Where in the World Are You Know? July 2007

I'm a few days early again but thought I'd again create the thread while I'm thinking about it.

Finallly have got around to My name is Red by Orhan Pamuk--Avaland. I know a lot of people really have liked it. Also reading Anita Desai (India) for the first time--Games at twilight.

lriley, what do you think of My name is Red?
I am one of those who enjoyed it.

I have just left Russia with Dead Souls by Gogol and also visited Norway with a superb translation of In the Wake by Per Pettersen. Loved both of these books and can highly recommend them.

I am moving to the north (and south) of England with North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and in a dystrophian world in Canada withThe Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

>4 kiwidoc:: karenwardill, I'll be reading North and South sometime in the next few months, as part of a "Classics" Reading Challenge. This is one that I first learned about on LT. I'd love to hear more about the book and what you think of it.

I am in Pakistan watching silkworms hatch during the early 1990s (trespassing by uzma aslam khan)

Hi, I've just joined this group :) For at least the next week I'll be in London & dark and dreary Yorkshire with the Nicklebys in Nicholas Nickleby. Although its very sad in parts, I am enjoying the story immensely. We are doing a sort of informal group read in the LT 'What the Dickens' group.

>4 kiwidoc: & 5 Ladies, I really enjoyed North and South. It was my first novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. There is also an excellent BBC adaptation of the book which is worth seeing. One of her other books, Wives and Daughters is on my TBR list.

I'm in Washington, DC, (not too far from my real home actually) in the White House.

I'm reading The truth about Hillary : what she knew, when she knew it, and how far she'll go to become president by Edward Klein. I really feel like stomping on this CD and smashing it into a million pieces. It's such a trashy vendetta against Hillary. I'll restrain myself because the CD belongs to my public library. :-)

#4, 5, and 7> I read North and South a very long time ago, and liked it a lot. Perhaps I should read some of Gaskell's books. Any suggestion?

I'm sorry...I had to giggle that this post says "where are you KNOW" instead of "NOW"

I'm still with David Mitchell in Ghostwritten. I said a reluctant farewell to Ireland and I've moved onto an American radio studio. I'm having a real love-hate relationship with this book. I think it's just a shock to fall in love with characters and then say good-bye to them so quickly. It always takes me 20 pages or so to get into the setting and characters of the next section.

>10 cestovatela: I hadn't even noticed that, cestovatela! :O. As long as we all know where we are now! :P

I have not gotten too far into North and South yet. About a third. Am enjoying it quite alot. It has a Brontian feel about it, with less of the gothic element.

In fact Gaskell was a huge admirer of the Brontes. She actually wrote a biography about Charlotte Bronte which was published in the late 19th century. I am not sure how credible it is, as she was such a keen admirer.

The BBC production of North and South was made in 2004 and was very good - although I am ashamed to say I did see it before reading the book, which I usually try to avoid. I would like to move to her other book Mary Barton soon as well - heard it is good also.

I am in England with Nicholas Nickleby and in 1840s New York with The Blackest Bird by Joel Rose.
Dickens, obviously, needs no introduction; I just started the other one and so I do not yet know whether I will like it or not.

Karen, I really loved North and South, such a great book!

I'm still in the English countryside with the Dashwoods, ca. 1811 in Sense and Sensibility and also canning lots of tomatoes and eating locally in Virginia with Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Occasionally I take a break and end up very close to home here in the Pacific Northwest with Timothy Egan's The Good Rain.

Paola - glad you liked the Gaskell. Ashamed to say the only Dickens I have read is A Tale of Two Cities which was great - must rectify that one.

Ok, I just noticed the gaffe I made in the thread title...geesh.

Still in the Belgian Congo most recently with Joseph Conrad in Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost - which is nonfiction, of course. I may have to reread Heart of Darkness at some point.

Left Pakistan for Damascus, Syria, in the company of Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib and his Just Like a River

In the U.S.A - BlackGirl/White Girl by Joyce Carol Oates.

