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To Say Nothing of the Dog

(Oxford Time Travel #2)

Connie Willis

4.09 · Rating details · 38,697 ratings · 4,172 reviews

Connie Willis' Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Doomsday Book uses time travel for a serious look at how people connect with each other. In this Hugo-winning companion to that novel, she offers a completely different kind of time travel adventure: a delightful romantic comedy that pays hilarious homage to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.

When too many jumps back to 1940 ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, 512 pages

Published December 1st 1998 by Bantam Books (first published January 1998)

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· 38,697 ratings · 4,172 reviews

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Jul 07, 2010 carol. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, my-library-hardcover, my-library, desert-island, awards, time-period-fantasy

If ever there was a symphony as book (Beethoven's 8th?), it would be this one. Like a symphony, To Say Nothing is a wonderful composite that is almost impossible to deconstruct. In many books, there might be a chapter that stands out, whether due to brilliance or failure; this is largely a harmonious, excellently written whole, with only one or two incongruous passages near the end.

Then there's the writing: amazingly developed and interwoven, it takes a number of disparate themes and juxtaposes ...more

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May 27, 2015 ✘✘ Sarah ✘✘ (former Nefarious Breeder of Murderous Crustaceans) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel, hahahahaha, 2018, 2015, rr-2018, welcome-to-the-zoo, absolute-favourites, science-fiction, victorians-do-it-better, br-2018

· Previous rating: 5 stars *eyerolls at her 2015 Self of Despicable Book Taste and Total Lack of Judgement*
· New rating: 20 million stars. And a half.

➽ And the moral of this rerererererereread is: Connie Willis’ amazingly clever writing + one of the most beautifully constructed tale ever + the top ranking boyfriend in my High Security Harem (aka Cyril the Bulldog) + time travel + ~~restful Victorian times~~ delightfully wacky Victorian escapades + PG Wodehouse + awesome space-time continuum incongru ...more

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Jun 04, 2007 thefourthvine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sff, queer-disinterest, favorites

Update on 6/28/2021: As we get farther in time from when this book was written, certain parts become amusing (the phrase “fax-mags” made me giggle aloud, for example), and I might not love this book as much as i read it for the first time today. But I do love it, and I’ve read it so many times that I wince at every error in the ebook. (You know you’ve read a book too many times when you’re hissing at changes in the italics.) This book has, I think, every single Connie Willis trope there is (exce ...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: humor, sci-fi, top-one-hundred, 2018-shelf

Fateful re-read 5/4/18

This is one of my all-time favorite books. From the clever phrases and deep PTSD exasperation to the total eventual collapse of the space-time continuum because of a freaking cat to THE BISHOP'S BIRD-STUMP, I find myself chortling nearly twenty years after the first read and again on the re-read.

We're catapulted through time thanks to the Oxford History Department's time machine put to the disposal of a wealthy American patron who is, let's be frank, NUTS. She's sent seemi ...more

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Jan 30, 2009 Laura rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, audiobook, time-travel

Oh, dear. Every time I see the title of this book it makes me feel anxious. I am almost ashamed to say this in public, but I will be brave: I didn't like it.

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, romance, the 19th century. Just to be sure about it I have read it twice over the years; once in traditional book format and once as an audio book. *sigh* It makes me feel defective but there you are. I didn't lik ...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, need-to-reread, time-travel, science-fiction

$2.99 Kindle sale, Dec. 11, 2018. While this offbeat time-travel novel is a sequel of sorts to Doomsday Book, they have completely different vibes, and it's not really necessary to have read Doomsday Book before this one. This is one of my favorite books in the world, but it's kind of an odd one that probably won't work for everyone. It's a little bit madcap farce, with people running and time-hopping around trying to find some obscure, ugly piece of Victorian art; it's got a bit of romantic com ...more

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May 08, 2012 Clouds rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, 5-star, locus-sci-fi, science-fiction, pub-1990s, science-fiction-series, hugo

Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.

On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.

While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and beca ...more

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Oct 18, 2021 Ms. Smartarse rated it really liked it

Recommended to Ms. Smartarse by: carol.

Shelves: sci-fi, comedy, time-travel, action-adventure, quotable, audible, audiobook

Oxford 2057, and time travel is a thing.
Lady Shrapnell is pouring all her effort into restoring the Coventry Cathedral, destroyed during a German bombing in 1940. She'll damned well requisition every single time travelling historian for the task, as long as every single original artifact gets recovered, regardless of its aesthetic and/or use.

