So next in my Connie Willis series was To Say Nothing of the Dog, another time travel book, though only loosely related, so you could read this without having read Doomsday Book and be totally fine, though I think reading them consecutively really allows one to see the themes that connect both stories (and that also run through Blackout and All Clear, her subsequent time travel books, which I'm reading presently).
But to say nothing more of these extraneous details, I'll return to the book at hand, which is by far the most light-hearted of Willis's time travel books. Set mainly in upper class Victorian England, this book is part comedy of manners, part romance, and a big part mystery. I hadn't really thought of it as a mystery book until this time around, when it really hit me that the whole story is one big whodunnit: what happened to the Bishop's Bird Stump, and when, and how, and why? Our intrepid time travelers have been assigned to find out, and as they work frantically to track this hideous Victorian artifact through history, they also have some hilarious misadventures along the way involving cats and dogs, butlers and boats, and the side effects of too much time traveling (extreme sentimentality).
The title references Jerome K. Jerome's delightful Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and for those who have read that book, its influence is clear. For those of you who haven't read it, I highly recommend it, as well as To Say Nothing of the Dog, which manages to be both funny and thought-provoking.
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