouse comedy, with some Agatha Christie thrown in for good measure. I found the explanations of time travel conundrums occasionally confusing, and I think at times they get in the way of a really enjoyable story. Otherwise, a good read. ( )
I wish I had read [b:Three Men in a Boat|4921|Three Men in a Boat (Penguin Popular Classics)|Jerome K. Jerome|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165515911s/4921.jpg|4476508] first. It would have added more layers to this to enjoy. I very much liked the fish-out-of-water quality of the main character being thrust into mid-Victorian society. The mystery driving the plot was almost more of a distraction; I didn't care much about it. But overall, it was still a pleasant read. ( )
Quick Word: Highly bewildering, and although great fun at times, the chaotic mess never tied up as neatly as I would've liked. However Willis has a beauty to her storys - and a historical hillarity- that makes everything worthwile. And such beautiful characterization. Perhaps I will enjoy it better after a re-read. ( )
To Say Nothing of the Dog is charming. It’s funny and gentle and it has Victorian England and severely time lagged time travelers from the near future freaking out over Victorian England, it’s full of jumble sales and beautiful cathedrals and kittens. This is a complicated funny story about resolving a time paradox, and at the end when all is revealed everything fits together like oiled clockwork. But what makes it worth reading is that it is about history and time and the way they relate to each other. If it’s possible to have a huge effect on the past by doing some tiny thing, it stands to reason that we have a huge effect on the future every time we do anything.
I have read several stories by Connie Willis which I have enjoyed. However, these have all been short stories or novellas. At longer lengths, based on the three Willis novels I've read, I'm afraid I subscribe to the minority opinion that her work is vastly overrated. While I'm sure To Say Nothing of the Dog will sell well and may even garner Willis another Hugo or Nebula, it is another Willis book which adds to my opinion that she should stick with short fiction and stay away from time travel.
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To Robert A. Heinlein
Who, in Have Space Suit, Will Travel, first introduced me to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog.
Primeres paraules
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There were five of us--Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger.
Citacions
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
She sighed. "It's too bad. 'Placetne, magistra?' he said when he proposed, and then she said, 'Placet'. That's a fancy Oxford don way of saying yes. I had to look it up. I hate it when people use Latin and don't tell you what they mean.
It was actually more of a swoon than a faint. She slumped sedately to the flowered carpet, managing to avoid hitting any of the furniture--no small feat since the room contained a large round rosewood table, a small triangular table with a tintype album on it, a mahogany table with a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass dome on it, a horsehair sofa, a damask loveseat, a Windsor chair, a Morris chair, a Chesterfield chair, several ottomans, a writing desk, a bookcase, a knick-knack cabinet, a whatnot, a firescreen, a harp, an aspidistra, and an elephant's foot.
Plans, intentions, reasons. I could hear Professor Overforce now. "I knew it! This is nothing but an argument for a Grand Design!"
A Grand Design we couldn't see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.
"History is character," Professor Peddick had said. And character had certainly played a part in the self-correction--Lizzie Bittner's devotion to her husband and the Colonel's refusal to wear a coat in rainy weather, Verity's fondness for cats and Princess Arjumand's fondness for fish and Hitler's temper and Mrs. Mering's gullibility. And my time-laggedness. If they were all part of the self-correction, what did that do to the notion of free will? Or was free will part of the plan as well?
One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober.
It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation.
Darreres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Fiction.
Literature.
Science Fiction.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel . . .
Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He??s been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It??s part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier.
But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right??not only to save the project but to prevent altering histor
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To say nothing of the dog: Connie Wills - reading_fox's review
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