Where in the World Are You Now? April 2007

I thought our original thread was becoming too long, so here is a new one...

I'm still in the UK and Zanzibar still with By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnhan which is really quite excellent thus far.

I was in Washington DC with an Ethiopian immigrant in The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu, enthusiastically reviewed in last Sunday's NY Times Book Review, and am now in England, in East Anglia, with Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop.

Today I'm in a drug and alcohol rehab center in Minnesota. I've been reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

Back in New Zealand (physically and literarily) with Patricia Grace, who is my discovery of the year so far, and Baby No-eyes.

I'm hanging out with a bunch of hippies in Alaska, circa 1970, with T.C. Boyle's Drop City.

I'm traveling in time as well as place.

I just left 1990s Washington State in the U.S. Northwest with Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues.

Now I'm headed to 1880s Burma, with a stop first in London, England, via Daniel Mason's The Piano Tuner.

A common thread perhaps is that both books feature characters with a love of music, which I have myself, although that had nothing to do with why I decided to read either one!

I'm in 1930s Paris (What a great place that must have been!) with Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

I am in China with A thousand pieces of gold by Adeline Yen Mah.

I left late 80's/early 90's England behind (Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and The Salmon of Doubt.

I moved to and alternative 1930's USA where fascism came to power, specifically Vermont with sidetrips to Washington, DC, Canada and Minnesota in Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here.

I'm still in an alternative fascist 1940's USA, specifically Newark, New Jersey and Washington, DC in Philip Roth's The Plot Against America.

After war in Nigeria, there's no place like home. I'm in Western Australia: Katherine Susannah Prichard, Coonardoo. I'm on a station (a farm) in the 1920s.

I'm in upstate New York, near Buffalo with The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates (I was briefly off the coast of Scotland in a lighthouse with Margaret Elphinstone's Light but will probably return after I finish the Oates) .

I'm in England in 1900 with The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley and in Venezuela in the early 1800s with the John Lynch biography of Simon Bolivar.

I am in the mythical Colombian village of Macondo with One Hundred Years of Solitude. Pretty bizarre place, I must say.

Yesterday I was in early 19th century Australia The Secret River by Kate Grenville. Having finished that I'm now in southern Sweden with a Henning Mankell detective story

I am now unstuck in time with Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five , with sojourns to Dresden, Germany during World War II and to the planet Tralfamadore.

I'm in Burma with a ghost in amy tan's saving fish from drowning.

Well, I have thankfully now left Macondo. This morning I have been both in the Chatham Islands off of New Zealand, and then abruptly en route from England to Belgium. This is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.

Well, I'm no longer unstuck in time, but I've now been transported forward to the near future, the Republic of Gilead to be exact, which is located in what used to be the Northeastern United States of America in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

I seem to be doing more traveling through time recently, than to other physical locations.

I'm on Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, in the house of Hans Hubermann. The year is 1939.

I'm, of course, reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and loving it.

I'm in late nineteenth century Ireland in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

I'm in London....sort of...in The Opposite House by Nigerian-born Londoner Helen Oyeyemi. It's a story with parallel narratives, one is voice of the 24 year old daughter of Black Cuban immigrants to London, but who longs for a connection to her African roots. The other narrative is that of a Santeria goddess who lives in a "somewherehouse" which has two doors, one that opens to London and another to Lagos.

I suspect the two narratives will eventually come together:-)

I'm also in Australia, sort of, reading the wonderful, fabulist short fiction of Margo Lanagan in Red Spikes. Although the stories don't name Australian places, they have an Australian "feel" to them that I recognize from the other books I've read with Australian settings. Her short fiction is listed as young adult over here but I find her imagination and thoughtful writing to be ageless.

During the last few days I have been in England with two "light" but entertaining books: The second Mrs. Darcy by Elizabeth Aston(finished a couple of days ago), and Wives behaving badly by Elizabeth Buchan.
This is the only kind of reading I can afford when I am mentally stressed and I find I cannot concentrate that much.
This, of course, does not imply that they are poorly written....quite the contrary!

**Titles do not touchstone

I'm in an alternate Regency London with Point of Honour by Madeleine E. Robins.

Hong Kong: The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham (audiobook).

I am in postwar Berlin with The Good German by Joseph Kanon.

I am somewhere in Africa with a group of boy soldiers in Beasts of No Nation.

It is horrific; I want to leave. So do they.

I'm afraid I've left the planet this time. I started, on a whim, Carnival by Elizabeth Bear (an LT author!) after a discussion on another group. The idea of a "New Amazonia" by a contemporary women writer (as opposed to one from the 70's) intrigued me. We'll see how it goes, I seem to have more books going at once than is my habit.

