Where in the World Are You Now? January 2008

I am in Haarlem, Holland in the 17th century with Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire.

I am in Kenya, with The Camel Bookmobile.

I'm in Tudor England with The Boleyn Inheritance. Lots of jousting going on!

I'm taking a little break from fiction, and I'm in Victorian London in 1854 to discover the cause of the great cholera outbreak in The Ghost Map: the story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic and how it changed Science, Cities and the the Modern World.

Nickelini - The Ghost Map's been high on my wishlist since I listened to this interview (on Penguin podcasts). Let me know what you think!

#4 and 5 The Ghost Map was wonderful! I read it a couple of months ago, right after reading Justinian's Flea, and found it twice as entertaining (and accessible) without being any the less well-researched. Enjoy!

I've been in Rome, ca. 200 A.D. all day today, reading Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day. Excellent little book!

I spent the first day of the year listlessly wandering between the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, trying to figure out what was so wondrous about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and have now decamped with a certain sense of relief to Kurdistan: My Father's Rifle.

I am all over the map right now.

I'm listening to Don Quixote, which was a great way to make those long holiday drives a bit more bearable. I'm reading Breathless in Bombay (an LT ARC). STILL finishing the end of Omeros, which got put aside during the holidays. I also started Foreigners, another LT ARC, but then my wife picked it up. And I've started into Robert Pinsky's Gulf Music. And then there's the non-fiction...

I am in a future version of Cambridge, Massachusetts ~ aka the Republic of Gilead according to Wikipedia; I am reading The Handmaid's tale, by Margaret Atwood.

I am in Mexico City in 1975 with some crazy poets in The Savage Detectives but I believe I'm going to start moving ahead in time and to various other places around the world.

I'm still in Tunisia with Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi.

I left Alabama (Looking for Alaska) yesterday and am now in New York city as Brian McNulty, bartender, in What Goes Around Comes Around by Con Lehane.

I'm visiting with Jane Eyre at the Lowood School in 19th Century England....and being horribly neglectful to those other books which I have already started and should finish but don't wanna right now.

#5 The Ghost Map's been high on my wishlist since I listened to this interview (on Penguin podcasts). Let me know what you think!

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I finished The Ghost Map yesterday. It was worth reading. I can't say I loved it, but it may be my mood (I haven't really been into non-fiction lately).

Now on to Burger's Daughter, by Nadine Gordimer. Not sure if I'm in the mood for this one, either! :-)

I am in Iran, a few centuries back, reading The Blood of FLowers by Anita Amirrevzani. And at bedtime, I'm back in England with The Child in Time by Ian McEwan.

I've finished Pillar of Salt by Memmi so am leaving Tunisia. It was an excellent book about self-identity, semi-autobiographical, set in Tunis. The main character, like Memmi, eventually studies and teaches philosophy (it's said to be in the vein of the French 'despair' novel). That said, by the end of the novel, and after he spends much of WWII still wondering who he is and whether he fits in, I just wanted the guy to get his head out of his a$%. It's got a Camus blurb on the book (Are you listening, depressaholic? I suspect you'd love it . . . even if he and Camus had a falling out later on).

So, before I start my last 'required' African novel tomorrow, I thought I'd run off to 18th century Amsterdam for the 160-page The Silent Sin by Anja Sicking.

I'm all over the place, but mostly in Ireland with the great Colm Tóibín's collection of short stories, Mothers and Sons.

I just left the Caucausus region in 950 A.D. with Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. (An adventure story that was great fun.) I am now in Kiev in the 1970's with Out of Line Growing Up Soviet by Tina Grimberg.

Mostly I'm in London but think I'll soon be spending a lot of time in Cairo in Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively.

Touchstones appear to be MIA.

I am in Pisa, Italy, mid-1860's. Travelling through Europe and the Holy Land with Mark Twain. I'm reading The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, and loving it!

Well, to start the new year, by day I am in Egypt with Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell, and at night I am in Italy with evil villains who escaped from Inkheart by Corneilia Funke.

