#doomsday book

[yourstrulyanndy]

Every single K.J Charles book I have ever read has had the vibe of putting 2 cats in a room together until they become inseparable or kill each other.

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

In honor of getting my Blackout and All Clear copies early, which one is your favorite Oxford Time Travel Book ?

Doomsday Book

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Blackout / All Clear

I can't pick just one

I haven't read any of them but I may one day

I don't want to vote because I've only read one/two of them*

I'm not planning to read them

Show results

Voting ended onMay 9

*not a problem for me but anyway I don't vote significantly on my polls and you do you

[cultivating-wildflowers]

okay, I just saw your tags in the post about what you’re currently reading, and you’re reading the Doomsday Book by Connie Willis?!? I started listening to it on audiobook last fall because I dearly love her book To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I never finished Doomsday Book because I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would? I was frequently frustrated by plot things and the depiction of the medieval characters. But I always intended to pick it back up again and finish it, and I really WANTED to like it (because To Say Nothing of the Dog is one of my top ten favorite books).

I’d love to hear your thoughts and feelings on the Doomsday Book if you’d like to share! Have you been enjoying it? Are you a Connie Willis fan? How did you get into reading the Doomsday Book?

Cheers, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi!! I am currently reading Doomsday Book. To answer your last question first, I was browsing Connie Willis's books after @distance-does-not-matter started virtually (and possibly literally) flailing over Crosstalk. I wasn't aware of Connie Willis before that. Crosstalk is now on my list, but Doomsday Book better suited my current reading mood, so I grabbed the audiobook. (Which is narrated by Jenny Sterlin, whom I know from the Howl's Moving Castle audiobooks.) To Say Nothing of the Dog was a title I recognized, though I've no idea why, and people seem to prefer it over Doomsday Book, so depending on how this read goes I'll probably add it to my list as well.

I have a feeling this book, or at least the 2054 pandemic plotline, probably would have gone down differently pre-2020 (and I realize this is a common thread in newer reviews). That part definitely frustrated me, not least because I expected this story to be about Kivrin and time travel, not catastrophizing over the flu and acting like healthy people are morally superior. However, I just passed the 20% mark and am into "book two", which seems more focused on Kivrin, so we'll see how my opinion changes as I go on.

Overall I've found the characters charmingly human (but don't ask me to spell any of their names), including Dunworthy and his anti-medieval prejudices. A lot of the negative attitudes toward medieval people seem to be based in Dunworthy's own fearful exaggerations and modern biases against the medieval period, though I definitely rolled my eyes over the "average lifespan of a medieval person was 38 years" bit. That said, I've only just learned the names of some of those medieval people, so I don't know how the narrative will treat them moving forward.

And now I've lost track of where I was going with this early review 😅 To summarize, I am enjoying it so far, even if I've rolled my eyes a few times, so unless something really absurd happens I'll probably finish it.

And Happy Thanksgiving to you as well!

[tales-from-the-abbey]

Father Roche.

That's it, that's the post

[whisperofthewaves]

reading a scifi book set in 2054, written in 1992, but mentioning "the Pandemic" is so damn weird.

[katereads]

Doomsday Book is the only plague novel I’ve been able to read since 2020.

But also, it was published in 1992. There’s a toilet paper shortage and no one wants to wear their face masks. There has been a global pandemic at some undefined point in the past (the book takes place sometime around 2050).

I guess what I’m saying is, Connie Willis time traveler?

[clonerightsagenda]

One of Doomsday Book's central themes is "why does God seem to abandon us in times of crisis" and one of the answers it posits is "maybe God is having IT problems"

[tam--lin]

I can't tell if it's me aging or the state of the world or changing careers or possibly some combination of all of them, but even just thinking about Doomsday Book nowadays makes me want to cry nowadays