Ned Henry is one of the unfortunate historians exhausted after several time travelling trips meant to find the Bishop's bird stump. Hoping to carve out some ...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Kim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle, all-time-favourites

Two weeks ago I'd not heard of Connie Willis or of this novel. It came into my life because I randomly clicked through to this article in The Guardian when I was looking for something completely different. Had I done my random clicking pre-Goodreads, I may well have passed on this novel, because "science-fiction fantasy" does not describe the kind of novel I generally read. But these days I'm much more adventurous, so I jumped right in.

What fun this was! It's a time travel story that (sort of) ...more

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May 05, 2009 colleen the convivial curmudgeon rated it it was ok

Recommended to colleen the convivial curmudgeon by: Goodreads Sci-Fi/ Fantasy Group

Shelves: historical-fiction, humor, sci-fi

2 1/2

I picked up this book because it was the read of the month for the Sci-fi/Fantasy group here on goodreads. Time travel tends to hurt my head, and this was no exception, but that's not what dragged it down.

Honestly, I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't like it - but I'll try.

To start with, I felt like it took a long while for the book to actually start. I guess there was too much set-up, or it was belabored too much. I didn't feel like it really got going until well into 200+ pages.

An ...more

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Jun 18, 2017 Beverly rated it it was amazing

It is a revelation, smart and funny, especially a particular mix-up about Cyril. Romance, time travel, history, this book has it all.

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Mar 16, 2012 Apatt rated it really liked it

We all like a good laugh don’t we? But for me, comedy works best in TV shows or movies. Humour in print works best in shorter formats, like cartoon strips or magazine articles. I tend to find “comic novels” (not to be confused with graphic novels) problematical. The trouble is I keep expecting to laugh at every page and that is a tall order for the authors. I don’t expect to be thrilled by every page of a thriller or to be scared by every page of a horror novel so I don’t know why I have such a ...more

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Sep 03, 2011 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2011

A most entertaining adventure where Oxford dons get to meddle with time travel and a chance for the author to exercise her wit and to pay homage to great British authors. Everything is thrown into the pot - from ancient Greek battles to the decisions that sealed the fate of Napoleon at Waterloo, from Shakespeare to Tennyson, G K Chesterton to P G Wodehouse, Victorian morals and artistic expressions, boating on the Thames or the raid that destroyed the Coventry Cathedral in World War II, Lord Pet ...more

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Nov 13, 2013 Kaethe rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dogs, beloved, art, uk, domesticity, humor, feminism, mystery, architecture, food

1998 Dec 21,
1999 May 15
1999 June 7
2004 Apr 09
2011 Nov 13
2014 Jan 10
2016 Jun 28
2020 May 15

I read it again, and I loved it. This is definitely a comfort read for me. Ah, the madcap chaos of it all. The naughty cat, the charming Cyril, the annoying people. Total love.

***
Speaking of books I love, down to every last detail, this is on the short list. The Chapter headings! The Tennyson quotes! The classism, sexism, and racism as viewed from a more enlightened viewpoint! The dog! The mystery novels of ...more

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May 06, 2018 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the second story about the Oxford Time Travel Institute. It is only loosely connected to the first, namely through Mr. Dunworthy, whom we know from book 1. And wasn't I glad about that (the first book and I didn't get along too splendidly).

It is 2057 (thus, a few years after the first book) and here, Mrs. Schrapnell, a rich and very eccentric (if not to say gaga) American lady is pouring money into rebuilding Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before the Nazi Blitz during WWII. She has This is the second story about the Oxford Time Travel Institute. It is only loosely connected to the first, namely through Mr. Dunworthy, whom we know from book 1. And wasn't I glad about that (the first book and I didn't get along too splendidly).