(sorry, touchstones not working)

#16
Memmi is already in my sights for the future, though sadly not the near future. Any connection with Camus intrigues me. I received 'Camus in New York' from my SantaThing, so he/she clearly did some homework!

I'm in China around new year 1924, where the writer Lu Xun tells the (short) story of the widow Xianglin Sao who is remarried against her will by her greedy mother in law.

With The Savage Detectives, I have now traveled to Barcelona, Paris, and the south of France, with visits back to Mexico City, and think I'm about to go Israel. Timewise, it's now later in the 1970s.

I'm now in the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest, chasing The Shape Shifter and other less mystical wrongdoers with the legendary (but now retired) Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navaho Tribal Police.

I have left mid-18th century Netherlands (a little letdown) and headed back to Zimbabwe with Nervous Conditions. Haven't started it yet as the cold I have is making concentrating on reading difficult. May have to settle for something else during the ride south. . .

I'm in Tokyo investigating a crime with Detective Minami. I now know the Japanese for "scratch-scratch" and "tick-tock" not to mention "want to play?" (in prostitute speak). The book is "Tokyo Year Zero" (Touchstones not working) by David Peace. Frustrated because as there's a glossary I look up the Japanese words but either find they're not included (presumably because every competent reader knows what they mean) or that I should know what they mean having looked before and have just forgotten. Still it's an interesting insight into another age/another world.

I'm in southern Spain, in the region of Adalusia with The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. But it looks like I'm going to end up in Egypt again!

I'm in Cairo with Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell.

After that, I'll be going into Russia with War and Peace.

I'm on a journey across the USA with Mr. Wednesday and Shadow in American Gods.

I've just left a desolate island in Lord of the Flies and am off to the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts via Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.

In the kitchen, I'm in 250 B.C. with The Celts by Herm as they are invading the Peloponnesian peninsula, having battered Rome in the previous chapter. In the bedroom, I'm in England in the early 1800s with Troy Chimneys, with Miles Lufton and his alter ego, Pronto.

Part of me is still in death-throes-of-apartheid South Africa, even though it's been more than a week since I finished Spud, by John van de Ruit, and another part is wandering Ediburgh and Paris with Bertie in Love over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith. Currently, however, I am vaguely planning some real (!) travel with 1000 Places to See Before You Die, Make the Most of Your Time on Earth, and The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel. But I really ought to visit my great love, the time/place that matters so much to me it made it onto my Stanford application: Rome in the first century B.C., with Augustus by Anthony Everitt.

France 20thC with Henrietta Taylor and her couple of books on her life in the Luberon region. Finished the first Escaping and now onto the second Lavender and Linen. No touchstones for these two I am afraid.

I am in Cambridge, England studying some Case Histories with Kate Atkinson.

I've just left 18th century Scotland, in Outlander, which I found really enjoyable (slightly to my surprise if I'm honest I think!) and am now about to follow Maurice Herzog as he climbs Annapurna in Nepal.

I'm weaving back and fourth between 19th c St Petersburg in Crime and Punishment, and turn-of-the-century Australia in My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin).

I've left Cambridge and now find myself once again in 17th century Holland with the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. I wonder if she'll meet up with the Ugly Stepsister (see #1 above).

I started out in Vietnam during the late sixties/early seventies in Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien. We've traveled through Vietnam to Laos, Malaysia, Iran, and expect to end in Paris. Compelling book and I expect the ending to hold some special excitement.

I finished with Roman Britain last night, after completing Lindsey Davis's 14th Falco offering The Jupiter Myth. (Don't know why the Lindsey Davis touchstone won't work.)

And now I'm just about to depart for New South Wales, Australia, with some English convicts in Kate Grenville's The Secret River!

After finishing Nervous Conditions this morning, I left Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and went back to early 1800's England with George Eliot's novella The Lifted Veil.

I left Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, hid out in Pakistan for awhile, emigrated to America, then flew back home 15 years later. I'm finally reading The Kite Runner.

