Where in the World Are You? July-August

I've left The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clézio off the coast of Mauritius; I read it for the Author Theme Reads group and found it both hauntingly beautiful and a little puzzling.

I'm switching between Bayhead Harbor, New Jersey with A Fair Maiden and the garden of Eden with Paradise Lost.

In Japan with The Devotion of Suspect X

I'm in Sweden with The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Just arrived in France, May 1940, with The Polish Officer.

I'm now exploring a forest on the island of Mauritius with Alexis and Denis, in The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio.

In London in the late 1900s and various oceans in the late 1700s, with Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth.

Jumping between San Francisco and Hong Kong while reading to write a review for Chop Suey, which I just had sent to me.

I've left The Juniper Tree in a small town in England.

Visiting Stockholm with Kurt Wallander in Henning Menkell's The Troubled Man.

Just left Annie John in Antigua and am now basking in Half of a Yellow Sun in Nigeria..

I've left Lima, Peru and the erotic lives of Don Rigoberto, Lucrecia, and Fonchto with In Praise of the Stepmother and The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto.

I've spent a few very nice days in Sudan, first celebrating The Wedding of Zein and now hanging around at the Lyrics Alley.

Taking a break from travelling all over the world with The Paris Review Book Of People With Problems and heading to a Disco For The Departed in Laos.

Just leaving Ukraine for a trip to Kazakhstan with The Good Angel of Death

I am in Nebraska with The Magician's Assistant and also in New York City with Martin Dressler.

Now in Australia learning the True History of the Kelly Gang and still in NYC with Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer.

In the fictitious (?) town of Newton in the United States, caught up in a very discordant Concerto.

I've just left Sisters by a River, the river Avon in England in the 1920s or so.

And now I've left the oceans of the world, and the town/island of Marstal (Denmark) with We, the Drowned).

I am in Australia learning the True History of the Kelly Gang and in Peoria, Illinois with the Pale King and in Saigon with the Lotus Eaters.

I was in an unnamed Balkan country with The Tiger's Wife.

I'm in the Ministry of Magic, which I assume means London, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in Texas with The Worst Hard Time, and Cuba with Dreaming in Cuban.

The Lyrics Alley is mostly in Umdurman, Sudan, but it also took me to Egypt, where I'm now hanging with the folks of the Yacoubian building.

Still wandering around Eden (Paradise Lost) very nearly as blindly as Milton himself while taking the occasional flight for light relief to London and Whitby in Dracula in Love.

I've left the various neighborhoods of Manhattan Noir.

I'm at the Bay of Bengal with The Hero's Walk.

I'm in Shanghai in 1903 in The Ginger Tree and the Marshall Islands just leaving for Pearl Harbor with At Dawn We Slept.

I'm hoping to soon leave Korea and Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin.

#31, hoping because . . . you don't like it, or . . . ?

I'm in Sierra Leone trying to survive the civil war in The Memory of Love.

32 - Indeed! I wasn't having fun. Now that I'm finished it and on to other things, it doesn't seem that bad.

I'm in east Africa spending time in and around The White Rhino Hotel.

I've just left Matterhorn, a peak n Vietnam so-named by the US military during the war there.

I'm in Congo Brazzaville with African Psycho b Alain Mabanckou, but also, at night, in the UK (and some East Africa) with The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah.

>20 TedWitham: Newton, Massachusetts outside of Boston is real, although your book still might be in a fictitious town!

I'll be interested in what you think about African Psycho, Lois; it's a book I've been considering getting.

Waiting nervously in Sinai during the war of 1967.

Somewhere in the middle of the Sahara improving my tan and reading The Sheltering Sky.

I remain in Cairo but I have moved from The Yacoubian building to Midaq Alley.

I'm just outside of Cambridge after World War I, in The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst. From there I'll skip over to a Parisian apartment building later today, in Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec.

I survived Sierra Leone and spent a day in post-war Berlin with the French Red Cross in Anne Wiazemsky's My Berlin Child. Now on to Italy and The Homecoming Party by Carmine Abate.

I'm in The Circle of Karma in Bhutan and wil then move to Portugal to the Act of the Damned.

I've left The Poisoner's Handbook in 1920s New York and The Moldavian Pimp in 1920s and contemporary Argentina and contemporary Paris.

#45 - I just saw The Moldavian Pimp the other day and thought it looks well intriguing. Please tell us what you think of it in due course...

In London, I am The Untouchable Kim Philby-look alike spy repenting at leisure.

Done with the Sahara - now in the Swiss Alps reading The Bells.

#46 I found The Moldavian Pimp beautifully written, fascinating, and sobering. You can read my review on the book page.

#49 Wonderful title!