It is 2057 (thus, a few years after the first book) and here, Mrs. Schrapnell, a rich and very eccentric (if not to say gaga) American lady is pouring money into rebuilding Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before the Nazi Blitz during WWII. She has therefore conscripted the Oxford history department to help her and, in addition, to find the Bishop's Bird Stump, a decorational piece from Coventry Cathedral.
The problem is that she’s working everyone to death, sending the historians up and down the timeline to find the blasted thing because it was lost (not destroyed, that much they know). But even if they find it (despite not even knowing what it looks like), they cannot just bring it to the future with them because the natural laws of the time continuum prevent anything of significance from being brought from the past to the future (or getting too close to historical events of significance so no historian can mess about). Any attempt at circumventing this law results in the time traveller either being sent to the right time but a completely different place (could be just a couple of kilometers or even another continent), or to the right place but the wrong time so the traveller can't create a paradox. In extreme cases, the continuum can even correct paradoxes by changing the course of events in minor ways to keep the original outcome the same. Yes, that means that the time continuum itself is kind of like a character here.
Due to the fact that the historians are working around the clock, suffering from time lag (yes, like jet lag, only worse), mistakes are made and slowly but surely we notice that the timeline (the net) is fighting back.
Ned, one of the historians, is suffering so much from time lag that he is sent to Victorian England for recovery (out of the way of Mrs. Schrapnell) just as a colleague of his has accidentally brought a cat forwards in time, supposedly violating the afore-mentioned time continuum law, which could even lead to the Nazis finding out about the Enigma having been compromised - which could, in turn, lead to a different outcome of WWII!
But history has a way of sorting itself out so of course he is smack in the middle of the continuum problem as well as contemporary romantic entanglements. To say nothing of the dog. ;)

Connie Willis obviously loves Jerome K. Jerome's book Three Men in a Boat and has therefore incorporated the style as well as many plot elements of that book. She combines them with the style of other works, such as Agatha Christie’s and Arthur Conan Doyle’s crime novels or Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. However, she cleverly intertwines all of that with the time travel element and impresses once again with the amount of details, in this case mostly about the Victorian era.

This combination makes this book much lighter and funnier than the first. Sure, the future of humanity is at stake, but we’re laughing along with the cat, are exasperated at the sheer stupidity of Tossie, and just enjoy the romp through all the misunderstandings in general. To say nothing of the time riddle and what really has happened. A very clever plot, I have to admit. In retrospect, the signs were indeed there, if one had only known where to look.

Thus, while I was once again annoyed (especially about the fact that nobody just shut Mrs. Schrapnell into a closet, her money be damned) and although I would have wished for a bit more history (Victorian England is not as interesting to me as - for example - Ancient Rome), I enjoyed this much more than the first volume. Probably because I could actually laugh along with some of the people and liked both Princess Arjumand and Cyril (the cat and the dog) very much so I was thoroughly delighted that they played such central roles. ...more

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Sep 24, 2016 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, sci-fi-fantasy-challenge-2016

Most of this book was four stars for me but then it went and got clever. It ended up being completely brilliant and I got some excellent laughs out of it, especially the end.

Poor Ned Henry has a severe case of time lag and he's been to way too many jumble sales. He's taken nearly 15 trips back to the 1940s to find the Bishop's Bird Stump and he's having no luck. Desperate to avoid Lady Schrapnell he goes to Mr. Dunworthy who promptly sends him back to the Victorian Era to have a bit of rest. He ...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Megan Baxter rated it really liked it

This is the third Connie Willis I've read, and I was a little leery. While I really enjoyed Passage, Lincoln's Dreams was pretty much the same book, written earlier, and less well. So I was a little worried about her recycling plots. And maybe she does, but this book has very little in common with either earlier book, and was thoroughly delightful and surprising.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to thi ...more

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Jun 02, 2011 ~Geektastic~ rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2012, currently-borrowed, reviewed, sci-fi, gmc-2012, timey-wimey

4.5 stars, just to be clear.

Part time travel adventure, part comedy of manners and part mystery, To Say Nothing of the Dog is a little bit of everything I love about books.

To Say Nothing of the Dog takes its name (and much of its sensibility) from the famous novella by Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog. This choice is not incidental, but neither is it overwhelmingly important to the novel as a whole. The story is told through the eyes of Ned Henry, a time travell 4.5 stars, just to be clear.

Part time travel adventure, part comedy of manners and part mystery, To Say Nothing of the Dog is a little bit of everything I love about books.