On Message #3--Sorry to take so long to get back Aluvalibri. So far it's been going slowly for me. This is my third time with Pamuk--The New Life and Snow. We're about 140 pages in. Hasn't quite got around to being a murder mystery yet. Whether (and how) it will--we'll see. There are a lot of potential threads to unravel. In some respects it reminds me of some of Rushdie or Eco--both writers I like. It's hard for me to render an opinion and it's a little bit different in context than those two other books of Pamuk's I've read which are both set in present time.

In the meantime I have also started on one of Alvaro Mutis's (Colombia) novellas from the The adventures and misadventures of Maqroll. Ilona comes with the rain. It's been a couple years since I've read any of Mutis. His Maqroll is an intinerant seaman and there are shades of Conrad though a very modernized one.

I am traveling back and forth among Laos, Thailand, and the U.S. (primarily California) with the Hmong refugees in Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.

I'm in Vancouver, Canada, but about to be shipped somewhere else. I'm not sure to where, but it's World War II, and anyone of Japanese ethnicity (Canadian or not) is being forced to leave his home. :-(

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

P.S. Thanks for sharing your book with me, Opinicus. Let me know what I should do with it now. Okay?

SqueakyChu - I loved Obasan, beautifully written book and I learned a lot about that time period in Canada. I have her sequel Itsuka, though it's going to be awhile before I get to it.

--> 22

Teelgee, I'm intrigued by Obasan because I never knew that Canada took that tack towards the ethnic Japanese during World War II. I thought it was just the U.S. Somehow I never pictured western Canada as being so racist.

Let me know how you like Itsuka after you read it.

Have moved from Syria to WWII Budapest with Battlefields and Playgrounds. I haven't read any holocaust literature for a long time, and have forgotten how difficult I find it to read. I'm already on edge and, apart from a rise in the level of anti-semitism in general, nothing particularly terrible has happened yet.

I'm somewhere in the United States, most likely the West Coast, perhaps California, in Chuck Palahniuk's Choke. 100 pages in and I don't believe a definitive location has been established.

depressaholic, are you still literally traveling (as opposed to literarily traveling...)?

No, unfortunately my feet are firmly planted back in the UK. On the upside, I am currently doing volunteer work in a charity bookshop, which feels like a nice fit for the moment. I read 8 books by New Zealand authors while in NZ (if you count Katherine Mansfield's complete works as 5 rather than 1) so did alright on the NZ score. Unfortunately, despite some recommendations from amandameale, I completely failed to read any Australian writers while in Sydney for a week, because I was finishing off other stuff. Anyway, my travelling is now solely literary. I just visited Syria, which is country number 85. I hope to be nearing 100 by the end of the year, if I persist.

I'm in Peru with Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa recommended by somebody on this board as a way to get into South American writers.

I'm in an alternate 1940s New Jersey where Charles Lindbergh has just been elected President - The Plot Against America. Already I am thinking about the issue of whether it is possible to admire the accomplishments of prominent people who espouse offensive beliefs - the boys in the story are torn between Lindbergh the American aviation hero and Lindbergh the anti-Semite.

I'm now in Miami Beach, Florida and Hollywood, California with Chili Palmer in Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty, a re-read for me as I first read it 16 years ago.

I'm on the Columbia River in Skamania County (Washington state) with The Good Rain. We're just about to windsurf on out of here.

I'm new to travelling with you people, and I've just landed in New Zealand with (The Bone People)

I am still in Nigeria, having just finished Purple Hibiscus and now working on Half of a Yellow Sun. This one is taking me a little longer to get into for some reason.

In Afghanistan - I've just moved to Kabul from Herat in A Thousand Splendid Suns.

In the Mountains of the Mind by Robert MacFarlane, as recommended by CitizenKelly - so moving between the mountains in Scotland, France, Italy, Nepal and many other mountains in the world. Experiencing a literary feast in celebration of climbers, bravery, fear, glaciers, and scenic beauty. Great book.

>32 raidergirl3:: Welcome raidergirl3! Nice traveling with you. I have The Bone People on my shelf but haven't read it yet - I'll be interested to hear what you think of it.

