
I'm in Czechoslovakia in 1929 inside
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.
And in real life it's 6.16 am on the first day of spring!
Spring?? But we didn't even have a winter! *wail*
I'm toggling between drifting down the Mississippi with
Huckleberry Finn and boating down the river in Oxford in
To Say Nothing of the Dog.
You know, I only just picked up the parallels. *slaps forehead*
Iʻll be leaving the San Francisco of 1942 (Brautiganʻs
Dreaming of Babylon to go back to the "ancient" world -- notably the city of Rome and the adjoining countryside with
Ovidʻs
Fasti, which Iʻm doing a verse translation of.
Having just finished having Amazing Adventures with
Kavalier and Clay in New York City, I'm returning to the sedate meditations of
Gilead Iowa.
Message edited by its author, Sep 1, 2009, 12:09pm.
Río Fugitivo, Bolivia watching the struggles over globalization and cryptography play out in
Turing's Delirium.
In Israel with
The Nimrod Flipout by
Etgar Keret.
A curious collection of very short tales many of which have weird perspectives and twists yet are rooted in our common modern day experience.
Message edited by its author, Sep 1, 2009, 12:36pm.
>4. I have
Moldavian Pimp but have not yet read it.
what did you think?
#7
Ooh, Etgar Keret is my favorite writer - hope you're liking
Nimrod!!
I'm in Sweden, trying to figure out who killed
The Ice Princess.
Stupid touchstones!
Message edited by its author, Sep 1, 2009, 4:26pm.
I am still in an apartment building in modern day Bombay, and Vishnu is still dying, and the people have run amok.
Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri.
6> Carlos, how are you finding Turing's Delirium? It sounds kind of intriguing...
I've just escaped from Borges's
Labyrinths (including a fantastic essay on what it means to be an Argentine writer) which have taken me all over the world and back, and have been spending some time in Desperance, in the Gulf of
Carpentaria.
Although I have taken excursions to Iceland and the far future, I have returned to continue in New York with Oates's grand gothic tale,
Mysteries of Winterthurn.
>9
I'm in Sweden too, reading
The Girl Who Played with Fire, although so far Lisbeth has taken a holiday to the Caribbean which sounded beautiful - apart from hurricane Matilda striking
#14
Hope you're liking it! The last book is a doozy too!
>9
yes Etgar Keret is a "blast". very different, unique, funny, refreshing. I am thoroughly enjoying his writing.
Back in England after many months, outside London, 17th century, in
Instance of the Fingerpost, yet to figure out what a Fingerpost is.
I am now in England in 1826 with illegal anatomists and body snatchers in
The resurrectionist by James Bradley.
#11
Liz, I'm liking it quite a bit. I've seen it labelled a "thriller," but I think that's a bit off since it doesn't strike me as particularly plot-driven. I think it's a little bit like latter-day William Gibson with a contemporary setting, a cast of interesting characters, a little dose of paranoia and an awareness of the way evolving technology can shift the balance of power between governments, corporations and individuals. Some of it's stylistic touches (such as the use of first-, second- and third-person narrators) strike me as a little unnecessary, but not so much so as to detract from the story.
I'm currently out of this world, wandering in the land of Pegana via the anthology
Short Works of Lord Dunsany. Dunsany was an Irish writer (c. early 1900s) who was quite influential on other writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and the like, as well as on various modern writers and filmmakers.
I've spending time again with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I want to be her when I grow up.
#23
You're going to love her in the last book - she kicks some serious booty! My boyfriend keeps trying to bribe me to read it out loud to him, translating as I go, but that's not going to happen! :)
I'm in Mozambique, hearing the voices of a family in
Ancestor Stones.
#5 - I have got to read Gilead! I've heard so many good things about it, and then I forget it. Another one to add to my toread list . . .
#24
I actually just recently read the second book, and loved it so much, that I went back to read the first one again - just in case, I missed something. Can't wait for the third, but I'm chagrined that it will be the last. I just tagged your library - you have some great Scandanavian titles that I want to check into.
Repost from the August thread (where did summer go???)
It's the the early 1800's, and I'm aboard a boat in the Arctic Sea, seeking the Northeast passage. We plucked a man more dead than alive off a passing ice flow. After several weeks aboard, he's recovered enough to tell us his name and Viktor
Frankenstein is about to tell his story.
#26
Yeah, it's sad he died so early - he was a good guy that did a lot of good work. Also sad that he never got to see his novels published and know that they are so popular.
Message edited by its author, Sep 3, 2009, 2:01pm.
I'm in Suffolk County, England and in my journal
I Capture the Castle where my family is living in poverty.
Message edited by its author, Sep 3, 2009, 2:05pm.
I am in England in the future with
Keith Brooke's
The Accord. At least at the time when I am not in the virtual reality which seems also to represent England so far):)
I'm undergoing
A Change in Altitude while climbing Mt. Kenya in Anita Shreve's upcoming novel. Shreve evokes a real feeling of the climb, and when I'm finished I'm looking forward to re-reading Michael Crichton's excellent essay "Kilimanjaro" in his collection,
Travels.