To Say Nothing of the Dog takes its name (and much of its sensibility) from the famous novella by Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog. This choice is not incidental, but neither is it overwhelmingly important to the novel as a whole. The story is told through the eyes of Ned Henry, a time travelling historian in the not-too-distant future, as we witness his adventures into the late Victorian past. Poor Ned is overworked and just looking for a bit of a rest. His employer, the demanding and overbearing (and appropriately named) Lady Shrapnell, is looking to collect the various “treasures” that once resided in Coventry Cathedral in order to complete a restoration project, including a mysterious object known as “the bishop’s bird stump.” With no concern for the health of her staff or the laws of time, Shrapnell runs her team into the ground, and Ned into an advanced case of time-lag, the mind-muddling result of excessive time travel. Think jet lag but about 100 times worse and 1,000 times more entertaining. Prescribed two weeks of rest to recover but perpetually hounded by Lady Shrapnell, Ned is given the chance to travel back to the late Victorian countryside for a bit of R&R. However, Ned is no expert in the chosen time, so naturally hilarity ensues. Of course, time travel is never so simple as a quick jaunt into the past, so Ned must confront a tangle of time related difficulties while also trying to maneuver through the intricacies of straight-laced Victorian society.

Time travel is a notoriously difficult narrative tool to handle properly. Even the most phenomenally plotted story can collapse under the weight of disbelief a slip in mechanics can create. The key is to focus on the most important “rules” and to try to stick to them assiduously, while simultaneously avoiding the tendency to bog everything down in too much detail. Connie Willis has built a career and reputation on her ability to render time travel with just the right amount of detail and vagary to make her mechanics credible without overshadowing the plot with technical terms and excessive exposition. Granted, I’m making this statement based on this particular book and hearsay, but I stand by it. Willis’ time travel mechanics are simple, while their implications are much more complex. In Dog, the system is gradually revealed, rather than dumped on the reader first thing. This is beneficial in keeping things simple, but at the same time causes an occasional head scratching when an unexplained technical term is used. Everything is clarified in due time, however, so it’s not really any hindrance to the story.

The heart of the story isn’t really the time travelling anyway. Most of the fun comes in the form of the characters Ned meets as he stumbles and blunders his way to a not-very-successful rest. A jaunt down the Thames soon introduces Ned to a myriad of famous Victorian types, including a poetry-spouting undergrad, an eccentric professor and a stiff-upper-lipped butler, to say nothing of the dog. Luckily for Ned, he also meets a fellow time traveler, the brilliant and beautiful Verity, who guides him through the social faux-pas minefield that was Victorian England. Verity is in 1888 on a mission, and when Ned becomes entangled as well, his rest goes right out the window and the trip becomes a mad dash to save all of time while still maintaining a stiff Victorian veneer.

I really loved this book. It’s so difficult not to go on and on about every little fascinating reference to Victorian culture and literature, and every brilliant twist in the time travel narrative, but the enjoyment is in the gradual reveal of detail, so I don’t want to give anything away here. I will say that, while it’s not really necessary, you may enjoy this book even more if you read Three Men in a Boat first. Also, as much as I found to love in this book, I had some difficulty with Ned at first. As a narrator he’s well up to the task, but as a character he could have used a bit more fleshing out. We never really know what he looks like, or much about him at all, other than the fact that he is a historian and not very well versed in Victorian history. Essentially, Ned plays the straight man, observing and reflecting the comedy going on around him, so once this is accepted the story rolls along quite nicely. Now, in the finest tradition of “show, don’t tell,” we do learn that Ned is very capable and intelligent by observing his reactions and puzzle solving abilities, rather than hear him go on about himself, and I think this is what finally won me over in his favor.

If you like time travel, P.G. Wodehouse, Victorian novels or any combination of the three, this would be the book for you.

(Warning: If you have never read Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and plan on doing so, read it before picking this up. It gives the whole twist away. I know I shouldn’t be peeved about spoilers over 100 years old, but I was.)
...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Althea Ann rated it it was amazing

This book was a real stand-out for me! I picked it up after reading some good reviews, and I was pleasantly surprised to like it even better than I expected.
It's a time-travel/mystery/romance which is consistently witty and often downright hilarious. Books which are simultaneously literary and humorous are hard to come by - but here, Willis succeeds amazingly well.
In the near future, time travel has been discovered. It's being used by a wealthy society dame, Lady Schrapnell, in her well-funded p ...more

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Jan 20, 2008 Hannah Grace rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Hannah Grace by: John

Shelves: historical-fiction, 2019, 2021, 2016

This is my absolute favorite book. A perfect blend of sci-fi, historical fiction, mystery, comedy, mistaken identity and romance; this book has it all.