>32 raidergirl3:: raidergirl3, nice to see you in this group! I'm between books, so not sure "where I am," but wanted to say hi.

I've moved on from 1940s alternative New Jersey (The Plot Against America) already - sadly it's not because I've finished it. I am having so much trouble getting into anything right now.

I didn't move too far, though. I'm now in Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 Illium, New York, where over half the workforce has been replaced by machines and people's lives are ruled by what is noted on their punchcards - Player Piano. I am finding that much easier to get into right now. I need to get off LT for a while and actually read! :)

>33 emaestra::emaestra: same here - I had to force my way through it. Yes, more mature than Purple Hibiscus but a book I felt that I should read rather than wanting to read.

I am now in Alabama with Scout, Jem, Dill, Atticus and Boo Radley in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, re-reading it after 20 years.

I'm in Germany: Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann.

I'm in the mountains (not sure if it's Germany or Switzerland in the very early 20th century with The Magic Mountain and in the Hudson River Valley during colonial times with The Hudson: A History by Tom Lewis. While on vacation, I was in contemporary Russia and New York with Lara Vapnyar's Memoirs of a Muse and in 1980s (?) San Francisco with The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse by Vikram Seth (and in 2007 San Francisco in reality).

Touchstones are not loading.

#42 rebeccanyc: I've looked at Tom Lewis's The Hudson: A History while browsing in Strand. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on it when you have finished.

I am now in Paris 1939 with The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst. ( with brief stopovers in Berlin, Prague and Genoa.)

#43, I'm enjoying it so far. It's interesting and well written. But a large part of my interest derives from the fact that I live in New York City and am very familiar with much of the Hudson Valley area; it's difficult for me to judge how interesting the book would be for people who live elsewhere. (I do see you were browsing at the Strand, so I assume you live here too, but I put that in for people who don't.)

16th century France: Gargantua and Pantagruel. It's become a little tedious so I'm taking a break by reading Jakob Von Gunten by Robert Walser. It's a really enjoyable palate cleanser.

I spent a week in Barcelona with The Shadow of the Wind; now I've arrived in New Zealand with The Bone People - amazing writing in this novel; very lyrical, almost like a narrative poem in places.

I am in Poland in Poland by James Michener

I've reluctantly left Afghanistan and Pakistan, finishing up A Thousand Splendid Suns and moved back to London and the English countryside with the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility.

I'm also decomposing in a casket in Grave Matters: a journey through the modern funeral industry to a natural way of burial.

#45 rebeccanyc: Thanks! Yes, I live in New Jersey and work downtown, about three blocks from the Strand Annex. I'll have to pick this one up and my wife and I love traveling through the Hudson Valley. We stayed at a 200+ year old bed and breakfast in Kinderhook for our first anniversary last year, the Van Schaack House.

As for my reading, I have left the Deep South, convinced that To Kill a Mockingbird just might be the "Great American Novel."

I am now wandering from farm to field to processing plant to feedlot to supermarket to restaurant to kitchen to dining room and more with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

I am on the moors in England, with Sherlock Holmes, trying to determine the mystery of The Hound of the Baskervilles

#47 wendy-
Two books with such a sense of setting!

#50, The Omnivore's Dilemma is great!

In Japan:

Huraki Murakami's After The Quake which is a collection of stories that touch that sense of modern anomie and alienation that any city dweller in today's world has experienced...we are all on the same planet, connected and trying to survive with meaning and connectiveness.

In Algeria, re-reading The Stranger by Albert Camus.

I'm in a post-apocalyptic USA with The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I only started it this morning and I'm already half way through. Haunting is the word.

Mostly England, but also Albania, Scotland, and northern Spain (so far) Lord Byron's Novel by John Crowley. His Little, Big is one of my favorite books ever and this one, so far, is fascinating. It's something that's easy to spoil, though, so I'll refrain from giving away any of the plot.

I spent the weekend sweltering in the French Quarter of New Orleans along with Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

>58 Stig_Brantley: I loved Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land - although I thought the contemporary thread the weakest of the three. I think his recreation of a Byron novel is well done.

