There's a Time and a Place for Everything

(This might almost count as "another silly game"....)

Murder on the Orient Express (touchstone is being wonky...) is properly read on a train, snowbound in the Balkans. (Failing that, at least on *some* train - I suppose the LIRR would do in a pinch.)

Alice in Wonderland is of course properly read while picnicking on the banks of the Isis. (Failing that, at any riverside picnic.)

Pretty much the same locale - the Oxford backs - is the place to read Zuleika Dobson (touchstone not working...), or the early bits of Brideshead Revisited (which then shifts to someplace like Castle Howard, of course...).

The Last of the Mohicans needs to be read at Cooper's Cave in Glens Falls, and at Fort William Henry in Lake George Village.

To read Rupert Brooke, you ideally should be in Grantchester, at 2:50pm.

Neuromancer is properly read in a 'capsule' hotel in Chiba City. (Failing that, maybe at the scrap-electronics dealers on Canal Street)

Persuasion is properly read at the Assembly Rooms at Bath; and then down at Lyme Regis. Where you should also read The French Lieutenant's Woman.

What else is the proper setting for reading which book?

And - more importantly - has anybody here actually done this sort of thing?

Just for completeness, where were you when you read Ironweed?

(oops, a double post - my connection has gone erratic on me...)

Yep, you have me pegged: yes, a bunch of it got read on Hawk Street (now a lost street) in Albany....

Well, I'll claim Winter in Majorca read in Puerto Pollensa. There wasn't a very big selection of books in English in the shop when we were there in the 70s.

Norwich's History of Venice on the way to, in, and on the way home from Venice (it's a big book!).

Given the opportunity, I would read The Iliad at Hissarlik.

Birdsong in Perth, Scotland while researching my grandfather's death in WWI (Black Watch Regiment).
Will be in Rye (aka Tilling) rereading the Mapp & Lucia series by EF Benson for the umpteenth time this September
Leaven of Malice by Robertson Davies in small town Ontario

Touchstones peripatetic tonight

Iain M. Banks's The Bridge should be read on the foreshore (preferably on a cold grey day with heavy mist) beneath the Forth Bridge. For those that don't know that is Edinburgh.

I have managed this occasionally, although it's hard to get the timing right - I started The fall of Constantinople at Istanbul airport, but finished it in Oxfordshire, for instance. It's easier when you're actually living somewhere - North and South in Manchester, Jude the obscure in Oxford, Eline Vere in The Hague.

Probably the silliest connection I can remember making was Moby-Dick on a sailing holiday - in the Ionian sea!

>1 AsYouKnow_Bob:
I was in Oxford when Brideshead revisited was first on TV: it would have been instant social death to have been seen with a copy. Or a teddy bear. There was a thriving little industry providing tourists with "Brideshead tours" of the city (now replaced by "Morse tours", I suppose).

Should probably point out the Oxford doesn't have "Backs", although I believe they may have such things in various East Anglian universities. Christ Church Meadow or the University Parks would be a good spot.

Castle Howard is a place well worth visiting in its own right, but its only Brideshead connection is that it was used as a location for part of the TV series.

A few years ago I went to London for four days with class. We were staying in a youth hostel. However, to get to the entrance you had to walk over cobbles and it was a sort of tunnel.

One evening our group returned to the youth hostel from a day of exploring London, and it was dark. Suddenly that passage, with its cobbles and tunnel-like appearance reminded me of old London. More specifically: Jack the Ripper. As a horror-freak I loved it!

I've read Pixel Juice in Manchester if that counts.

Cambridge Uni does have "the backs"

Inspector Morse should be read in Oxford

I used to take The Tidewater Tales on vacation to Chincoteague every year. I loved to read the passage about Chincoteague oysters, knowing I could drive out and buy some whenever I wanted to.

I saw th movie of Under the Volcano at la cinema in Cuernavaca. It was so neat seeing the town in the film & then stepping out of the theater onto those same streets.

This has nothing to do with a place, but a time of sorts. I developed a nasal infection while reading The Stand. I got pretty weirded out and never did finish it.