Its the not-too-distant future, but time-travel has been around for awhile. Oxford historian Ned Henry is trying desperately to find a hideous Victorian object, the Bishop's Bird Stump, shuttling back and forth between World War Two and the Victorian Era. Meanwhile, another historian, Verity Kindle, accidentally brings something back from the pas ...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Kim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: adventure, historical, locus-winner, book-club-scifi-and-fantasy, book-club, sci-fi, female-author, time-travel, hugo-winner, mystery

I've now read all of Connie Willis' Oxford Time Travel novels and I have to say that I found this one to be the best. The story was intriguing and funny and didn't have any of the ridiculous tension issues of the other books. No communication issues anywhere. No mistaken identities. Yes there were mysteries and things that needed to be resolved but they were handled in a way that made it enjoyable to read, not frustrating.

I look forward to seeing where she takes this series next. Highly recommen ...more

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Feb 28, 2010 Lawyer rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Lawyer by: A very good real life and goodreads friend

Shelves: locus-winner, time-travel, speculative-fiction, the-blitz, hugo-award-winner, nebula-nominee

TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, or How I stopped worrying about the space-time continuum and learned to love discontinuity

This review about a novel concerning time travel is a bit of an exercise in time travel, itself. I had gone to add a book to my to-read shelf and there sat To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis as big as life. Now that can't be right, I thought. I read this in 2010. I loved this book. I'm sure I even reviewed it. I thought. Therefore, there are no read dates I can assign to t ...more

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Jul 26, 2014 Eilonwy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: funny-and-gripping, fast-and-enjoyable

This was a fun romp -- perfect summer reading, and a nice homage to P.G. Wodehouse, whose books I've really enjoyed. There are enough twists and turns that I'll probably be just as pleasantly surprised by how the events play out in a re-read, too. ...more

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Nov 17, 2020 Wanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: female-authors, read-in-2020, public-library, reading-project, good-dog, speculative-fiction, time-travel, here-kitty-kitty

Well, that was fun. A wonderful time travel whodunnit. I forget where I read that this book was informed by Three Men in a Boat, which I read earlier this year in preparation for reading this novel. Although I didn't find Jerome K. Jerome's tale too engaging, I loved Connie Willis' version. I’m so glad I was familiar with Mr. Jerome's work, as it provided a great deal of humour. Although this novel features the same university department as Willis' Doomsday Book, it had an entirely different ton ...more

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Nov 30, 2018 Anna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018-aty-in-52-books, science-fiction, favourites, hugo-winner, favourites-in-2018, author-american

"When was the last time I’d eaten? A cup of tea and a rock cake at the Women’s Institute Victory Drive Sale of Work was all I could remember, and that was at least two days and fifty-two years ago."

This was absurd and witty and very, very funny. I’m a sucker for absurd and funny.
...more

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Dec 09, 2015 Mike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, book-club, reviewed, science-fiction, time-travel

So this was a fun little read, with elements of sci-fi time travel, a Victorian era social comedy story, and a 1930's mystery with a very light touch of romance thrown in.

In the future we have mastered the ability to travel through time... only to discover we can't actually bring anything consequential back (sorry people who want to steal the Mona Lisa fresh off da Vinci's easel) and any attempts to change key events are thwarted by the space-time continuum itself. In this way is was a bit like So this was a fun little read, with elements of sci-fi time travel, a Victorian era social comedy story, and a 1930's mystery with a very light touch of romance thrown in.

In the future we have mastered the ability to travel through time... only to discover we can't actually bring anything consequential back (sorry people who want to steal the Mona Lisa fresh off da Vinci's easel) and any attempts to change key events are thwarted by the space-time continuum itself. In this way is was a bit like Stephen King's 11/22/63, with coincidences and alteration of time jumps preserving the general thrust of history. Of course that doesn't stop us from studying the past, but there isn't much money in that especially when time travelers can't even get close to the good stuff since the continuum won't risk many changes. This, as you can imagine, leaves funds for time travel a bit difficult to get.

Of course this just makes universities and time travel organizations desperate enough to offer their talents to the super wealthy, in this case a rich American who is obsessed the Coventry Cathedral which had a major impact on the life of an ancestor of hers. She decides to spend lavishly to create a perfect reconstruction of it, down to every insignificant detail and harangues the time travel agencies to send their workers on time travel drops of every conceivable kind to get every little detail perfect.

