Woman, Be Happier!

Time travel to Victorian times, subtle humor, a gentle love story, a cat that is crucial to the fate of the universe, an overbearing busybody, homage to a great comic writer with a rowboat trip down the Thames, a search through time for a mysterious object called “the Bishop’s bird stump,” and a happy ending–how could you fail to be charmed by this book?

Say What, Again?

Oxford history student Ned Henry is time-lagged from traveling repeatedly between 2057 and 1940 to try to locate an object called the Bishop’s bird stump in order to placate Lady Schrapnell, who is restoring the bomb-destroyed Coventry Cathedral, and will endow the Oxford time-travel program in exchange for the historians’ help with her restoration project. In order to escape her demands and get the necessary two weeks of rest that he needs to recuperate, Ned agrees to travel to 1888 and return something that fellow student Verity Kindle brought to the future, inadvertently changing the course of history. After delivering this object, Ned will be free to relax for two weeks. In his confusion and exhaustion, he is not entirely clear about the object he is supposed to return. A comedy of errors ensues, in the course of which Ned falls in love with Verity and manages to set things right, and even finds the Bishop’s bird stump at last.

I Couldn’t Stop Laughing

Connie Willis has the kind of sense of humor that sneaks up on you, so that you read a passage, and several seconds later you burst out laughing. In this zany book, she has also put in outright slapstick comedy, such as when Our Hero, having never seen a cat, attempts unsuccessfully to catch one. The story is a lighthearted mix of genres that masks a serious plot, that will keep you absorbed, make you laugh, and leave you satisfied at the end.

There are two other books by Connie Willis related to Oxford time travelers from the same futuristic era, and they are both wonderful books that are impossible to put down, but be warned that they deal with tragic events and do not have the lighthearted silliness of To Say Nothing But the Dog. One, Doomsday Book, takes place during the Black Death of 1348, and the other, Blackout, during the bombing of England in World War II, and I love them dearly, but they will make you cry. Stick with this one for a book that will make you feel good from the first page to the last.