Title: The Doomsday Book
Author: Connie Willis
Category: Science-Fiction
Publisher: Random House, August 1993
Starred Review: 4 out of 5 stars
I’ve been reading a lot of Connie Willis lately. I guess maybe I’ve finally found a science-fiction author I love. Took a while, ha. Anyway, this book is usually slated to be Willis’s best, and given that it lives in the same universe as Blackout and All Clear, I knew I had to read it.
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Title: All Clear
Author: Connie Willis
Category: Science-Fiction, Time Travel, Historical Fiction
Publisher: October 2010
Starred Review: 5 out of 5 stars
All Clear is the second half of Connie Willis’s latest time travel historians novel. The first, Blackout, came out in February and I reviewed it earlier. Here’s the amazing plot in a nutshell: Historians in the year 2060 study history by time travel. Three historians travel at the same time to various places in the UK during World War II. One to London during the Blitz, one to the evacuation of Dunkirk, and one to study children evacuees in the country. It soon becomes apparent that they are stuck in WWII England, and Blackout ended abruptly with this panic of not being able to get back to 2060. All Clear picks up there — how can they get back to 2060, can they get back to 2060, and what happens if they can’t?
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Title: Passage
Author: Connie Willis
Category: Science-Fiction
Publisher: Random House, January 2002
Starred Review: 5 out of 5
This book is brilliant. Seriously. Brilliant.
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Have you ever started reading a book only to be unexpectedly engrossed with it? I’m not talking about a book you know you’ll want to keep reading. Of course there are times with Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or a new sequel I can’t wait to get my hands on when I rush through it and hate the time I spend away from it.
What I’m talking about here is picking up a book that looks interesting, or a book that someone recommended, or a book by an author you enjoyed but weren’t completely crazy with. So you pick up this book you know very little about, maybe it’s not even in a genre you usually gobble up, and then — it hits you. You don’t want to put this book down. No, seriously, the thought of putting the book down makes you nervous, sick, crazy!
It doesn’t happen to me very often. Like I said above, usually the idea that I don’t want to put a book down comes because I know I’ll like the book. Then I get disappointed when I don’t get as into it as I anticipated. (Example: With Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay, the third in the Hunger Games series, I probably could have left the book unfinished and feel okay with it.)
I’m currently reading Passage, by Connie Willis. I’ve only ever read one of her books, Blackout, before. I knew I liked that one, and I knew her other books were similar, but they are all in that dreaded science-fiction genre that is more often a miss for me than a hit. As I’ve said before, I can’t stomach excessive description or the overuse of world-building, and science was never my strong suit so anything overly scientific can’t hold my interest.
But Passage is surprising me. I don’t want to put it down. My 25 minute subway commute each way is not long enough. I have a feeling that tonight the TV will not go one (excepting for “The Big Bang Theory”) so that I can keep reading. It’s 800 pages long, which should terrify me, but I’m amazed at how quickly I’m working through it.
Hi, my name is Sarah! My blog title tells you everything you need to know -- I am a writer, reader, & dreamer.
I hold an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. I spent several years as a Children's and YA bookseller with Barnes & Noble, and a year as Director of Youth at my church. Right now, I work as a Web Publicist for a major publishing house.
I'm originally from Pittsburgh, PA, but I currently live in NYC with a great roommate and my darling cat, a tortie named Lola. I'm an avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan, love London, traveling, social media, reading, and cooking.
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