I am in England flashing between the present and the years leading up to WW1 in The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

I am in 17th century America with the Pilgrims and the Strangers that made up the company of settlers, just coming to safe harbor at Cape Cod Bay after 65 very difficult days at sea on the Mayflower by Philbrick.

After a brief stopover in England with the Eliot novella, I found myself missing Africa and spent this evening with The Moonlight Bride by Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta. It was only a novella so I am ready to move on again. . .

I am in London with The Ladies of Lyndon by Margaret Kennedy.
I suspect I will be heading south, to Paris, soon.

I'm in Maine with Here If You Need Me; in Biafra with Half a Yellow Sun; and in the Hudson River Valley with A Ship Made of Paper.

Having just spent some time in Kenya with Barack Obama's Dreams of my Father, I'm now in South Africa reading Cry, the Beloved Country. Very moving book ...

Happily, I have just left WWII Germany (well it's a sad place, despite being a great book), courtesy of The Book Thief, and have finally decided to take The Steep Approach to Garbadale, Scotland.

I haven't been there since i visited the thoughtful Isabel Dalhousie in Edinburgh, who i must say definitely has The Right Attitude to Rain. Hope that it hasn't changed much ;)

I've just left Scotland for Khartoum, Sudan in The Translator by Leila Aboulela. Spare prose, rich to read.

I'm in America sometime in the future with David Lozell Martin's Our American King - a satirical, post-apocalyptic tale (I'm not quite sure where in the US I'm in yet).

I've finished my visit with Jane Eyre and have decided to transport myself to the mythical world of Alera to see how Tavi is doing in Academ's Fury by Jim Butcher

I'm just leaving La Mancha, Spain with Don Quixote and Bombay, India with Breathless in Bombay, and not quite sure where to go next.

CEP - The Translator is a book I just pushed on my wife; I hope you enjoy it.

Lindsalc - That is an old favorite of mine (I have my parents' copy). I must re-read it sometime. Too Late the Phalarope is also good, if not quite as good as Cry the Beloved Country.

I left the Dominican Republic after learning about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which I adored and couldn't put down and now I am in Cairo deciding the fate of the world after WWI in Dreamers of the Day

>54 A_musing:: A_musing, Cry, the Beloved Country was a quick read for me -- started yesterday, finished today -- but one of the most powerful books I've read in a while. Wow.

ok, I've figured out that I was in Alexandria, Virginia but am now in D.C. waiting for the 'king' to declare himself in this morbidly witty and irreverent satire. See#52 above. A weirdly entertaining read.

I am in Tibet with a Chinese visitor, in Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian. We've just witnessed a sky burial - kind of gruesome.

I am digging for gold in New Zealand in The Colour and at the same time I am reading with the Queen of England in An Uncommon Reader and visiting with some upper class London toffs in The Line of Beauty.

I am in Perth, Western Australia with Cloudstreet by Tim Winton.

I've left Afghanistan, a little wiser, a little sadder, but all the better for the journey.

I'm now in the fictional town of Templeton, New York, based on the author's hometown of Cooperstown, New York, with an advanced copy of Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton. So far it's very intriguing, especially the way she works in James Fenimore Cooper's characters as if they had actually existed in her town. I'd agree with Stephen King's assessment of it as Bradbury-esque.

I've checked out of the Hotel du Lac near Geneva and moved on to Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, a small village near Toulouse, France to open a Chocolat shop.

Having recently left Botswana in Maru, I am now in Zanzibar with Desertion and quite enjoying the journey.

I just moved to Cleveland, Ohio (USA), being Caroline in The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.

I'm in the middle of a draft riot in New York City in 1863 with the Gangs of New York. The truth was even more horrific than the movie. Yikes! Run and Hide!

I am rattling along the cliffs & beaches of Sicily with Elizabeth inEat, Pray, Love . Enjoying every minute of it ! I wonder where we will eat next ??

