rocketjk's 2016 travels

I've had fun charting my travels the last six years. 2015 brought me to twelve countries, including the U.S., up from only nine the year before. Within the U.S., I read to 12 states, as well as several books that I considered non-state specific. With luck, I'll be a happy globe trotter this year, as well.

As always, I don't select my reading to purposefully "travel" around. Rather, I just have fun seeing where my more random reading choices take me! I'll be writing at greater length about each book on my 2015 50-Book Challenge thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/210833

ASIA
Bangladesh
A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam

The Pacific Ocean
McCampbell's Heroes: The Story of the U.S. Navy's Most Celebrated Carrier Fighters of the Pacific War by Edwin P. Hoyt (non-fiction)

India
Fireproof by Raj Kamal Jha

Saudi Arabia
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (memoir)

Vietnam
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam edited by Bernard Edelman (non-fiction)

EUROPE
England
Chance by Joseph Conrad
Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh (reread)
Murder by the Sea by Lesley Cookman
Second Wind by Dick Francis
George Passant by C.P. Snow
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
The Wooden Shepherdess by Richard Hughes (also listed in Germany)
All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot

The British Army
Officers and Gentlemen by Evelyn Waugh (reread)
The End of the Battle by Evelyn Waugh

Finland
Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi

France
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
Madame Curie by Eve Curie (biography--also listed in Poland)

Germany
A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr (also listed in Argentina)
The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes (reread -- also listed in Wales)
The Wooden Shepherdess by Richard Hughes (also listed in England)
The Pink Triangle: the Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant (history)

Ireland
The Run of the Country by Shane Connaughton

Italy
Men Like Shadows by Dorothy Charques (also listed in Palestine)

Poland
Madame Curie by Eve Curie (biography--also listed in France)

Wales
The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes (reread -- also listed in Germany)

THE MIDDLE EAST
PALESTINE
Men Like Shadows by Dorothy Charques (also listed in Italy)

NORTH AMERICA
UNITED STATES
Non-state specific
Still Talking by Joan Rivers (memoir)
Manhunt Detective Story Monthly, January, 1953 edited by John McCloud

California
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

Georgia
Home by Toni Morrison

Iowa
Morning Ran Red by Stephen Bowman

Maine
Waterbabys by Cris Mazza

Mississippi
The Quiet Game by Greg Iles

New York
When Tenants Claimed the City: the Struggle for Citizenship in New York Housing by Roberta Gold (non-fiction)

North Carolina
My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slavery: Twenty-One Oral Histories of Former North Carolina Slaves edited by Belinda Hurmence (non-fiction)

Texas
The Devil's Code by John Sanford
In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas by Larry McMurtry (non-fiction)
Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg

Virginia
The Guns of Cedar Creek by Thomas A. Lewis (history)

SOUTH AMERICA
Argentina
A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr (also listed in Germany)

It is, of course, a misrepresentation to place Seven Pillars of Wisdom in Saudi Arabia. For one thing, the country as such did not formally exist at the time being described, and for another, the action of T.E. Lawrence's World War One memoir spills outside the borders of the present-day country, concluding with the Allied conquest of Damascus, Syria, from the Ottoman Empire. However, a large enough percentage of the events of this memoir take place within what is now Saudi Arabia for me to anchor the book in that country for my purposes, here. At any rate, even taken with the grain of salt this narrative by an Englishman might deserve, Seven Pillars of Wisdom provides a whole lot of fascinating information about Arabian history and culture and about the physical grandeur, and horror, of that vast place.

I took my first reading trip to England for the year via Joseph Conrad's Chance. It's not among Conrad's best, but, as I love Conrad, I still enjoyed the experience.

I read to India via Fireproof by Indian author Raj Kamal Jha. It's a novel about horrific ethnic violence in an Indian city, Ahmedabad, and based on a real event. Jha makes consistent use magical realism to tell his story, and sections of the book are very powerful, indeed. Though I would say all in all this is a good but flawed novel. As I said in my review, I'm at an odd place with this book. I want other people to read it, but I don't feel comfortable recommending it to them.

Intriguing comment about Fireproof. I added it to my wishlist for later consideration.

I read to England again via Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley's "novel of ideas" about the intellectual/philosophical life of London's upper and high middle class between the world wars (or, as Huxley was experiencing it, since the book was published in 1928, after the Great War). It is interesting in places, with a generous supply of Huxley's sly wit, but also tedious for significant stretches. Your mileage may vary.

Interesting to hear about Huxley for something else than Brave new world. I'm completely ignorant about his other work so thanks for the information.

>7 chlorine: Another of Huxley's works, one that I enjoyed a little more than Point Counter Point, in fact, although it is probably not as strong a book overall, was his satiric novel, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.

>8 rocketjk:: Sounds great, thanks for pointing it out!

I took a reading trip to Argentina via Philip Kerr's excellent thriller, A Quiet Flame. This is the fifth in Kerr's terrific "Bernie Gunther" Berlin noir series. In book five, it is 1950, and Gunther has been falsely accused of Nazi war crimes. He escapes to Argentina, where he is, of course, soon involved in crime solving. There are also extensive flashbacks to Berlin, circa 1932, during the weeks leading up to the Reichstag fire, enough so that I'm also listing this as a reading trip to Germany.