I just left James Joyce's Ireland and ventured into Yann Martel's India in Life of Pi. So far, I have learned a lot about zoo keeping.

Thankfully I've left Africa and am now in early 1900s Nova Scotia reading Fall on Your Knees. Touchstone isn't loading ...

I am in Australia and England with The ghost writer by John Harwood.

I'm in Chairman Mao's China with Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min.

I have just gone from 1923 Wales to 1923 Germany in Richard Hughes's The Fox in the Attic.

I'm in India and Yorkshire with Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone

I am in a fantastic realm with William Goldman's The Princess Bride.

>35 aluvalibri: Then are you in Guilder? Or perhaps in the pit of despair? Or perhaps the fire swamp? My daughter had to read the book in 7th grade, how awful was that?

Not yet, Lois, I just started. So far, it is actually pretty funny, besides, I need to read something "light"....too much stress lately...I just finished The ghost writer by John Harwood. Excellent story, very creepy and 'multilayered', just like an onion!

The Princess Bride is an old favorite of mine--enjoy it! (How funny. The touchstone comes up as by Rob Reiner, with no option to change it.) I read it in high school, and then couldn't stop thinking about it in college, so dug it up on a break and read it again. A few months later, the movie came out, and I dragged all of my friends to see it. One of the few times where I've found the movie to be as enjoyable as the book.

I'm off to the banks of the Ganges with Pankaj Mishra's The Romantics.

cabegley, the screenplay was by William Goldman as well, that is perhaps why the movie was enjoyable too!

I have now departed China for the post-apartheid South Africa in The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut.

I am somewhere in rural France following the story of an orphaned young albino woman in Sylvie Germain's novel The Song of False Lovers.

I left Australia early (because I couldn't understand the narration on the I am the Messenger CD easily), and now I'm in Brooklyn, New York.

Uh! Oh! The police are pointing their guns at me! :-(

I'm reading What Goes Around Comes Around by Con Lehane.

I'm back on the planet and have started Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter...

#40 cestovatela: would be interested to hear your opinion of The Good Doctor. I read it last year and it left me with some questions.

I'm in heaven - The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Ablom. It's quite nice.

Beside being in fairyland (The Princess Bride), I also am in Asia (India, Tibet, Nepal etc. ) with The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Ted Riccardi. Quite an enjoyable reading!

To #44 - amandameale:

I finished The Good Doctor tonight on the train and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think it is a very powerful portrait of post-apartheid South Africa...and yet, I also felt something was missing. I wonder if the book suffered from the decision to use jaded, apathetic Frank as the narrator. It's as if the whole book gets bogged down in his grayness and while I intellectual recognize that this is a work with a lot to say, I couldn't actually *feel* its power.

What did you think?

I've travelled from late 1980's New England to 1950's New York to World War II Europe in Time's Arrow by Martin Amis. I was born an old man and am currently in my thirties. Here backwards flows time.

I have left 1923 Germany in Richard Hughes's The Fox in the Attic and am now with the same protagonist in 1924 Connecticut (but about to flee to Canada) in the continuation, The Wooden Shepherdess.

No touchstones this morning.

>44 amandameale: & 46 When I read The Good Doctor I also felt that something was missing. I assumed that I just didn't know enough about the situation to, as you cestovatela say, "feel its power." I also read the author's book The Quarry.

I'm now in Vietnam and back home in the United States with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Re-reading it for the first time since its initial publication in 1990.

I just left Bombay (The Space Between Us) and have now arrived in Nova Scotia Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald.

i am in pre-WWII japan with the Makioka Sisters and somewhere in the water in Africa The Descent of Woman.

I'm in Sierra Leone with a young Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone).

I was just in Sierra Leone last. It's not exactly the kind of book you enjoy, but A Long Way Gone is definitely worth reading.

I just traveled around Massachusetts, New York and Calcutta in The Namesake. I was surprisingly bored there.

I can't decide where I should go next.

#46 and 49
I'm with both of you. In some ways it was very good but (and I looked it up) in my journal I wrote down a quote from the book: "This was a story without a resolution- maybe even without a theme. I was only here at Maria's to learn again how much I didn't know and would never understand." And that, for me, summed up the book itself - in the end nothing had changed.

I'm in Scotland reading my first Iain Banks novel: The Steep approach to Garbadale.

I'm in post-war Japan right now with An Artist of the Floating World. I don't think it will be my favorite Kazuo Ishiguro but it is a very interesting portrait of generational conflict after the war.

I'm in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and San Francisco in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.