I'm currently in the dark castle of Elsinore with some crazy Danish royalty--currently studying Hamlet. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'll be revisiting various locations in 19th century England as I reread Jane Eyre for another class. No time for any reading or traveling of my own.

I'm in Australia (not quite sure what part) with My Place by Sally Morgan, an autobiography of all things. Begins in the early 1950's and seems to concentrate on the author's early years.

I'm in a bunker in Lebanon, afraid of war really, but trying not to show it.

I just started reading Beaufort (no touchstone available) by the Israeli novelist Ron Leshem.

At the moment I am in Afghanistan with The Twentieth Wife, but it appears the book will soon be moving me to India.

I'm also floating in the space between life and death with Hotel World.

And occasionally I'm in Zeeland with my buddy Beowulf.

I'm in Paris with Have Mercy On Us All by Fred Vargas.

I'm travelling through Northern India during the time of the Raj with Kim, as well as hanging out with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in long-ago England and spending some time On Chesil Beach.

I've left the post-apocalyptic world of The Road and have landed in New Hampshire with Light on Snow (Anita Shreve).

I'm in post-conflict Bosnia in The Small Boat of Great Sorrows - and about to head to Rome. It's a great read.

I'm reading March, which involves roaming around the US during the Civil War. And I'm listening to Astrid and Veronika, so I am visiting Sweden at the same time.

I had a fairly harrowing trip with Misha a jewish girl searching for her parents in 'the East'. We went from Belgium through Germany and Poland to The Ukraine, often in the company of Wolves. The book is Surviving With Wolves by Misha Defonesca.

Presently I am in Russia, watching Moscow burn with Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

I've left Nigeria and have journeyed to Pakistan with The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I have several other books on the go, but this one is too gripping to put down.

I am shuttling between the United States (The Muse Asylum) and Spain (The Club Dumas).

I am sympathising (I think) in the pre-USA with one of the survivors of Custer's last stand in Delia Falconer's The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers.

I'm in an alternate England visiting with Thursday Next in the Eyre Affair...this should be interesting since I just read Jane Eyre for the first time not too long ago.

I'm the Marquesas Islands with Melville's Typee - so far, a story that deals with Western contact with other cultures in a way that is rich in detail and sensitive in tone compared to other Western books.

On the non-fiction side, I'm reading up on Medieval al-Andalus (Spain) with God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe. This is part of a sudden Quixote-inspired fascination with Medieval and Renaissance Spain.

I've returned to Moscow but instead of entertaining devils and cats, this time I'm hanging out with Levin and Vronsky and Anna Karenina.

I am in Canada around the end of the 19th century with The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan.

I am in Victorian London with Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.

I'm hanging around with a Sicilian prince and his great dane in The Leopard

I just left the alternate england of The Eyre Affair and plan on traveling to the alternate world of Alera next to check out what Tavi and company are up to in Cursor's Fury

I am in England in the year of our Ford 632 in Brave New World it is probably the fifth time I have visited and each time it is a little more interesting.

Eh, LAWriter, isn't that your book? I believe you were just flagged yesterday in another group for promoting your own books, correct?

teelgee: LAWriter has been doing this for a while. I think a number of people (myself included) have tried to explain to LAWriter that their messages aren't welcome in talk, but it doesn't seem to have had any impact whatsoever.

I guess Tim will have to do something about it, since LAWriter does not get it!

I am still in Western Australia with My Place; however, I am also in London trying to write a dissertation on Keats (while writing a book on euthanasia to pay the rent) with Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street.

I am leaving Perth, Western Australia behind, having finished Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. Now I'm off to Antarctica with the Bill Manhire anthology The Wide White Page.

I am in Elizabethan England in the year 1569 with The Hooded Hawke by Karen Harper.

I've decided being in London is not enough (see #92); I have also placed one foot in Colombiá with Delirium by Laura Restrepo

I am in London's underworld in the 1930s with Night and the City by Gerald Kersh.

