Rating: 
Summary: One of the Best Books I've Read
Review: An amazing book. Essentially, it can be summed up with: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men. Gang aft agley." From the second you pick it up, you're caught up in it just as though you were the protagonist. Action. Mystery. Romance. Time-travel. Even bits of History and Culture. All of it set in a book you just can't put down. I don't know why I'd never run across Connie Willis' books before, but I'm going to get her others now. Amazing book.
Rating:
Summary: Great Fun
Review: This is one of those rare books that I just didn't want to put down. I've always liked time travel stories, so that's why I picked up the book...but the time travel turned out to be almost a side note. The book was more a mystery and comedy than I expected...and the combination was delightful. I recommend this book to anyone who needs to be cheered up, distracted, or just wants a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much confusion, otherwise a great book....
Review: I just couldn't get past some of the confusing space-time continuum parts of the book. There was too much going on, but otherwise I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: The best Connie Willis book, and one not to be missed
Review: I've read almost all of Connie Willis' books, and I enjoyed this one most (though I did like Doomsday Book, too). Actually, I rarely read fiction, but once I read this one, I couldn't avoid a Connie Willis kick.The book is extraordinarily clever, bringing the reader on the same confusing experiential journey as the novel's characters. The characters are believable and sympathetic, and the time travel aspect is skillfully used as a means of exploring certain kinds of relationships rather than merely a technological bauble. First rate; new Connie Willis readers would do well to start here.
Rating:
Summary: "in media res"
Review: We are always in the middle of things and things are always in the midst of what we do. Thomas Carlyle writing in 1829 in The Signs of the Times argued, "It is no very good symptom either of nations or individuals that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." I suspect that Connie Willis subscribes to that view. In "To Say Nothing of the Dog" her premise is how our efforts to shape the future are unlikely to succeed even when we believe that that future is known to us. For Willis advances the proposition that the future is already written and, to quote Edward Fitzgerald writing in 1859, "nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it".
This book is extremely well plotted, its style is a pastiche of the late Victorian and early Edwardian manner epitomised in Jerome K Jerome, H G Wells, Oscar Wilde and others (including an oblique nod to L. Frank Baum, I think) and its theme, while easily lending itself to profound and ponderous treatment, is handled with great humour and wit. Willis is clearly well read. She has, for example, absorbed the lessons of Shakespeare's comedies - to which she makes express reference - and takes the wranglings of the serious-minded as a foil to the romantic entanglements of young lovers. The devices of mistaken identities, over-earnest pedants and wise servants are honestly borrowed and delightfully employed.
If I were to criticise the book it would be because most of the characters do not develop much beyond our first encounter with them. For the protagonist there is an epiphany but it does not work in him the changes that, for example, the events at sea have in Hamlet in Act 5 scene 1. In dénouement there is a half-enunciated realisation that events which appeared to be acts of free will were elements of the "Grand Design" (the existence of which was grist for the mill of the pedants in the novel) much as Hamlet finally knows that "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will", but this being in classical terms a comedy and not a tragedy this realisation is not cathartic. It is followed instead by the appearance after 490 pages of the novel's equivalent of the Wizard of Oz, the sounds of a Cathedral organ and choir rising in English hymn and the journey's end in lovers' meeting.
It is an excellent and absorbing read. And if Carlyle with customary seriousness advised that, "Are the solemn temples in which the Divinity was once visibly revealed among us, crumbling away? Then we can repair them, we can rebuild them" then Shakespeare with customary humour responded (two hundred years earlier) that, "The cat will mew and dog will have his day". Read this book and you will know they were both correct. John.
Rating:
Summary: Right Dosages of Humors
Review: The book begins with action packed comedy, and it continues to the end. Connie Willis' 1999 Hugo award winner "To Say Nothing of the Dog (ISBN: 0-553-57538-4)" - a science fiction based on an intricate time travel story, is filled with other aspects of thrill filled tale - there were mysteries to solve, slight romanticisms were involved, and all of these thrilling episodes were glued with plenty of right dosages of humors. A delight for the lovers of science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: This the story, that made me laugh, that made milk shoot...