Hazelk- still haunts me. loved the father-son dynamic. Cormac is a fantastic writer. i ,too, raced through the book-a real page turner, helped along by the brief chapter headings.

Hi, I'm new to this group, but found this thread on the recommendation of a number of LTers - whom I'm delighted to see here!

I'm in Egypt at the moment with the final volume of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. I think I know where I'm going next when I finally leave...

#56, I've been looking at The Road recently... I'll have to pick it up sometime.

This weekend I was in Mexico with All the Pretty Horses, also by Cormac McCarthy, and now I'm in Amsterdam (with some memories of Lisbon) in The Coffee Trader by David Liss.

Nice of you to wander in, finebalance! Welcome to the World.

I've barely had reading time this week, but I'm in Pakistan and Afghanistan with Three Cups of Tea, a non-fiction about a mountain climber who built schools in poor villages after a failed expedition to K2.

Have made the short hop from Hungary (Battlefields and Playgrounds) to Romania (The Royal Hunt).

I'm still in Burma with The Lizard Cage (I may be there most of the summer) and in Africa with The African Aids Epidemic: A History by John Illife (and I will be here most of the summer - with different books though).

>65 cestovatela:: cestovatela, will be interested to hear how you like Three Cups of Tea. I know a woman who is making it her personal mission in life to have everyone she knows read it, but I haven't yet.

I'm in Anywhere, USA with Al Gore's Assault on Reason. (Excellent, so far.)

I'm also trying to get out of London and back to Devonshire (Sense and Sensibility).

And: my cremated remains were just mixed into a concrete artificial reef and dumped off the coast of Ocean City, New Jersey in Grave Matters: a journey through the modern funeral industry to a natural way of burial.

I do get around.

Hi, I have just joined, my name is Su. I was in San Francisco last week, and needed to buy a book to read on the flight home, so I picked up 1st to Die by James Patterson. I have since read 2 more in the series, btw, it helped make the journey accross the Pacific a lot more enjoyable. I am now in Yorkshire with Dalziel & Pascoe in the latest Reginald Hill novel, The Death of Dalziel. It is already looking like another great read from this author.

It's Saturday and I'm in London. Great read so far.

I just left New Orleans with that wild and crazy guy, Ignatius J Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, and now I am in present day England, but remembering wartime Europe in Willaim Boyd's Restless.

Having gone global with George Monbiot in Manifesto for a new world order, I am digesting some of his ideas while solving a murder in Catalonia with Lorenzo Silva's Civil Guard detectives in The Queen without a mirror.

Also sporadically visiting A house for Mr Biswas and wondering whether to stay on or cut the visit short.

I am engaged in vying for an inheritance in a dying old man's house in Middlemarch, in early 17th-century England.

Let's see. Several of my current books have me in different worlds, such as Pern, Middle-Earth, Salusa Secundus, and Arrakis.

However, I'm also in various parts of our world, at different points in time.

I'm in Tudor England with The Other Bolyen Girl, as well as Restoration England (currently at Rosings, though on the way to London and thenceforth to Longbourne) with Lizzy Bennett in Pride & Prejudice.
I'm at the Burrow in England, and soon to be at Hogwarts in Scotland with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
I'm also at a Canadian museum with Vicky Nelson in Blood Lines.
And, I'm in Spain (I think?) with Sharpe's Rifles.

Closer to home, I'm in Forks, Washington with Bella and Edward in Twilight, and also outside St. Louis (currently) with Anita Blake in Narcissus in Chains.

Lastly, though it's nowhere specifically in this world or in others, for that matter, I'm taking a tour through The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.

...why yes, I do read a billion books at once. I've only stopped starting new ones because I've run out of bookmarks. *grin*

I'm in a future England, hanging out with my droogs, making up our rassoodocks about what to do in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

I finished Three Cups of Tea this morning. It was a very inspirational trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now I've come back to the United States for The Year of Magical Thinking.

Joan Didion kicks ass, Cestovatela...

