To those of you who might have spared me, thanks for taking the time, sorry I was too stupid to take advantage of your efforts. I read the reviews on this book AFTER slogging through this bloated pig of a book and found they were much more interesting and better written than the book itself. I mean really - this book is in the rarefied company of truly stellar sci-fi like Ender's Game, Left Hand of Darkness, and Dune. But no - I stupidly assumed a book that won both Nebula and Hugo awards had to be good if not great. In the case of Doomsday Book there are MANY negative reviews so even though Audible doesn't make critical reviews easy to find, it would not have been hard with this book.

I usually read many of a book's reviews before buying and I look especially for the more critical reviews since they tend to tell me more of what I want to know. I hated the Doomsday Book and I totally hated that I could have been spared this 26 hour agony had I only done what I almost always do - READ THE REVIEWS. After you've thoroughly enjoyed all of these amazing books. There- I've just come up with a great plan for your next 50 or hours of Audible listening. That other book is also available on Audible :'To Say Nothing of the Dog' Listen to 'Doomsday' first, save 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' to cheer you up and you can then finish off with Jerome K Jerome's sweetly funny 'Three Men in a Boat'. 2) 'Doomsday won a Hugo Award in 93 and Nebula Award in 92 and 3) Connie Willis has written another book with some of the same characters that is much lighter in tone yet still very worth reading and a good way to recover from the terrible, searing beauty of 'The Doomsday Book'. Three more selling points for this great book: 1) I love a good, long book from Audible and 'Doomsday' is a wonderful 26 hours and 30 minuets of listening to one of my favorite narrators, Jenny Sterlin. The characters and setting are beautifully written and this is one of the most moving books I've ever had the pleasure of reading or listening to.

The book was written in 1992 and much of the action takes place in a squalid, medieval village and yet it is all terribly timely. Meanwhile, current day Oxfordshire is also suffering from an especially virulent flu and attendant quarantine. It is an amazing, satisfying, beautiful and terrible story mostly about a time traveler who is trapped in a small medieval village that is stricken by the plague. Now more than ever, I am recommending that everyone I know listen to this book.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis