With the Covid pandemic trauma, I thought, "Why not make it worse and re-read this book?" It took me four months to finally get the courage to do it. I am wrecked once again.

What I had not remembered was that the the circumstance that led to the mess-up that stranded the time-traveling historian in the past was an eerily similar circumstance to ours: Set in the year 2054 some time after a worldwide pandemic (say, 2020?), a novel virus and resulting epidemic and quarantine shuts down the university that was running the time travel. Topics suddenly more familiar that were thoroughly worked into the story: contact tracing, gene sequencing of the virus, development of vaccines. ( )

First sentence: Mr. Dunworthy opened the door to the laboratory and his spectacles promptly steamed up.
"Am I too late?" he said, yanking them off and squinting at Mary.
"Shut the door," she said. "I can't hear you over the sound of those ghastly carols."
Dunworthy closed the door, but it didn't completely shut out the sound of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" wafting in from the quad. "Am I too late?" he said again.

Premise/plot: In a world where historians learn their subject firsthand by time travel, Kivrin, our heroine--one of them--is sent to the middle ages to learn just "how exaggerated" (according to her professor/advisor Gilchrist) the accounts of the Black Death were. That's spinning it a bit. Kivrin is there to LEARN and OBSERVE and ABSORB. Technically, she's to be sent to 1320--the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany season in OXFORD. But that's if all goes according to plan and there are no mix-ups or mistakes. Mr. Dunworthy, our hero, has a bad feeling that those in charge of the project are incapable and incompetent and imbeciles. The book opens moments before she is sent back in time....it isn't long before Dunworthy has reason to panic...

But this book isn't about one man's panic--his helicopter teaching, if you will. It is about TWO pandemics. One is set in the present of 2054. This pandemic requires a quarantine, contact tracing, mask-wearing, and safety protocols. With it comes toilet paper shortages--along with soap! The present story line is full of mystery and action. The other is set in the past--the Black Death. There is a theme of helplessness in both.

My thoughts: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite books. This is my SIXTH time to read and review it. I last reviewed it in 2020. I love and adore this book so much. It is set during Christmas/Epiphany. It's just a book that calls out to me every year to reread. I started it in December of 2022, but didn't finish up until this past weekend! ( )

In 2054 Oxford, England, the college town still has bicycles, pubs, and intramural fighting amongst the professors; but it also features a "time machine" of sorts (actually more like a Star Trek transporter, but with additional time fixes instead of just places/space coordinates). One of the students from Mediaeval (college/department) has convinced various professors to have her trained to go back to the fourteenth century and, during the Advent season, succeeds in being delivered to a time of Old English, kirtles and Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately, instead of landing in the relatively safe year of 1320, Kirven ends up in the year 1348--- at the onset of The Plague in England. The research and the dual timelines are well done; the characters well developed, credible and relatable; the descriptions of place, and atmosphere, vivid and; overall the story is emotionally engaging. Highly recommend with the only caveat being that this does deal with deadly pandemics and graphic descriptions of the symptoms & deaths of plagues victims. ( )

Interesting book involving time travel & disease. The book tells the story of Kivrin's journey into the past, alongside a crisis from the time where she came (2050s). I tended to prefer the sections following Kivrin. I agree with another reviewer that it gets better toward the end, though I personally still found the beginning to be engaging enough. Some of the characters were insufferable - I get why they had to have their unlikable traits, otherwise the plot would not have worked. But I still found it difficult to read parts involving these characters. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this novel ( )

I got through about half of this on audio before switching to e-book and doing it basically as homework, reading a certain amount each day to get through it before my digital checkout expired.
Why would I do this to myself? I normally wouldn't, but enough people who share my reading tastes, including my husband, really loved this book, and I just had to see if it would get better if I read it for long enough.
And it did.
About 450 pages or so into the story.
So 70-75% of the book was boring and repetitive, and then I liked it a little more after the plot got moving.
The way the characters reacted to their situations, in both time settings, made perfect sense. People do tend to think and do the same things over and over, especially in the middle of a crisis. But to read about people doing the same things over and over and thinking the same things over and over is not interesting to me.
Here is what happened, again and again, for the first big chunk of the book:

1. Dunworthy had a frustrating experience with a telephone.
2. Gilchrist reminded someone he's acting Head.
3. Colin examined his gobstopper or referred to something as "necrotic" or "apocalyptic."
4. Kivrin wondered where the Drop was.
5. Badri woke up, muttered something unhelpful, and fell back asleep.

The reason I quit the audio version is because, while otherwise quite good, the reader had a slower pace than I was willing to endure, given how bored I was.

The emotional turn the plot took at the end and the daring rescue bumped this from a 1-star rating to a 2-star for me, but that's it. I like a daring rescue as much as the next guy, and I liked seeing Dunworthy and the gang work together to rescue Kivrin. It was still too little too late. ( )