Where In The World Are You Now? - December 2010

I am in Provence trying to Deliver Us From Evil and also in Cuba with Cecilia Valdes.

I'm a-Viking around Iceland, Greenland, Norway and Newfoundland with Ice-Shirt by William T. Vollmann. It is very very cold.

Just moving to what is now Albany, Western Australia, to learn a Noongar perspective on first contact with Europeans in Kim Chance's That Dead Man Dance.

Strangely, I'm in the US with Sourland:Stories by Joyce Carol Oates. I'm also reading poetry by Romanian poet Nina Cassian.

I'll be in Israel for a while this month with Eshkol Nevo's interesting World Cup Wishes and just starting Grossman's To the End of the Land. Also taking short breaks in Sicily with Camilleri's The Patience of the Spider.

I visited Afghanistan yesterday with The Patience Stone and today I'm in Ireland watching The Wild Geese.

At the moment I'm visiting Chicago with Stuart Dybeks' I Sailed With Magellan. It's a pity there isn't a german translation of this book - somehow it would feel perfectly right to read out the story "The Blue Boy" to my family at Christmas. It made me think of my father, who will be missing at the table for the second time now.

Am in New York with Let the great world spin. It's growing on me, having left me cold for the first 100 pages.

Still in Cuba with Cecilia Valdes, but now also in Alabama learning about an Anthill.

Currently reading Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi.

And just got off the streets of Chicago, Ill. with Harry Dresden in Storm front by Jim Butcher.

I've finally left the Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder, the region between eastern Poland and western Russia where, conservatively (conservatively!). and estimated 14 million people who were deliberately murdered in the 1933-1945+ period.

I'm still in the English town of Middlemarch, courtesy of George Eliot.

I'm also in New York, spending much of my time in a wonderful, vintage coffeehouse thanks to Cleo Coyle's Latte Trouble.

I am in Ireland with An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor.

I am in Ireland with An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor.

I'm in the middle of a murder trial in Upper Peninsula, Michigan (U.S.) in Anatomy of a Murder.

>16 rocketjk: Hope you enjoy your visit to the UP. It's where I grew up. Incidentally, my first pet dog when I was a kid was bought by my parents from the bartender who was later murdered in the true case that Anatomy of a Murder was based on. (My only brush with fame, or in this case, infamy).

#17> Thanks, jpyvr. What an interesting tidbit, there! I'm enjoying the book quite a bit. Is the UP still anywhere near as beautiful as described in the book?

>18 rocketjk: The UP is stunningly beautiful, summer or winter. But the winter's are horrendously long. Long and cold and snowy and did I say long?

I am still in upstate New York with JCO, but also in Argentina with Silvina Ocampo's The Topless Tower—but the boy in the story has slipped into a fantasy world.

I am in A Novel Bookstore in Paris and other parts of France. And I have now left it!

I am in post WWII England catching The Flight of the Maidens, and also in New York City getting to know Miss Lonelyhearts.

I have sadly left Captain Pantoja and the Special Service in Peru's Amazon, although Captain Pantoja himself is now it the cold heights of Lake Titicaca..

I'm now in Lickin Creek, PA - near Amish country courtesy of Death, Snow, and Mistletoe by Valerie s. Malmont.

I'm now in Lickin Creek, PA - near Amish country courtesy of Death, Snow, and Mistletoe by Valerie s. Malmont.

Still in post WWII England with Flight of the Maidens, but now somewhere in the Middle East with Adam & Eve.

In Zimbabwe, reading letters to Zenzele, who is somewhere else.

I'm at the beginning of the war in Bosnia in 1992 with Sista kulan sparar jag at grannen (The Last Bullet I'm Saving for the Neighbor). So far a really scary look at how war can turn friends into each other's worst enemy.

I'm in Stowe, Vt., courtesy of The Christmas Thief by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark.

I'm in the Canadian arctic, visiting a curious band of people working at a small radio station. They are all transplants from other parts of the continent and failures and dissappointments they are running away from are about to catch up with them in Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay.

I'm currently in the American south but about to head west, in "Doc" by Mary Doria Russell (as in Doc Holliday).

I've just left Jerusalem in 1945 and the School for Love by Olivia Manning.

I'm accompanying Mendel Singer and his family as they travel from Russia to America in the early 20th century in Job: The Story of a Simple Man by Joseph Roth.

In claustrophobic post-war England with the famous detective Adam Dalgleish, wondering why they didn't Cover Her Face when they murdered her.

I've been spending time in Paris, and now I'm in Montecarlo during the late 1800's. I've been hanging out with Irene Adler of Sherlock Holmes fame courtesy of The Adventuress also known by the title Good Morning, Irene by Carole Nelson Douglas.

I'm in 1960s New Orleans with the irrepressible Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces.

I left 1938 Lisbon where Pereira Declares and am now enjoying my Travels in Siberia.

I'm in pre-World War II Shanghai, listening to an audio version of Shanghai Girls, read by someone who seems to know how to pronounce the Chinese (not that I would know myself, but at least they are using tones)

Got interested in pre-World War II Shanghai after reading Your Turn, Mr. Moto in November. The current book is more about life in an actual Chinese family, which is more interesting than Mr. Moto was.

I'm in South Korea, just after the Korean War, reading The Innocent by Richard Kim. (The touchstone is very wacky.)

I am in Eden of 2021 with Adam & Eve and Kentucky traveling The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.

I'm now in NY, specifically at Barnard College along with author Stephanie Staal courtesy of Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life.

I'm LOVING this! After graduating Barnard in the 1990's, and making good progress on the way to a stellar career, Stepahnie Staal became a wife and mother. She began to feel the loss of her own identity...to wonder what happened to the dreams she'd had. This sparked the decision to go back and take the same classes on feminist literature that she'd taken as a young co-ed.

Again...this book is absolutely terrific! It was right up my alley!

In Shanghai, China with the first of the Inspector Chen mysteries: Death of a Red Heroine.

I am enjoying the sad, satirical, funny short stories by Petina Gappah, in An Elegy for Easterly -- stories that portray the tragedy of Zimbabwe during the last 10 years.

Still in Kentucky on The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, but now also in Germany getting to know all about Wondrak and Other Stories.

Now I am in Roulettenberg, Germany with The Gambler and still in eastern Kentucky learning about life on The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.

I've been in France for quite a while, Hugo's France, as I labor through Les misérables. I might have to take a few brief vacations, though, back to my familiar, comfortable South America. I would also like to hop over to Poland because Ferdydurke is burning a hole in my bookshelf.

I am in the English countryside during the Napoleonic Wars. hanging out with Shirley by Charlotte Brontë.

I'm in Azerbaijan with Ali and Nino and in Poland reading Over het doppen van bonen (A Treatise on Shelling Beans) by Wieslaw Mysliwski.

Just reluctantly ended my Travels in Siberia with Ian Frazier.

Barely escaped with my life from Transylvania after tangling with the Count Dracula by Bram Stoker.

I have just arrived in Iceland on my way to Greenland with They came on Viking Ships is a quick and easy read.

I am on the Great Plains with Ian Frazier and in Europe, the Boston area, New York, and the mountain west with The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford.

I'm in 1930s England with Random Harvest.

Just got back from vacation, during which I went to South Korea, just after the Korean War, for a fictional coup d'etat in The Innocent by Richard Kim. Then I went to England for the fun mystery Hot Money by Dick Francis.

Oh, and for the vacation, I actually went to the Bahamas for a week.