I was in Germany with The Book Thief Istanbul with Orhan Pamuk Istanbul, Memories and the City and Versailles with Chantal Thomas Farewell My Queen

Finished my Japan trip this morning. Things were a little disappointing there. By my lunch break, I was in Australia with True History of the Kelly Gang. It's pretty interesting there so far.

I've finished with Sylvie Germain's Pyrenees and Paris (rather a disappointment in the end) and am now in the midst of Alan Warner's Scotland with Morvern Callar, which is a far more enthralling (albeit somewhat appalling) read.

I've finished with Sylvie Germain's Pyrenees and Paris (rather a disappointment in the end) and am now in the midst of Alan Warner's Scotland with Morvern Callar, which is a far more enthralling (albeit, somewhat appalling) read.

I have finished The Kite Runner and have moved to the bullfights of Spain in the 1930s in Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. At first it was dull, but it is growing on me as I get farther into the book.

I have finished The Oriental casebook of Sherlock Holmes (excellent pastiche, btw) and now, from India, Ceylon, Nepal, and Tibet, I went back to London with The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

I am wandering through a desolate, destroyed post-apocalyptic America with a father and son in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. So far (a little over halfway through) it's the most somber and "ugly" book I've ever read. There is no sunshine, there are no happy moments. There has been one incredibly brutal scene, briefly described, but certainly implied. I can only imagine how Oprah's audience is finding this so far.

Do you promise we'll never eat anybody even if we're starving?

I've noticed that's a trend with Oprah's choices. I think some people think that if a book is not dark and nearly hopeless it's not literature.

I am in New York in the future and India in the past learning about malaria The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery

I left Nigeria and Biafra in Half of a Yellow Sun enlightened and melancholy, stopped in Absurdistan, but became so impatient with the droll nature of the populace, I left for Japan in Spring Snow. I'll probably be summoned back to Absurdistan this weekend because I left without a visa. ;-)

In a post-apocalyptic USA on The Road somewhere in the eastern mountains. It is rough and not a place for the weak and feeble.

#67, I read the parts of Absurdistan that appeared in the New York and was decidedly unimpressed -- let us know what you think if you go back!

I have left 1920s Connecticut (during Prohibition) and 1920s and '30s England, Germany, and Morocco in Richard Hughes's The Wooden Shepherdess and am now on a corn farm in contemporary Iowa with The Omnivore's Dilemna by Michael Pollan.

I'm in Brixton, London: Wise Children by Angela Carter.

I'm in an unnamed New England city, in the winter of 1973 in Stephen King's Roadwork, one of The Bachman Books. It's a re-read for me, about 17 years since I last read it. I didn't plan it, but I am reading this directly after The Road. After this I'll go back to the 1001 books list for some more.

I've recently departed Mozambique (Scribbling the Cat). I was pretty sorry to go.

Now I'm in Bombay with Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. It's a 500 page non-fiction tome, so I suspect I'll be there awhile.

I left Cape Bretton and am now in England with Arthur and George who are so far keeping me entertained.

I have also just landed in England with Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.

Because I'm not in the UK with Nights at the Circus..*sobs*...and must wait for another copy to arrive in my mailbox, I'm now in Russia with a brutal and strange cult of "awakened" blue-eyed, blonde people in Ice by Vladimir Solokin. I'm not normally a thriller reader but the idea of a Russian thriller intrigued me. Can't say
I like it yet, but it's weird enough to keep me reading at the moment.

I am in the made-up island of Mandragora with Emily Barton's The Testament of Yves Gundron, the Soviet Union during WWII with Vasily Grossman's A Writer at War, an organic and ecologically organized farm in Virginia with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemna, and in colonial South America with John Lynch's biography of Simon Bolivar.

I just stepped into Colfax, Louisiana in 1873 along the Red River.

I'm in 1940's New York City watching young Claude Rawlings grow to manhood becoming a virtuoso pianists and composer.

I'm leaving quickly a rather brutal and weird Russia or some of it (without finishing the book) for anywhere else! ...I think I'm headed for the Philadelphia area with Joyce Carol Oates' Black Girl White Girl...

I'm a hobbit in Middle Earth, travelling with a band of 13 dwarves and a wizard, 61 years prior to the events in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I'm, of course, reading The Hobbit. Re-reading, I should say. I first read it nearly 20 years ago.

I have been all over the world, but right now I am in Sweden in Carolyn Parkhurst's Lost and Found. It hasn't been that great so far. Her first book, The Dog's of Babel was better. I don't think she is very good at giving her characters their own voice.

PLEASE POST TO NEW MAY THREAD NOW (it's not April anymore...)

One for May already exists.

yes, I created it a day or two late but it's there:-) Anyone can do that, btw, when June rolls around:-) Whoever things of it first!

Here is a link to that May thread.