My first reading trip to Ireland this year came via The Run of the Country by Shane Connaughton. This is a very nice, and insightful, coming of age story about a teenager in Cavan County, Ireland, a rural area on the border with Northern Ireland. The novel, which takes place in the 1950s, includes plenty of lovely descriptions of countryside, human nature and longing, and life along a border.

I reread the first two books of Evelyn Waugh's "Sword of Honour" trilogy, Men at Arms and Officers and Gentlemen so that I could fully appreciate the third book, The End of the Battlev (a.k.a. Unconditional Surrender). The first book takes place in England, but for the second, I created the category, "The British Army." I would will put The End of the Battle in that category, as well. The trilogy is Waugh's literary trip through World War 2, via his upper class character, Guy Crouchback. What begins in the first book as rather broad satire becomes, by the end of the trilogy, much more pointed, dour to the point of bitterness, and very, very memorable.

Took my first reading trip to Bangladesh via A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam. This is a good but not great novel about a woman and her two almost grow children dealing with the Pakistani Civil War that would lead to the creation of Bangladesh.

I read my way to France, during and just after World War I, via Dos Passos' second novel, Three Soldiers. First published in 1921, this book still packs a punch. Three Soldiers is about the absurdities and terrors experienced by American enlisted men during World War I in France. But even more, it is about the tedium, frustration and humiliations of military life in general, at least as experienced among the ranks. The grimness of the narrative is mitigated by Dos Passos' obvious affection for his characters, and by his often joyous physical descriptions of Paris and the French countryside, and the life to be found there. So while primarily a strong anti-war novel, Dos Passos has also provided here a love letter to Paris in particular and France in general.

I read to England again via Murder by the Sea, the fourth book in Lesley Cookman's "Libby Sarjeant" series. These books are amiable and low-stress fun, although the two main characters have already gotten fairly repetitive by this point, only four books into an 11-book (so far) series.

One more reading trip to England, via another mystery, Second Wind by Dick Francis. This is the second book of Francis' I've read, and I've enjoyed them both.

And to England again, this time via George Passant, the second novel of "Strangers and Brothers," C.P. Snow's long series about British life and mores from the 1920s through the 60s.

I had a good time running around England and Scotland, reading John Buchan's espionage classic, The 39 Steps.

I reread The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes, which took me on a reading journey to Wales and Germany.

I recently completed the historical novel Men Like Shadows by Dorothy Charques about the Third Crusade. It takes place primarily in Sicily and Palestine, so I've listed it above in both countries.

I finished The Wooden Shepherdess by Richard Hughes. This novel provides an in-depth look at the Nazi's rise, taking the reader through 1934 and culminating with Hitler's brutal 1934 consolidation of power known as the Night of the Long Knives. Some time is also spent with British politics of the same era. This is the sequel to The Fox in the Attic, which I also read recently. So, Germany and Great Britain.

I was happy to finally read Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi. First published in 1870, Seven Brothers is considered the first novel written in Finnish. Previously, Finnish novels had been written in Swedish, or even Latin. The seven boisterous, brawling Jukola brothers live in rural Finland. They are just entering adulthood when their mother dies, leaving them parentless. And while they bicker endlessly with each other, they remain fiercely loyal as well, presenting a united front to the outside world, which wants them to simmer down, to put it mildly. The adventures of these brothers as well as the evolution of their internal relations and their development into mature adults provide the novel's course. But the novel seems almost as much to be a parable about life in general and Finnish rural culture in particular, and the narrative is seeded frequently with entertaining and enlightening folk tales, as told by one of the brothers. While it took me a while to enter the flow of the narrative, in the end I enjoyed this book a lot.

Loved your list!

>23 jordantaylor: Thanks! Hope your travels are going well.

I finished McCampbell's Heroes: The Story of the U.S. Navy's Most Celebrated Carrier Fighters of the Pacific War by Edwin P. Hoyt. This is a history of a famed carrier-based fighter group who flew in the Pacific Theater in the latter stages of World War 2. Sadly, while I found the book informative to a certain extent, I also found it to be quite tedious for long stretches. For my purposes here, I'm listing this in Asia and just listing it as the Pacific Ocean since almost all of the action takes place at sea.

Took my ninth reading trip to England this year, as I finished up James Herriot's poignant and enjoyable "All Creatures Great and Small" series with All Things Wise and Wonderful.

Made my fourth reading trip to Germany this year, but my first history, via The Pink Triangle: the Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant. This is an excellent if depressing overview of the harassment, arrest, torture and murder in thousands of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.

Even 79 years after its original publication, Madame Curie, Eve Curie's marvelous biography of her famous mother, Marie Curie, remains a vibrant and important work. I consider this biography a reading visit both to Poland, as Eve provides an extremely vivid account of her mother's childhood and young adulthood, and France, where Marie Curie studied, undertook, along with her husband, Pierre, her ground-breaking, Nobel Prize earning research, and raised her children.

I've wrapped up my reading for calendar year 2016. This year I read to 15 countries, including the U.S., plus to two designations of my own, the Pacific Ocean and the British Army. Within the U.S., I read to nine states. Other than the U.S., the quantity winner as usual was England, with nine entries.

Cheers all! I'll be getting up a new world travels thread in a bit.

Enjoyed "following" your travels again this year. Richard Hughes is a favourite of mine, as is The Thirty-Nine Steps. You have put Seven Brothers on my list for 2017. Looking forward to your thread then.