Review: ...from my nose, that the cat drank off the floor, in the house that Jack built! Wow. What a fun novel! This 1999 Hugo award winning book was a sheer joy to read. Miss Willis certainly has done her research on Victorian England. I felt like I was there. The story takes place in the very near future (between 2000 and 2100) and is told in the first person by a time-traveling reconstructionist named Ned Henry. Ned's boss, Lady Shrapnell, is ruthless in her pursuit of knowledge about a particular item known as 'The Bishop's Bird Stump.' Lady Shrapnell is rebuilding Coventry Cathedral (which was destroyed during WWII in a German bombing raid), and will stop at nothing to recreate as much of the cathedral as she can. She has EVERYONE working on this project. Even some who shouldn't be. Or maybe, some who no longer should be. Enter Ned Henry, our narrator for the novel, who is in serious need of some sleep. He has 'time-lag,' which is basically the worst jetlag you could imagine, but with some serious mental repercussions: it makes the time-traveler recite poetry and become loving of all things, as well as making the poor time-lagged individual have DDS (Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds) and a few other uproariously uncomfortable things. But Lady Shrapnell needs Ned to find this damn bird stump...so she won't let him rest. Enter Verity, a beautiful time-traveler who happens to be in Victorian England in 1888 with Ned. Does Ned fall in love with her, and she with him, or are they both just severely time-lagged? If their mental capacities aren't completely up to par, how on earth are they going to find this bird stump? What do the people of Victorian England think of these two strangers who dress like them, but don't necessarily act like them? With all its 'bolderdashes' and the like, this book pulls off some incredibly rousing comedy and I loved the ending. It wrapped everything up nicely but left you wondering 'Where do we go from here?' The book has its faults, however; which is why I gave it four stars and not five. The first sixty pages of the novel dragged for me, but after that, it picked right up and kept me interested for the most part. There were also a few times when Ned does several 'jumps' into the past (rapid successive jumps) but doesn't get time-lagged...so that seemed a bit convenient. Even so, a highly enjoyable read with lots of historical comedy and futuristic techno-babble; acceptable techno-babble. Not overly so. Pick it up and read it. It's pretty light and pretty hilarious.
Rating:
Summary: Witty and fun
Review: TSNOTD is light, engaging, and funny, and not too heavy on the science fiction stuff. It's much more about the characters, with some interesting historical speculation and really well-handled concepts (like "time-lag") thrown in. Willis has a Douglas Adams-like sense of imagination and playfulness (the characters are looking for something called the bishop's bird stump while trying to save the universe) and a knack for juggling multiple characters, story lines and historical periods. Like a good mystery writer, she includes enough clues to keep us simultaneously guessing and thinking we have it all figured out. Willis skillfully weaves together time travel, World War II, a love story, tons of literary allusions, a fair amount of history and a Victorian comedy of manners. She does an excellent job of tying up all the loose ends, some of them in surprising ways. I especially like the way she portrays a world 50 years in the future. Rather than having everyone flying around in hover cars, she uses subtle differences in language and living (cats are extinct, videos are "vids" and a handyman nonchalantly asks a bystander to "hand me that laser") to convey the changes. This was a fast read, a romp of a book and very entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding book
Review: This book was hands-down my favorite read of the year. I found it every bit as delightful and as enjoyable as "Confederacy of Dunces" a book which, if you have not read it, you must. "To Say Nothing..." was light, easy to read and laugh-out-loud funny. HOWEVER, I have recommended this book to a number of my friends and have gotten mixed reviews. Some said it was hard to get in to which it is. You have to be willing to plow through the first few chapters which can be a bit confusing/fantastical. Afterwards I was unable to put it down. While I happened to REALLY enjoy this book, I think it requires a certain mindset. You have to A) enjoy Science-Fiction, and B) be looking for a light-hearted group of characters who can border on being stereo-types of the Victorian era. All in all I recommend this book highly if you fit the aforementioned mindsets, otherwise, borrow it from your friend. :-)
Rating:
Summary: Most enjoyable
Review: This is one of the most fun sci fi/fantasy/mystery/whatever books to be written in a long time. Ms. Willis' humor is constantly present, without turning into a farce. Fans of Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night will also get a good chuckle at a science fiction book that seems so familiar.
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