false <![CDATA[To Say Nothing of the Dog]]> 77773 10 <i>To Say Nothing of the Dog</i> is a science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel, complete with epigraphs, brief outlines, and a rather ugly boxer in three-quarters profile at the start of each chapter. Or is it a Victorian novel in the guise of a time-traveling tale, or a highly comic romp, or a great, allusive literary game, complete with spry references to Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Its title is the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's singular, and hilarious, <i>Three Men in a Boat</i>. In one scene the hero, Ned Henry, and his friends come upon Jerome, two men, and the dog Montmorency in--you guessed it--a boat. Jerome will later immortalize Ned's fumbling. (Or, more accurately, Jerome will <i>earlier</i> immortalize Ned's fumbling, because Ned is from the 21st century and Jerome from the 19th.) <p> What Connie Willis soon makes clear is that genre can go to the dogs. <i>To Say Nothing of the Dog</i> is a fine, and fun, romance--an amused examination of conceptions and misconceptions about other eras, other people. When we first meet Ned, in 1940, he and five other time jumpers are searching bombed-out Coventry Cathedral for the bishop's bird stump, an object about which neither he nor the reader will be clear for hundreds of pages. All he knows is that if they don't find it, the powerful Lady Schrapnell will keep sending them back in time, again and again and again. Once he's been whisked through the rather quaint Net back to the Oxford future, Ned is in a state of super time-lag. (Willis is happily unconcerned with futuristic <i>vraisemblance</i>, though Ned makes some obligatory references to "vids," "interactives," and "headrigs.") The only way Ned can get the necessary two weeks' R and R is to perform one more drop and recuperate in the past, away from Lady Schrapnell. Once he returns something to someone (he's too exhausted to understand what or to whom) on June 7, 1888, he's free. <p> Willis <i>is</i> concerned, however, as is her confused character, with getting Victoriana right, and Ned makes a good amateur anthropologist--entering one crowded room, he realizes that "the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over." Though he's still not sure what he's supposed to bring back, various of his confederates keep popping back to set him to rights. <i>To Say Nothing of the Dog</i> is a shaggy-dog tale complete with a preternaturally quiet, time-traveling cat, Princess Arjumand, who might well be the cause of some serious temporal incongruities--for even a mouser might change the course of European history. In the end, readers might well be more interested in Ned's romance with a fellow historian than in the bishop's bird stump, and who will not rejoice in their first Net kiss, which lasts 169 years! 696 1997 To Say Nothing of the Dog total:2624|5:1125|4:990|3:404|2:79|1:26| 2624 10981 3885 483 5 11 false false Sun Dec 21 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 18 08:10:59 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 21 09:35:49 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 8 false false Sun Mar 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jan 19 05:47:26 -0800 2009 Wed Oct 21 11:45:20 -0700 2009 1
This was a very enjoyable jaunt through time in search of a missing bishop's bird stump for the Coventry Cathedral's restoration. It's 2057 and Lady Shrapnell (very aptly named by the way) is restoring the Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before it's destruction in 1940 ...more...]]> 4 5 false false Fri Apr 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 08 09:02:53 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 11 17:54:32 -0700 2009
Humor and romance help--not hurt--a story, but if the science fiction doesn't work, chances are the whole story falls apart. Willis' work...more...]]> 5 4 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1998 Mon Jun 04 12:44:48 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 04 12:49:21 -0700 2007 and it's got Cyril, who I love with a love that makes my time travel love look like a Tuesday afternoon romance. Plus, it's inspired by - and references, oh my god, ...more...]]> 5 2 false false Fri Dec 12 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 02 17:20:02 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 12 21:41:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Sat Apr 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Feb 19 04:25:39 -0800 2008 Sat Apr 26 04:08:41 -0700 2008 Passage.

This book brims over with humo...more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Sun Jan 20 01:25:38 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 02 06:51:17 -0800 2008
Its the not-too-distant future, but time-travel has been around for awhile. Oxford historian Ned Henry is trying desperately to find a h...more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Sep 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 19:33:45 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 29 17:46:34 -0700 2009 4 3 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sun Dec 28 08:50:07 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 28 08:50:30 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sat Jun 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 25 23:39:56 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 27 22:06:16 -0700 2009 This was the Sci-Fi selection for the Goodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club for the month of May 2009. Visit this link to see all of the discussions, group member reviews, etc.

I am not a fan of sustained silliness. Actually, I'm not a fan of silliness at all unless it has an undertone of...more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Mar 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Dec 29 08:42:56 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 31 17:14:18 -0700 2009
She started to write and then stopped and frowned at the pen. She pulled an orange dahlia penwiper out of her pocket.
"What are you doing?" I said.
"Wiping my pen," she said. She stuck the pen into the dahlia and wi...
more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Feb 21 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 31 06:55:06 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 20 23:32:07 -0800 2008 The Doomsday Book. I mean, it's not that the Black Death didn't have its lighter side, it's just the overall it's not so much fun.
...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Jan 27 12:11:15 -0800 2008 Sun Feb 10 15:39:05 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Aug 12 23:07:41 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 12 23:07:41 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Mar 19 14:24:43 -0700 2007 Mon Mar 19 17:25:23 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 2 false false Fri Jan 30 17:12:42 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 20 11:13:19 -0800 2009 2
I know. Everyone loves it and I can't explain why I don't. Normally I love all the elements that make up this book: time travel, r...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu May 08 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jan 05 13:31:49 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 13:34:57 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Dec 30 15:18:01 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 30 15:27:43 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 26 14:28:47 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 26 18:33:08 -0700 2009 Technically it's a sequel to Doomsday Book by Willis, but it stands on its own. I believe reading this one first and going back to Doomsday is a more felicitous order because the reader gets the lighter-hearted introduction ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jun 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 20:43:05 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 20:56:04 -0700 2009
Ned Henry has made too many time drops (traveling back in time) looking for the bishop's ...more...]]>