Message edited by its author, Sep 4, 2009, 9:15am.
I was just in 10 European cities in Decapolis: Tales from Ten Cities. Ten tales set in ten cities by ten different, mostly youngish international authors. I liked some better than others, of course.
avaland,
This sounds interesting. Which are the cities?
"In" Winnipeg, briefly Ottawa, and rural Ontario, with John Craigʻs In Council Rooms Apart (1971).
A very neglected novel, it would seem, but I donʻt see much Canadian writing.
Could it have taken place anywhere? Well, yes -- in any Allied country of WW II.
It takes place about a quarter century after WW II, when the war is not yet firmly "history" -in the strict or the popular sense of the word -- and is no longer just "old current events". without giving away the main point, it is about a revisionist view of one crucial point in the history of the war.
Message edited by its author, Sep 5, 2009, 1:11am.
I couldnʻt find the above (Craigʻs i C R A) under LTʻs "Search" by title, and I wouldnʻttry to look up a "John Craig" --anticipating saturation.
Been a busy traveller as an
Avenger. Spent some time in Bosnia before returning to New York. Quick trips to Panama and the United Arab Emirates have also featured and I don't think I've stopped there.
I've been in Czechoslovakia, Vienna, Switzerland, Cuba, and Massachusetts with
The Glass Room.
I'm still floating down
Thames: Sacred River with Peter Ackroyd. It's been a slow, meandering, but very pleasant journey.
Yesterday, I was in Vermont (US) with Jeffrey Lent's
A Peculiar Grace. Now I'm trying to decide where to do next...
>19 Thanks eairo. Especially needed the wiki link since I gave up on Fingerpost at page 120 or so - too meandering with religious debates for me.
Now I am back in the US in NYC reading about Seymour in
Raise High the Roofbeams Carpenters.
Right now I'm in Enniscorthy near Dublin but about to embark on a journey to live in
Brooklyn (Colm Toibin's newest).
I'm in New York with Tess Chaykin, trying to solve the mistery of
The Last Templar.
Having left the Canada of John Craig ( In Council Rooms Apart --#35), I am in a rather mundane Manhattan of some time in the 2nd half of the 20th c. with Rex Stoutʻs Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. (Copyright 1985, but the setting of the bookʻs 3 short novels is no doubt somewhat earlier.)
A very different New York from todayʻs, I suppose (I havenʻt seen NYC since the 1970s), but youʻre not so aware, in reading, of the ambience; the plot overrides that.
The State Library System has this book only in audio- not in book-form, so I may donate it when finished. (
Death Times Three, 1985. )
#50, rolandperkins, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels were written from the 30s through the 70s;
Death Times Three was published posthumously.
Hi rebecca nyc,
Thanks; I couldnʻt find individual dates of publication for the 3 items in Death Ties Three
I knew he first published a novel some time in the 1930s, at age about 40.
Right now I am alternating between Van Diemen's Island (Tasmania) and London, England in Richard Flanagan's
Wanting.
I am marching across Syria sometime BCE in the "baggage" of Cyrus'
The Lost ArmyI'm in rural China (ca. 1920s) with
Women of the Silk. hemlok, bring that couch by so I can have a rest!
Still in Portugal.
Pereira left and I moved from his small but respectable afternoon newspaper's editing office to the local population register to learn
All the Names.
I think I'm somewhere in Europe, with it's prehistoric forests, but as it's never explicitely said, it's a bit hard to guess. Still it's the only place I can think of that has forests and where both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived, as is the case in
The Inheritors by William Golding.
I am in Modern day China. Was in Beijing and now have gone to some mountain some where with
Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost.
I'm now in Israel, with
Look for Me, the second part in Edeet Ravel's Tel Aviv trilogy. I'm very happy, because I have found a new favorite author!!
I am now in Ethiopia in the 1950's in Cutting for Stone by Abraham Vewrghese.
Cambridge, England with Jackson Brodie and the Land sisters and Binky Rain (all wonderful characters) in
Case HistoriesI’m in the middle-east groping my way because I’m in
Baghdad Without a Map(and Other Misadventures) by
Tony HorwitzI’m also in a isolated mountain village the year is 1666 while the plague is spreading in a
Year of Wonders a Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks
Message edited by its author, Sep 11, 2009, 9:28am.
I'm in Iceland watching The Draining Lake with Arnaldur Indridason's detectives.
I'm in Belgium just starting
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald and will be traveling after that to Tokyo for Gail Tsukiyama's The Street of a Thousand Flowers.
Am in another Dakkar, in Senegal, with
Xala.
I am in Sitka, Alaska with The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon.
I have given up on being in the "Western Desert" (Libya/Tunisia?) of the WW II Era, having read just a little of Pressburgʻs The Killing of Rommel.
I am moving to Arkansas (an unnamed big city -- Little Rock(?) ), with
Grif Stockleyʻs
Religious Conviction. A lot of it is Arkansan, a lot more is things that could have happened in the Legal ambience of any city.
I am in 1916 Mexico with an aging cavalryman and an expedition of inexperienced horse soldiers on patrol for the elusive Pancho Villa in
Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead. This is my first Olmstead novel and so far I am really enjoying it.
