Doomsday Book is brilliant, beautiful, and one of my very favourite novels. This was my third time reading it. a beloved book to fight in the battle against severe depression. It helped a lot.

Oxford medievalist Kivrin has worked hard to obtain permission to time travel back to 1320 England. She has learned Middle English and Latin, grown her hair long, studied herbal remedies, fashioned era-appropriate clothing, and received a series of vaccines that keep her safe from medieval illnesses. Nonetheless, she arrives in the Middle Ages terribly ill and near death. Her battle against dying, and then her struggle to be accepted as an upper-class woman who has lost her memory (a ruse), take up one part of the narrative. We also watch present-day Oxford, where a severe virus causes the university city to be quarantined, and where retrieving Kivrin from the long-distant past is impossible.

I love the detail of this book. Each time I've read it, I've been amazed at Connie Willis' ability to create two imaginary worlds, both of which seem vividly real. I love the characters, particularly Father Roche and young, spoiled Agnes, who clings onto Kivrin as best friend and mother-subsitute. She is a willful child, but loveable all the same. Everything is so well researched - the food, clothes, social lives, disease, religion - all of it.

So vivid are the characters that I got way too attached to them, even the third time through, when I know the fates of each of them. If you are the sort to cry at books, I recommend bringing a box of tissues for the last hundred pages of this one.

I feel somewhat healed, the result of a book where healing is much sought-after. Perfection. This book is as near to that as any novel I've ever read. ( )

3.5 stars

In Doomsday Book, we follow Kivrin, a college student historian, as she travels through time to the 14th century and faces a massive spread of disease; simultaneously, we follow the professionals in the year 2054 who sent her to the Middle Ages, and who are struggling with an outbreak of their own.

This was quite a sad read at times, and I actually cried at one point - something I rarely do! It was thought-provoking in a really good way, also: Does what we do matter, when we're all eventually going to die anyway?

A lot of "unnecessary" characters were introduced, and while I loved having a large cast of characters (it makes a story feel more realistic), there were a few people I wish had been omitted altogether (Mrs. Gaddson, for one), because they were just plain annoying and didn't add anything to the story.

There's a lot of detail about day-to-day life here, which I enjoyed, but which would probably become very tedious for anyone who's not naturally detailed-oriented, or curious about everyday life in another culture.

I was a little overwhelmed with the size of this book at first and I definitely think it could have been condensed. There's quite a lot of repetition in the first third of the book, where a sense of urgency is written into every sentence, yet nothing really happens.

I would definitely recommend this book, but only to those who enjoy history and are patient! ( )

FROM AMAZON: A thrilling trip through time to discover the things that make us most human.
For Oxford student Kivrin, traveling back to the 14th century is more than the culmination of her studies - it's the chance for a wonderful adventure. For Dunworthy, her mentor, it is cause for intense worry about the thousands of things that could go wrong. When an accident leaves Kivrin trapped in one of the deadliest eras in human history, the two find themselves in equally gripping - and oddly connected - struggles to survive.

Deftly juggling stories from the 14th and 21st centuries, Willis provides thrilling action - as well as an insightful examination of the things that connect human beings to each other. ( )

I really enjoyed the concept of time travel being a thing, but restricted to only academic historians doing field research. I was really intrigued by the dueling epidemic plots, separated by 700 years. But man, this book is unnecessarily long. It's not even that the book is particularly long, but way way way too much of the book involves characters running back and forth to telephones, they make a call, there's no answer, they try again, there's no answer, repeat ad nauseam. It was such a slog to get through nearly entire chapters of nothing happening other than Dunworthy being upset about the telephone not working. This would have been a 4 star book for me, but the constant need to narrate every single minor action a character did, that had absolutely no relevance to the plot or character development, made this drop a whole star, it was that brutal. I'm planning to read the rest of this series in my quest to read all the Hugo and Nebula winners, but man do I hope Connie Willis doesn't keep that particular habit up. ( )

Great premise, but the story fizzled for me a little more than halfway through. Will try other books in this series though, most assuredly. ( )