#50 And a good book too, unlike my mental category of books whose titles are the best thing about them!

with David Gann in Brazil/Bolivia and Peru:

The Lost City of Z. is a real page turner. A journalist becomes fascinated by the dissappearance of a great English explorer, Percy Fawcett, in 1925. Fawcett had set out to discover the ruins of a great ancient civilization he believed had existed and thrived in the great Amazon jungle. Once he dissappeared many followed to find him and they,too, were never heard from again.

Others believed that a civilized society could never develop in such an unforgiveable and unliveable environmewnt where tribes could not look beyond their daily survival needs - their only focus to find enough to eat and to defend themselves against poisonous snakes and annual floods.

this is an amazing tale, well-told.

I've once again left the darker side of Manhattan with Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics.

I'm in Kingston, Jamaica in 1938, with the young Chinese emigrant Pao.

Left The Homecoming Party in Albanian speaking Italy. I hadn't know that Albanians began migrating to Southern Italy in the 1500s. Although a small minority, the Albanian Italians have kept their language and some of their customs.

From a culture site:

Many of these villages still exist in Southern Italy. Over 800,000 Albanians in Italy speak a language called 'Tosca." Tosca is a type of Albanian distinct to Italy. It is primarily Aberesh ( the native language of Albania), but also contains Italian and traces of Greek. Although Tosca is not an official language of Italy, it can be heard spoken at homes in Albanian-Italian villages like Civita. There are four Tosca dialects, all spoken in Southern Italy. Those dialects are Sicilian Albanian, Calabrian Albanian, Central Mountain Albanian, and Field Marino Albanian.

Where should I go next?

I was in England and France with The Theory of Clouds, but now I'm in Denmark with The Quiet Girl.

#53, how did you like the Manhattan Noir? I keep seeing these books and I'm curious how they are.

#57 The second one, the classics, was much better than the first. As with all anthologies, some stories are better than others. You can read my brief reviews here and here on my reading thread.

I'm in 1930s Lisbon with Pereira maintains and I've sneaked across to 1950s New York to peek inside my next read, William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel.

I'm in Peoria, Illinois with The Pale King and also in Newark, New Jersey during the polio outbreak in the mid 1940s and Nemesis.

#30, how do you like The Ginger Tree? It's on my TBR.

I am romping through 1950s (I think) Mexico and enjoying my visit to Don Otavio (another Eland Press book, like my copy of The Ginger Tree).

#60 I'm curious about the NJ book dealing with the polio outbreak. What is it called? How are you enjoying it?

# 63 - It is Philip Roth's Nemesis, but touchstones aren't working properly...

#64 Oh, I see. When I clicked the first link, I went to a sci-fi book and thought you were reading that as well. Thanks for staightening me out!

I finally found some time to read and am in Lahore, Pakistan with the Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Enjoying the scenery in Montana and the solving of a murder in The Bluejay Shaman.

I've experienced A Change of Climate in Africa and England and An Experiment in Love in northern England and London.

Still in Peoria with The Pale King, but now also in Norway with The Snowman.

After having read about my future Denmark in Tordenregn (climate change) and the former South Africa in Assegai, I am now relaxing with a Fantasy novel.

Have been to Scotland, England, Egypt, Australia, and Ireland so far this summer.

"I am recalling now that last summer before I was sent away. It was 1979, and the sun was everywhere. Tripoli lay brilliant and still beneath it. Every person, animal and andt went in desperate search for shade, those occasional grey patches of mercy carved into the white of everything" In The Country of Men.

I'm in the US! Haven't been there in ages... meeting brain-challenged vampires in Los Angeles ;) Bite Me is such a relief to read in times of sparkling, daywalking vampires ;)

I'm with some very different, unsparkly vampires too but these are in England in The Radleys.

#73....Radley as in "Boo"? :-)

I finished The Last Gift, which was very good, and still have to finish African Psycho, though I admit to dragging my feet a bit. It's not a cheery read. Have started reading Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates (finally), which is one of her "American Gothics". This one is different than the previous two of her Amer. Gothics, I've read; Bellefleur is a family saga set in upstate New York, complete with curse and crumbling estate (probably some inbreeding too).

#74 I don't think they're related :)

I've been racking up the frequent flier miles over the past two days. I left Kingston, Jamaica after a visit with Pao, spent most of yesterday in the tribal areas of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border alongside The Wandering Falcon, and today I'm in a south London neighborhood learning Pigeon English.

Last night I headed to England and a WWI asylum for shell-shocked soldiers in Regeneration.

Shuttling between Wales, Sudan and Nigeria with the memoir Sugar and Slate.

I'm on the slopes of Cham, aka Chamonix. It's a super novel set in the ski resort and yet, for some reason, Amazon now thinks I might like every non-fiction book that was ever written about skiing. That's odd because I've also recently reread Frankenstein and they haven't yet recommended any n/f on how to create a monster from dead bodies.