#82> OMG how many have been to Sweden via The Girl Who Played with Fire ? LOL
I know, it's quite the popular one at the moment! I'm reading it because the third in the series is coming out RSN (next month, I think) and because my workmate wants to discuss it finally (she read it some months ago now).
I'm in the Czech Republic - well, it was still Czechoslovakia at the time - reading Mawer's
The Glass Room.
I am in Foxborough, Massachusetts near past and present with the New England Patriots, and the non-fiction
Then Belichick Said to Brady by Jim Donaldson.
In Atlanta, Georgia, USA with
Genesis by Karin Slaughter.
I'm in Portugal discovering
The Sin of Father Amaro.
I just found this group and realized that I'm actually currently reading from this month's theme nation. :)
I've found myself just outside Peking (as it was) with Teilhard de Chardin and a team of scientists looking for Peking Man among dragon's bones in
The Jesuit and the Skull.
In England in the midst of a modern war --
How I Live Now by Med Rosoff.
Really thought-provoking.
I am currently in Moscow, Russia just breaking well into
War and Peace. Amazing how much it reminds me of his Anna Karinina.
belva
I am in Cameroon with Susana Herrera watching Mango Elephants in the Sun.
Message edited by its author, Sep 20, 2009, 9:06pm.
I am in Leningrade during the Nazis’ brutal siege. I’m in jail for looting a dead Nazi’s pilot , my cell mate is such Kolya , he has been charged of desertion; but we will not executed , if we find a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake; all this in
City of Thieves by David Benioff the same who wrote
The 25th HourMessage edited by its author, Sep 22, 2009, 3:50am.
I am still messing about with
Three Men in a Boat on the Thames and about to
Kiss the Girls Goodbye in London.
I am also at
War and Peace in Russia and will be for the rest of 2009.
About to engage with The Cobra's Heart in East Africa.
Message edited by its author, Sep 21, 2009, 6:24pm.
I am in Kyoto, Japan with
Geisha a non-fiction, by Liza Dalby.
I am bouncing back and forth between Russia with
War and Peace and Transylvania with the Count in
Dracula.
belva
I have been jumping around Africa suffering enormously with the new Oprah pick (while I usually don't jump at her pic, the boyfriend is Nigerian, and this author is Nigerian, so had to get it!) with
Say You're One of Them. It was quite depressing. I am now moving to Algeria with
Women of Algiers in their Apartment.
In Portugal (I think). I'm hanging out with death, but there are interruptions.
Death with Interruptions by José Saramago
In Spain, going to The South, or
El Sur seguido de Bene, from Barcelona (and not Madrid as I earlier thought in #120).
Message edited by its author, Sep 25, 2009, 6:22am.
I’m in Jerusalem getting ready to follow Marco Polo's footsteps . So I guess in a week , more or less, I will be
In Xanadu a Quest by
William DalrympleMessage edited by its author, Sep 25, 2009, 8:51am.
Well, I started out in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris, France (in which hangs
Foucault's Pendulum) but am now hanging out in Pilade's talking about Templars--as well as cretins, fools, morons and lunatics.
>132
Cretins, moron and lunatics - I do so love Umberto Eco.
In Montreal, reading a very interesting story based in another region of the world!
The Lost I, by Choghig Kazandjian
(highly recommend it to anyone looking for something to read)
Message edited by its author, Sep 27, 2009, 9:52am.
I am pondering the terrors of WW I and the grip of morphine in a trench in Somme, France, 1916 with "Three Day Road" by Joseph Boydon.
Slightly distracted from
A Confederacy of Dunces, I'm now visiting The Hundred, a spooky old collapsing mansion in England, with Sarah Waters'
The Little Stranger.
Getting in on the October theme reading a bit early!
148--Same here, after having just left the
"spooky old collapsing mansion in England, with Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger" mentioned by wookiebender.
Message edited by its author, Sep 29, 2009, 10:13pm.
Russia - W & P
Germany -
Mary by Vladimir Nabokov.
I've just left an unnamed, collapsing city hit by an epidemic Blindness (José Saramago). I enjoyed it a lot more than my previous (and first) read by him, The Cave.
Now I have just arrived in Rio de Janeiro with
Colombines kyss (Original title: Um Beijo De Colombina, Eng.
Columbine's Kiss, not yet published) by
Adriana Lisboa, who by the way has been given the Saramago Award. I'm also spending some time in Elizabethan Britain listening to
Orlando by
Virginia Woolf. I've understood I am to remain there for a few hundred years.
Edit: Typo and attempting to fix touchstones.Message edited by its author, Oct 1, 2009, 11:07am.
I'm in New England celebrating Banned Book Week with Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Sweden with Karin Alvtegen in
ShadowThis message has been deleted by its author.
for
A Hundred and One Days A Baghdad Journal
I will be other there writing it
Message edited by its author, Oct 5, 2009, 4:01am.
I am in a Welsh country village in the 50's in The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan.
This message has been deleted by its author.
I'm sneaking around the back streets of Milan with a left-leaning British spy looking for
A Cause for Alarm.
The year's going too quickly!
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