I've left Hamlet's Denmark, and I've made my way south to the Adriatic coast of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm still wandering the Yorkshire moors with Jane Eyre. I expect to be only in Europe between now and April, as I'm studying Victorian Brit Lit and Shakespeare.

I'm in the French Alps with For Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas.

I'm dividing my time between Moscow, Petersburg, Pokrovskoe and Yergushovo; still immersed in the lives of Vronsky, Levin and Anna Karenina.

I've now left the Marquesas Islands with Typee, took a quick detour into Dark Age Cornwall with Tristan and Iseault, and am still exploring medieval Spain with God's Crucible, but am now sinking into 18th Century England in Foreigners by Caryl Phillips and considering what to read from Haiti next.

I am in a few places - crossing the mediterranean, in Washington DC, London, but mostly in an unnamed Southern African country in V.S. Naipaul's In a Free State.

Its a re-read this one, and I'm still not entirely convinced by it.

I, too, am in more than one place at the moment. I am enjoying quiet evenings in the deep woods of Norway with Out Stealing Horses. I am also attending a wedding in Saudi Arabia in the beginning of Girls of Riyadh. I am very much enjoying both of these books even though they are very different.

emaestra - Out Stealing Horses was one of my favorite reads last year, I think it's stunning.

I've left 1860s Sicily (The Leopard), and am now in 1790s London, having just started The Secret River. Looks like I'll be going to Oz soon.

Oh yes, lindsacl, you will be in Australia before you know it!

I am in the British Royal Navy, it is the mid-19th Century. Our ships are frozen in the arctic ice in far northern Canada as we seek the Northwest Passage. The leader of our expedition, Sir John Franklin, has died. The tinned food we brought with us, enough to last 3 years at full rations, 5 years with some rationing and 7 years in the worst situation, is mostly poisoned, victim to the shoddy practices of the victualer who got the Navy contract by underbidding everyone else. We spent the winter of 1845-46 iced in near an island, but relatively comfortable. When the ice melted, we sailed south and west, seeking the passage, but winter soon arrived again, this time icing us in 25 miles from the nearest land. Then, the ice never melted in the summer of 1847, and it is now January 1848. Our ships have not moved in 18 months. It is usually 60 below zero above deck, we are nearly out of coal for the boilers to heat the ship. We will be out of food in a matter of weeks. And worst of all. Something is out there. It's huge, powerful, fast and deadly and has been attacking and devouring my crewmates, including the aforementioned Sir John Franklin.

I am reading, and loving, The Terror by Dan Simmons. I find it hard to put it down to get some sleep at night, it's that good. A great combination of historical, nautical and horror fiction.

@106 TheTwoD's - I think that you've just seriously upped the bar of this thread! I loved your post. You had me rivited and now I'm dying to know what happens.

Part of me also hates you (not literally) as well for adding yet another book onto my TBR wishlist!!

I'm still in Colombia with Delirium but am also in Cranford outside of Manchester, England in the mid-19th century. An amusing reread.

Avaland - I'm in Cranford too! Do you have any idea who the narrator of this story is? I'm on the 5th story, and she never seems to say who she is. . . or have I missed it? Anyway, they're an amusing bunch, I'll agree.

>109 Nickelini: I'm only on the 2nd story as I'm reading the other book also (upstairs/downstairs). . .

I'm in Palestine in the 40's hearing the stories of Amos Oz's friends and families, having escaped the holocaust and establishing a place where they will be able to forever be free of the pogroms and anti-semetism. A Tale of Love and Darkness is sort of a fictionalized memoir; it makes me very much want to read some of his fiction.

I am in Northern Norway and I've just begun readingWar and peace by Leo Tolstoy (in Norwegian translation by Geir Kjetsaa). Some years ago I read about a third of this huge novel, but I think I am more motivated this time to finish it, and I hope I'll learn a little more about European and Russian history, and get to know Tolstoy's literary (and real) persons in "War and peace".

kjellika -- we have a group reading War and Peace together (well, sort of together, everyone is reading at their own pace) - it would be great to have you join us. You can find it here.