I would read Dune on Arrakis.

For a place that I have a better chance at visiting, I would read The epic of Gilgamesh in Iraq (maybe in 30 years when stuff settles down there)

One very late and restless night, I drove out to the beach, walked to the end of the pier on an almost moonless night when the waves were coming in high and pulled out The Black Seas of Infinity, an HP Lovecraft anthology and started reading The Shadow over Innsmouth.

I'd love to read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in Rennes-le-Chateau, sitting right next to the creepy carving of Asmodeus.

Bonjour Tristesse on the sands of the Riviera.

Ah, kawika, that is brilliant. I always thought New England would be a good place for reading Lovecraft, though for a long time after discovering Lovecraft, I felt reluctant to visit New England.

Life : a user's manual by Georges Perec needs to be read in Paris, preferably in an apartment house with a diversity of residents.

>20 vpfluke:
...at a little before eight in the evening on the 23rd of June 1975 - obviously, you'd have to read all the chapters at the same time, or it wouldn't work :-)

9> phew, I was getting worried for a second that I'd lived in Oxford most of my life and missed that Oxford had "backs"! reading_fox is indeed correct though that Fenland Poly is equipped with the famed backs. Which, scarily enough, were one of the main reasons I decided to do a PhD here. Hmmm. Anyway, appropriately Cambridge reading has to be something like Porterhouse Blue, surely. Case Histories is also suitably Cambridge-based.

For really confusing - reading Half of a Yellow Sun while on a bus journey across Uzbekistan. Really similar climate, landscape and infrastructure to West Africa in places. Really, really confusing. I kept thinking I was half the world away... On the same trip I did start reading Samarkand in Samarkand, but it turns out that not much of the story takes place there (it would be better read in Iran) and it's all too early for the (admittedly fantastic) monuments that you can still see there.

The Tutor of History in Nepal (Kathmandu and around Pokhara) would be great.

#11

I did read Inspector Morse in Oxford (Ohio)

What about travel books?

Read Baghdad Without a Map in Iraq.

or

Read In a Sunburned Country in Australia (I have).

Maybe, read Robert Harris's Pompeii while in Italy, looking out of your hotel room at the splendor of Mount Vesuvius and the Roman ruins.

And, last, but not least... my personal favorite: Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while on a cross country motorcycle trip... maybe with your kids? Or possibly just a friend or two.

> thorold, readingfox, LizT, et. al.

Please elaborate on "the backs." It's a new phrase to this NYer.

Ivanhoe should be read at Conisburgh Castle and on the bank of the river Don (both just near my house.)

Tales of the City should be read in San Fransico.

I read My Family and other Animals in Corfu but forgot to take Captain Corelli's Mandolin with me to Kefalonia.

#21

It's a puzzle, isn't it?

Hideous Kinky must be read in Morroco.

I read A Fortunate Life while roadtripping in the Western Australian Outback earlier this year. Considering it is set up and down WA I passed through many cities and towns which is mentioned within the book.

#25 CEP >> thorold, readingfox, LizT, et. al.

Please elaborate on "the backs." It's a new phrase to this NYer.

Sorry, that was my fault. Both Oxford and Cambridge have streams running through them; I visited both (...in a rush, 20-some years ago...) and confused the local terminology.

There's actually a Wikipedia article on The Backs:

The Backs, is an area of the city of Cambridge, England where several colleges of the University of Cambridge back onto the River Cam, their grounds covering both banks of the river. Its name, The Backs refers to the backs of the colleges. ...

AsYouKnow_Bob, thanks. "The backs" sound so nice. Just the place to enjoy a good read.

I read Skinny Dip by Carl Hiiasen while on a cruise. It's about a man who tries to kill his wife by throwing her overboard while they were on their anniversary cruise.

Well, as for the perfect time: I read Valley of the horses when I was doing an internship abroad. The story is about a girl who is all alone in an unfamiliar place and making it on her own and that was exactly how I felt.

