Where In The World Are You - February 2011

I'm in San Francisco with The Joy Luck Club . Loved the movie , finally reading the book .

I am in Germany learning about The Tin Drum, and simultaneously in Washington, D.C. beginning to learn about The Swan Thieves.

I just left South Africa and July's People and am about to embark on Clay's Ark which I think might take me to California.

July's People was amazing, and left me with a sick feeling. My review is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/85697/reviews/67649804

Hemlokgang> I'll be interested in your review of The Tin Drum. I've heard about it off and on for years, but don't know much about it.

I'm in Slone, Texas, wondering if The Confession of a sex maniac will save an innocent man.

Posted in the January group by mistake, but I've left various parts of Russia with Doctor Zhivago and the Conquered City of 1919 Leningrad, and am now gallivanting around Eastern Europe with the Wandering Stars.

I just got to India with Shantaram. I've heard great things about it, but have only just started, so fingers Xed!

6> Yes, that January thread fooled me too. There was plenty of recent activity on it.

I'm in the US and the Caribbean amazed by all sorts of duppies and witches in Mojo: Conjure Stories.

I'm in Egypt (and sometimes England) with Egyptian/British author Ahdaf Soueif and her collection of delightful short stories, I Think of You.

In a snow storm in Newfoundland (that's New-Found-LAND) with The Colony Of Unrequited Dreams, which is good, but a leeetle bit long-winded.

I've left the Isle of Dreams near Tokyo (Keizo Hino and am now in not so merry old England with Susan Hill's Mrs. De Winter.

I'm in Kerala, south India with Rahel, Esthappen, Sophie Mol, Baby Kochamma, et al in the God of Small Things.

I've already spent A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. Things are developing badly, and another weekend is at hand.

Hunting a serial killer in England in The Wire in the Blood.

I'm in Japan, baby sitting the 2½ year old God, otherwise known as Amélie Nothomb, in her humor filled autobiographical novel Métaphysique des tubes (The Character of Rain).

kidzdoc> That sounds hysterical. I can't wait to see your review.

I'm now in North Carolina with The Girl Who Chased The Moon .

India: Kashmir -- Srinagar, to be precise. Jahanara: Princess of Princesses by Kathryn Lasky.

This book (with Lasky's admission in her author's notes that she took much poetic license) reminds me that an exotic book setting isn't guaranteed to be totally correct.

The palaces, pools, and gardens sound too beautiful to be real -- I guess the old canard about reading taking you places you'll never get to go could be replaced for me by "reading will make you yearn even more than before to visit those places".

Me, I'm in the East Village in 1968 with Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe - Just Kids

Was in Greenland in Cold Earth by Sarah Moss.

I'm in South Africa, on a farm during the late 19th Century, courtesy of The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner.

Just traipsed through Vanuatu and Fiji, thanks to Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost

I'm in mid-19th century Panama at the moment, in The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

I'm still in Paris with Les Miserables and bound to still be there in March at my current read rate, though I'm also in Colombia with The general in his labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez .

I'm in the middle of London, knowing that every fraught relationship in this story has A Question of Integrity hanging over it.

I'm about to leave Pennsylvania and go to Europe with Marian Anderson in My Lord, What a Morning.

I was in Biafra with Half of a Yellow Sun. Now I am in the south in the past with Their Eyes Were Watching God.

I'm in the Arab world, getting an interesting historical survey of the political and cultural forces that helped shape events throughout that region from the period between the world wars through 1998, reading The Dream Palace of the Arabs.

27> FicusFan, ooh, two fabulous books!

I am currently travelling the world with Angela Carter's Fairy Tales - fabulous stuff.

I am in fictitious Three Pines, Canada where you have to learn to Bury Your Dead, and also in an insane asylum post WWII in Germany learning about The Tin Drum.

I'm in Umuofia, Nigeria, resisting the influx of the white man with Things Fall Apart's Okonkwo and his clan.

I just left post-apocalyptic Russia, where I encountered The Slynx. Now I'm off to India keeping my eye on The White Tiger.

I've gone back in time to 1950 in the English Countryside watching Flavia de Luce solve her second crime in The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag .

31> Things Fall Apart is great. Enjoy!

32> Let me know what you think about The White Tiger. I got that one as an ARC when I worked at a bookstore, but still haven't gotten around to reading it.

I've discovered Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead in a small English village at the end of the 19th century, traveled around an unnamed postcolonial African country with the mysterious Matigari, and gotten inside the head of the Bogeywoman in the Eastern US in the late 60s/early 70s.

I'm making my way through the Middle East, specifically, I'm in Jerusalem at the moment, courtesy of Agatha Christie's Appointment With Death.

I'm in South Africa with a man I can't stand in Disgrace.

I am now on The Lost Steps in an unnamed South American country, as well as in the Gulag.

Somewhere south of Texas, blinded by The Evening Redness in the West . Tonight I dine with Americans in Paris.

I've left late 18th century Colombia and Panama and early 20th century London in The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, and I'm now in a hill town in 1972 India in Staying On by Paul Scott.

Time-traveling to 13th century Cornwall in Seasons in the Mist by Deborah Kinnard.

I'm in Uganda with the Abyssinian Chronicles. Idi Amin just made his coup, and people are partying and dancing in the streets...

I'm in Algeria investigating An Unfinished Business by Boualem Sansal.

I've just left Timbuktou and am in Sidi-bel-Abbas, Algeria in the late 1920's early 1930's. I'm flying pretty much all over the world courtesy of The Flying Carpet by Richard Halliburton. (Non-fiction travel-adventure about the early days of aviation.)

I'm in Madrid on 23 February 1981 (exactly 30 years ago!), watching in disbelief as a coup d'état is taking place in the Spanish Parliament in The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas, a novel based on the actual event, known as 23-F.

In Damascus, Syria, with The Dark Side of Love

I've just left Wyatt wondering 'What's next?!' in Tasmania in Garry Disher's The Wyatt Butterfly and am about go to a sheep station in rural New South Wales with Murray Bail's The Pages.

Now I'm in Papua New Guinea, during a revolution in the 1990's or so, reading Great Expectations courtesy of Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.

I'm not far in, but I am already loving this book!

I have recently been in Jackson, Mississippi, with The Help, after which I headed to Andover, New England, where The Heretic's Daughter was in trouble. Yesterday I dipped into late nineteenth-century Copenhagen in My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time, but am not sure if I will make it back there for a while.

I'm in Florida with the Seraph on the Suwanee.

I'm in the fictional town of Thalia, Texas, reading the 4th of James McMurtry's 5-part Thalia, Texas, series, When the Light Goes. This is the series that began with The Last Picture Show. Duane Moore, whom we first saw in high school, is now 64.

Keeping in step with the news of the hour, I've been in Libya with In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar.

Though it's an excellent novel, it didn't quite give me the background on Libya that I was hoping for as it focuses more on family relationships under the stress of living in a police state.

Just read my first book of 2011, An Awkward Age by Anna Starobinets, which is a collection of short stories. It takes place in Russia and overall, it's an interesting little collection worth looking at.

Right now I'm in the Italian Alps, trying to escape from the Nazis with a group of other Jewish people. courtesy of Wandering Star by J.M.G. Le Clézio.

I am in Quebec and Three Pines in Canada where they Bury Your Dead. I am also in the American South witnessing The Sound and The Fury.

I'm in Charles Dickens' London, and about to head north to Yorkshire with Mr Squeers and Nicholas Nickleby.