I was just escaped a massacre in the Dominican Republic by fleeing to Haiti in The Farming of Bones, by Edwidge Danticat. Now I'm not sure where I am with Salman Rushdie in The Ground Beneath Her Feet . . . it started out in Mexico, but currently we're in Bombay, India. I'm sure the book will take me several more places around the globe before I'm done with it.

I've just left London in Saturday and am now in Nazi Germany with The Book Thief.

I've finally returned to Nova Scotia during WWI to finish The Birth House after several diversions around the globe.

Pyongyang, North Korea with Comrades and Strangers. Next, the Catskills! (Joey Adam's memoir The Borscht Belt is up on deck).

having left behind Murakami in Japan I am now with Seamus Heaney and Beowulf in Scandinavia sometime in the late first millenium...this is a surprisingly easy read, suspenseful, daring and mysterious.

I spent a few days with Stephanie Plum in Trenton, NJ, but am now in Bath, England reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

I just got to Greenwich Village in Manhattan (New York City) and am checking out the night clubs. I'm reading Chronicles, Volume 1 which is the first part of Bob Dylan's autobiography. I think I'm going to like this book.

I've had a weekend of roaming. I left Cairo on Friday having finished Naguib Mahfouz Cairo Trilogy. I then moved to New York with Amy Bloom's Away, which took me from Russia, to New York and then across that continent to Seattle and up to Alaska and towards Siberia. After that I came back to rural England for a day in an unnamed part of Sussex at the end of the Second World War with Mollie Panter-Downes One Fine Day. Mmm, where next?

I'm in colonial India with A Passage to India by E M Forster which is a re-read being my reading group selection. It will be interesting to see what maturer(ha-ha) years bring to this novel.

I have been in Germany and South America for AGES due to lack of reading time: Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann (German). I'm about to leave there so have also been spending time in a Burmese gaol cell with Lois: The Lizard Cage by Karen Connellyy.

Disappointed at the sight of the empty Elephant cage, I left that nameless Japanese city because of an Awful Mess on Via Merulana.

Am visiting the Good Women of China in the company of Xinran.

#91 How are you enjoying That Awful Mess on Via Merulana? I bought it but haven't read it yet.

I'm visiting the underworld and Ithaca with Margaret Atwood's retelling of Penelope's story in The Penelopiad.

With a few days off from work, I decided to visit the fictional world of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I should be able to read about 3 books per day of this series. While the film was set in the Boston area, the books are set in completely fictional locales.

#93, rebeccanyc, I read That Awful Mess on Via Merulana many years ago, when I still lived in Italy, and loved it, especially for the language Gadda uses. Who is the translator? I would be curious to know how he/she managed to recreate it in the English version.

#96, aluvalibri, It was translated by William Weaver and has an introduction by Italo Calvino. It's one of NYRB (New York Review Books) reissues. As noted above, I haven't read it yet.

Oh, since it is translated by William Weaver it will certainly be good. His translations are probably the best. Another excellent translator - if ever you come across his work - is Stephen Sartarelli, who is also a good friend of mine.

#93, #96, I think it's mostly terrific so far. I'm slightly distracted by the narrator's rants about Mussolini - they seem disjoint from the story, like something the author just really wanted to stick in there. I don't mind reading them, though.

While the dialect layer of the work is largely lost in translation, the translator occasionally provides helpful footnotes elucidating significant dialectical details as well as references to customs, quotations and people that can be assumed to be unknown to non-Italians - eg. cinobalànico, a word invented by Gadda, a Greco-Italian adjective created from an obscene Roman dialect expression meaning 'badly done".

I am now in the mythical kingdom of Florin in The Princess Bride. It's a good book, but I'm bored because the movie parallels the book so closely and I've seen the movie a thousand times. It's funny, but I miss the movie's visual humor. As an English major, it pains me to say I like a movie better than the book, but this might be one case where that's true.

#99 > darsu, I am glad Weaver provides footnotes. It is probably the best thing to do when some terms are impossible to translate. Since Gadda invented a lot of words (even in his other works), the footnotes would be useful to native speakers of Italian (such as myself).