Also, I think I would love to read Memoirs of a Geisha in Kyoto.

#30

They ain't streams but rivers. In Cambridge's case the River Cam - in Oxford's case it is the Thames (but they call it The Isis). Hiring a punt is the best way to see the backs (and the bridges over the river) in Cambridge in my opinion.

I read Kafka on the Shore on an all-day train trip from Sapporo to Yokohama. it was so engrossing, I paid no attention to the scenery.

#1 Obviously, The French Lieutenant's Woman has to be read on the Cobb at Lyme - preferably during a rainstorm and while wearing a floor length cape. (I don't think we'll have any problem spotting you if you try it.)
Jody! Another Greece fan by the sound of it! Are you sure we weren't separated at birth? I'd already read Captain Corelli by the time we went to Kefalonia (read it in Crete) but I sort of allow for Greek books being read in general Greece. Also read The Magus by John Fowles in Crete (should have been Spetses). A big favourite I've mentioned on another thread is The Athenian Murders which can only be read in Athens, on a balcony that overlooks the Acropolis on one side and Lykavitos on the other (though I did finish it off in Delphi). Although it's not set there, I did find Donna Tartt's The Secret History is a great book to read in Greece because of all the Ancient Greek/Bacchanalian stuff. Any other good Greek reads I've missed would be most welcome - it's back to the Peloponnese this year and I've already read Patrick Leigh Fermor's Mani and, anyway, I've got Greek travel books practically coming out of my ears, so I'd prefer fiction if there's anything you know of. Oh, and I've also got practically every book ever written about 'We-bought-a-house-in-Greece-and-wasn't-it-funny', so don't really need any more of those. I'm off to browse your library now for anything I've missed. Are you going again this year? If so, where?
Edited to correct terrible punctuation.
Edited again to remove complete misunderstanding about what I thought was a question but, on more careful reading, discovered it wasn't.
Then edited again because I'd misspelled 'edited' it the last edit.

I'd read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse (and not in Guildford after all).

>38 Grammath:

You should really read that with a towel over your shoulder.

#37 Booksloth I love Greece and would love to go back but there's no sign of a holiday for me this year (boo).

I did miss my chance to read about Odysseus in Ithika while I was there but if I ever go again I'll take The Penelopiad with me instead.

As for timing - I started Isaac's Storm while in hotel in Oklahoma City... after evacuating Houston in front of Hurricane Rita. This was a month after Katrina in 2005. That made it a bit more intense.

(Rita ending up missing Houston and pounding the Texas/Louisiana border instead).

Time, Place ... how about Character?

I read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri on a cruise where our dining-room waiter was an introspective Indian fellow. We chatted about India and America over many dinners, and when I finished the novel, I loaned it to him for the rest of the cruise. He returned it with an inscription more precious than even Lahiri's would have been.

I would like to read The Song of Roland while sitting on an outcropping two-thirds the way up a mountain in the Pyrenees.

>43 rocketjk:

Might be a touch chilly at this time of year!

(And in summer you'd have to stop every few minutes to say "Bonjour" to people on the way up and "Hola" to people on the way down, or vice-versa...)

>44 thorold:

This time of year, yes. But my wife and I spent time in the French Pays Basque in September two years back, and the weather was just perfect. Stayed in a small town called Biddarray and hiked up a mountain called L'Harriondo. Intensely beautiful. I have The Basque History of the World on my short TBR list.

I can recommend The Basque History of the world.

45> We had our honeymoon in the Pyrenees in September. It was gorgeous! And totally deserted as well :-)

Of course, I was reading such appropriate things as Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Bit too far east, but hey!

I re-read World's End after I had moved to the Mid-Hudson Valley and it made the places way more real. A well-written book should evoke the place even in those who haven't been there, tho. TC Boyle's pretty damn good at this.

I started reading From Here to Eternity after leaving Schofield Barracks, bringing my boyfriend back from Afghanistan.

I would like to read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in Tokyo. And Journey to the West on top of a misty bamboo-covered hill in Yangshuo.