Connie Willis

 Imaginary Interviewer: What's next on the list?

Me: Oh, it's a good one. This is 'Doomsday Book', by Connie Willis. 

II: What's it about?

Me: It's a time travel book. It's set in the near future when time travel has been created but is only used for research purposes by Oxford University. Historians travel back so that they can blend in with earlier eras and report on how people lived back then. In this book, a young woman travels to England in the 1300's, a rough time to be sure. Unfortunately for her, an epidemic has hit her modern time and everything is bad. 

II: Has she written other books?

Me: Yes. Several. The first thing I read from her was the pair of books, 'Blackout' and 'All Clear', which tells of historians going to the Blitz of London. She has written short stories and other novels that also work from this same framework. 

II: Is it a series?

Me: Not really. Or, if you want to call it that, then it's a very loose series. There are recurring characters, especially the professor Dunworthy. But each piece of it reads independently. You don't need to have read earlier works. Having said that, 'Doomsday Book' is the first novel in this "series", so if you're interested, you can just look at the publishing timeline and take them in order. The novels have all won Hugo and Locus Awards. Two of the three won the Nebula awards. These are all very good works.

II: What else should we know?

Me: 'Doomsday Book' was written in the early 90's. It's set in 2050 (I think) but it isn't quite a future that is realistic to us. There are no cell phones and the internet is not around, or at least is much more limited than it would be to us. When you watch old sit-coms set in the 80's and 90's, many of the plot problems could be solved if everyone had smart-phones. This has that same limitation. So think of it as an alternate history, if that bothers you.

II: Anything else?

Me: It has wonderful humor. Not as in your face as Adams or Pratchett but subtle and continuous. I read this with a smile on my face. Having said that, the book works as a thriller. Problems mount and you'll want to see how (and if!) they are resolved. 

II: What about the author?

Me: Connie Willis is hugely acclaimed. Wikipedia says that she has won more major SF awards than any other author. This includes 11 Hugos and 7 Nebulas. She's an excellent writer. 

Kurt Vonnegut

 Imaginary Interviewer: What book are you tackling next?

Me: Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughter-house Five'.

II: Have you read this before?

Me: Yes, but only once and that was only a few years ago.

II: What did you think?

Me: Vonnegut has a wonderful writing style. A great "voice", if you will. It's easy to read one page and then another and so on. This book is a fairly quick read.

II: What should we know about him?

Me: I'd say that Vonnegut is one of the more 'literary' authors on our list. At least, he's one of the authors that most literary readers would have read. He's a science fiction writer, I guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if most bookstores had him in their general fiction category. Several of his novels were nominated for Hugo awards, including S-5, and he was put into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2015. One of his other books, 'Cat's Cradle' is also on our list.

II: What's 'Slaughter-House Five' about?

Me: At it's heart, the book is about the fire-bombing of Dresden late in World War II. Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden and lived through the ordeal. This part of S-5 is auto-biographical or at least semi-autobiographical. The whole experience was wildly traumatic and this novel is in part his way of working through that trauma. 

II: Is it an anti-war book?

Me: It's listed that way and many people have taken it that way. I think that's a reasonable take but...it's also more complicated than that. The science fiction element of the book casts it all in a strange light and I'm not sure exactly what message to take from it. I can easily say that it isn't a pro-war book, but I think treating it as a binary operation isn't quite right.

II: Do you recommend it?

Me: Yes, very much so.