Very excited to be heading to Pakistan in The Wandering Falcon. It's an ER book that just arrived today.

I'm on the island of Mauritius reacquainting myself with Deeti in River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, the sequel to his 2008 novel Sea of Poppies.

I've been in Jerusalem and the Holy Land in 1910 with Amelia Peabody and her family courtesy of River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters, I've been around the world with Nellie Bly in about 1890, courtesy of Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist by Brooke Kroeger, in Afghanistan and India about 1840 or so with Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser, and I'm now in thd English midlands, I think somewhere between 1910 and 1920 courtesy of Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence.

Whew! I'm tired! Lol!

I am in Oslo, Norway with The Snowman and have just left Haroun and the Sea of Stories in India and will be heading off to Idaho because Then Came the Evening.

Still in Oslo with The Snowman but now traveling Across Many Mountains starting in Tibet.

I'm in WW2 Poland with Uri Orlev's The Lead Soldiers and also about to move to the English countryside with Mr Rosenblum's List. As I've have just been in a UK jail for most of Bernice Rubens' I, Dreyfus this will make a pleasant change.

I'm in England, on my way to Gretna Green, with Georgette Heyer

I've left Scotland and its Classic Crimes.

Camped and sailing up and down the east coast of New Zealand, hearing the legends of the great chief Wulf.

Now in the Norfolk Fens with Waterland.

I' ve been in Portugal, Spain and América with Colombo Português of Manuel Rosa in 1450 - 1510 and in France, Arles, with Van Gogh and Gauguin in "A casa amarela" of Martin Gayford.

I've just left pre-World War I Hungary and the compellingly readable sprawling saga of They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy.

I'm now in New England with the Alcotts courtesy of Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reilsen.

I just read The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto and am still composing my thoughts on it. It takes place in my favorite, Japan.

I have traveled to ancient India into the Palace of Illusions with Chitra Divakaruni, with a view of the Mahabharata from a woman's perspective.

Somewhere in Yukon, with Jack London. Of course I read books by him before, as a child, but the collection of 'Meistererzählungen' (master narratives?) I'm reading now is really impressive. Exellent, adult oriented, critical stories.

I am in Tibet Across Many Mountains and in Victorian England wondering....Can You Forgive Her?

#90: How are you enjoying Wulf? I read it a few weeks ago and thought it was excellent.
I've just made a quick trip to Iceland with a woman turning to stone but am mainly in London with A.S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories.

Mexico City in The lacuna.

I've just left New York, Montreal, and the remote Irish village of Drishane while searching for The Mangan Inheritance.

Left The Country of Men during the weekend and now back in Egypt. In Alexandria slowly enjoying the poems by Cavafy and also preparing for Blood Feud to come.

@99 THe writing is Wulf is delicious, the scenery well drawn, especially as my wife and I cruised down that west coast of New Zealand this past January. I enjoy the way Hamish Clayton is making connections between European and NZ myth. It's a good book. Four or four and a half stars!

I've left The Bride from Odessa in Argentina, and other characters in this collection of stories by Edgardo Cozarinksy in various parts of Europe as well as in Argentina.

After having spent several book's worth of time in the San Francisco area (Cannery Row, A Child Called It, The Crying of Lot 49), I started out once again in that city with Portrait in Sepia, but it has now taken me south to Chile.

I am in the still Hungarian Transylvania in They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy which is the first book in The Writing on the Wall also known as the Transylvanian Trilogy.

Motoring across Siberia, getting horribly flybitten and road-weary in Travels In Siberia by Ian Frazier.

106, 107 Loved both of those books!

I'm among the European ex-pats in Nairobi, Kenya, reading Rules of the Wild by Francesca Marciano

Carrying The Fire, I'm blasting off into space with Michael Collins and the Gemini and Apollo space programmes. So far it's an incredible ride!

I've just left The Factory of Facts in Belgium.

Reading: 1985 Moscow, experiencing The Dream Life Of Sukhanov.

Listening: the hardcore Glasgow underworld, with Lennox.

Both brilliant.

I'm dodging between Victorian England with The Invention of Murder and Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia and, finally, England again, in the company of Don Juan. Nobody can say I'm not well-travelled!

#112 I thought The Dream Life of Sukhanov very good, and Grushin's second book, The Line even better. I can't wait to see how her writing life progresses. She is one of my new favorite authors.

Currently in Algeria, France, Germany, etc. in The German Mujahid.

I've been delivering mail to Pablo Neruda in rural Chile with The Postman.

Lisa, thanks for the recommendation - I'll definitely look out for The Line.

It is now September -- and time for a new thread.

We now have two Sept - Oct 2011 threads -- the other one is: http://www.librarything.com/topic/123058 .

Oops, I've marked the one I started CLOSED. Please use this one which was started first -- this is the one vpfluke mentions. Thanks for calling my attention to it.