Reading Questions for Wednesday

Reading questions for Wednesday. Please write down your responses. 

1) An important aspect of Willis' novel is the way in which she tackles history. Often when we read history, it becomes a bunch of boring facts and statistics. Throughout the book, Kivrin's intensive preparation for the time period rubs up against the realities of the time, things that she did not anticipate.What does Connie Willis reveal to us about the inadequacies of studying history?

2) Why is it important that you, as a reader, must switch back and forth between the 1300s and the imagined future? What is the effect of reading both of these timelines? 

3) The Domesday book is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states:

While spending the Christmas time of 1085 in Gloucester, William had deep speech with his counsellors and sent men all over England to each shire to find out what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock and what it was worth.

It was written in Medieval Latin, was highly abbreviated, and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents.^[3] The survey's main purpose was to determine what taxes had been owed during the reign of KingEdward the Confessor.

The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians and historical economists. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land (sometimes termed the "Modern Domesday")^[7] which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the British Isles.^[8]

Why do you think Connie Willis chose to name her book Doomsday Book?

4) What unites people from the ancient past and the present? What unites us with the humans who have come before us?