The book opens with the main character and time travel historian Ned Henry in a bad spot, stuck on a seemingly impossible mission to determine what has happened to the Bishop's Bird Stump, a historic artifact that has yet to be located fro the reconsecration of the Coventry Cathedral. He is also suffering heavily from time-lag, a by product of too frequent time travel which affects the mind in a similar manner as extreme fatigue. He then finds himself on a bit of a misadventure as he is sent back to the Victorian era for an easy mission (which he does not remember) to meet another agent (whom he does not recall) and then spend the rest of the time relaxing.

Sufficed to say nothing goes as planned. He is still completely time lagged and has no idea what he is doing. He falls with a bunch of very colorful characters right out of a Victorian story: the matron obsessed with the spirits, a patron who loves his fish and finds spiritualism to be a bunch of hooey, the absent minded Oxford Don, the hyper efficient but constantly put upon butler, the romantic and poetry spouting undergrad who falls in love with the spoiled and pampered daughter of the aforementioned patron and matron, to say nothing of the dog. Ned and his fellow agent Verity (who he does meet up with) try to unravel all the many accidents and problems they inadvertently cause in the time line while navigating this tangled social web.

This was for the most part a really fun read. The characters were suitable absurd that I would often find myself laughing out loud at their antics. Willis does an excellent job balancing the time travel plot and the quest for the Bishop's Bird Stump with the Victorian era events that Ned and Verity end up mucking up a bit. By the end we discover the mystery behind all the tricks the continuum has been playing on the time travelers and just what happened to that wretched bird stump (a solution found using nothing but Ned's "little gray cells" as Poirot would say). I found the conclusion of the book quite satisfying with everything wrapped up nicely and logically.

While I did enjoy the book a lot I thought the beginning and ending dragged a bit. The beginning was a bit slow and then Ned gets hit with full blown time-lag so what was going on around him wasn't terribly clear. Things didn't really get going until he ends up on the Thames in the 19th century. The ending felt a bit rushed and cluttered but it did get the important points across

All in all well worth reading as the absurd characters, great writing, and time travel mystery really kept me engaged. Also, while this is the second book in the Oxford Time Travel Series, it is a stand alone book that doesn't require knowledge of the first to enjoy. ...more

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Dec 02, 2008 Lori rated it it was amazing

Ah, I was so bummed when this book was over, I would have gladly stayed with these characters for at least a month, that's how delightful they were. Even when Willis writes about the more annoying characters, it's with such bonhomie they become like irritating family members that you hope will leave soon but they are still family so you're stuck with them, and after they leave you can have a good laugh and roll your eyes at their antics. And I miss Cyril and Princess Amahajumed the most, I wish ...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Alexis Hall added it

Shelves: a-few-of-my-favourite-things, i-doff-my-hat-to-your-cleverness, delightful, sci-fi-and-or-fantasy, books-i-would-save-before-my-cat

This book is the best book.

That is all.

Okay maybe it's not all.

I don't even know how to describe it ... a ridiculously clever, ridiculously funny madcap time-travelling Victoriana-infused romp?

Profoundly Oxfordy as well - full of references and allusions that make me at once feel at one and in on a snooty private joke. Which is a feeling I kinda enjoy. Because I'm a bad person.

Also Lady Shrapnel is the best name for a villain.

...more

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Jun 22, 2021 picoas picoas rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

J.K. Jerome: "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis

I think the best value for money I've had during the pandemic was re-reading Connie Willis's “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, one of her time travelling historian novels based on the premise of historians travelling to different eras to study history. It's a comic, SF, mystery historical novel with the most convoluted, challenging and at the same time great fun and beautifully flowin ...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Corinna rated it really liked it

Recommended to Corinna by: Phil Gonzales

Many people know that Three Men in a Boat: to Say Nothing of the Dog! is probably my favorite book. What many people don't necessarily know is that I first read it because I bought a very old copy of it at a book sale, and the reason I bought it was because I had read Have Space Suit-Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein, (to whom To Say Nothing of the Dogis dedicated) in which the main character, Kip, interrupts his father as he is reading HIS favorite book, Three Men in a Boat, in which, he claims ...more

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About Connie Willis

Connie Willis

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Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.

She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Ficti ...more