>finebalance, I read The Penelopiad not so long ago and enjoyed it. Lots of that trademark Atwood wit there. I have Victor Pelevin's Helmet of Horror to read, it's another in the same series (the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur). I read several other Pelevin novels, all satirical, which is why I picked this up - I think this is set in an internet chat room!

I have been all over sub-saharan Africa with the Aids epidemic book. What a ride. Now I'm in Somalia with the young Ayaan Hirsi Alis memoir Infidel. And I was in the future with a Proustian SF novel by Adam Roberts, called Land of the Headless. Clever and a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Must go read now!

I fled Nova Scotia and arrived in Boston just in time for the flu epidemic of 1918 (still reading The Birth House - or I should say, back to reading it).

In Ticonderoga, Canada with The Blind Assassin. Have to confess to not being blown away so far (100+ pages in).

Currently in 1920s Cairo with Mahfouz (Palace Walk) and 1930s Transylvania (with Walter Starkie, Raggle-Taggle, Adventures with a fiddle in Hungary and Romania). The Middle East (with my favorite Swede, Par Lagerkvist) looms ahead as does a visit to Alexandria with Lawrence Durrell (Justine).

Iceland. The Independent People by Halldor Laxness. I'm only about 70 pages in but I can already tell that I'm going to love it. It reminds me of Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil only it's more amusing.

I'm being forced off the land in the 1930s Oklahoma Dust Bowl in The Grapes of Wrath.

Near Tora Bora with bin Laden and The Looming Tower. Not sure I want to be here, and equal parts fascination and dread run through me as I read.

I'm in Beirut, and Galilee (pre-1948), and then Israel and the Gaza Strip in more modern times. I'm reading Elias Khoury's Gate of the Sun and finding I need to bone up on my history a bit to get the most out of this book.

I"m in Civil War Georgia right now in The March by E.L. Doctorow.

I am in Ithaca with Odysseus reading Homer, and spending a whirlwind trip around the world from ancient times to present with Guns, Germs and Steel which is rather a slog but I am determined to make it around.

I'm lost in the labyrinth of the human mind in The Myth of Sanity. It's a fascinating but sad place -- most of the minds we're exploring are trauma survivors.

Funny, that. I just picked that up today after getting my books out of hock last weekend. I'd forgotten how good it was.

I am in Eastern Europe hanging out with the Gypsies (Roma) reading Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca.
A side note... I read Bram Stoker's Dracula while living in Romania (I was even reading it when I was on a trip to Transylvania! Spooky I tell you!

I'm now on Route 66 somewhere between Oklahoma and California in The Grapes of Wrath.

Avaland, I really enjoyed The Penelopiad and will be looking for others in the series to read. Let me know what you think of Pelevin!

Meanwhile, I've headed off to England in the early 20th century to explore the labyrinthine and complex relationships of the Bloomsbury group and friends in Uncommon Arrangements by Katie Roiphe.

finebalance, it may be quite a while before I get to it but it currently resides on the coffee table in the livingroom with about 20 other books!

I have finished the memoir Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Wow, what a story. Next up is the West African tale, The Epic of Son-Jara. Followed by another memoir Singing Away the Hunger. These are all for class (but it's not like it's painful to have to read these incredible books).

>117 avaland:: avaland, I can't wait to read Infidel now. I've been intrigued for a while, but it's working its way up Mt. TBR thanks to your enthusiastic praise!

I've escaped the labyrinth of the mind and traveled back in time to the Dust Bowl in The Worst Hard Time. Even 10 pages in, it's fascinating. Who knew people had to spread molasses and arsenic on the ground to kill plagues of grasshoppers?

I'm in two places at once. England (or is it?) with The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly; and Malaysia: Old Filth by Jane Gardam.

#120 amandameale:

My wife and I both loved The Book of Lost Things, hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

I'm in Afghanistan, reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. It is very enjoyable, but unbelievably sad.I'm also exploring reworked fairy tales in Good Bones.

I've now departed from the Dust Bowl (my time there was harrowing but fascinating) and moved onto the Alaskan wilderness with Into the Wild. It's not as compelling as I had hoped it would be.