Where in the world are you reading? (3)

New year, new thread.

I've spent the last week in North Stonefield, Connecticut. It's a fairly dour and un-Christian population of residents, with a few notable exceptions - Grandma Griswold and Aunt Mariana, and probably Aunt Martha too, though she gets no page time, always doing the work in the background. Grandma Called It Carnal.

I'm in 1918 Devon, with a young schoolmaster in To Serve Them All My Days.

>2 fuzzi: That was one of my favorite Delderfield novels. Did you ever try the series that began with God is an Englishman?

I'm on Yorkshire veterinary immersion: reading All Creatures Great and Small, as well as bingeing my way through the original BBC series from the 70's.

I'm reading The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James. Giving myself the creeps, reading one each day just before bedtime. Some of them feel campy, some give the impression that the author was tired of them and just stopped writing (although I get the feeling he believed in letting the reader's imagination finish the story), and some are chilling to the bones.

>3 gmathis: I read the Horseman Riding By series many years ago, loved it. I tried to read God is an Englishman but didn't get very far.

But I'm loving To Serve Them All My Days! It was my mother's favorite Delderfield.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Herriot series, both books and television. There's several books about a vet written by Joyce Stranger that you'd probably like, starting with Vet on Call.

Rome and Palestine, circa 30 AD: The Robe has been on my self TBR for ages and I don't know what took me so long.

At the base of l'Homme Mort on the evening of 30 September with the 308th. Soon the situation will become one of Finding the Lost Battalion.

>5 fuzzi: Making note ... Vet on Call does sound like fun!

I am in southern Ireland in the 1800s, on Hungry Hill and not enjoying it at all.

So every now and then I slip out to the river to listen to The Wind in the Willows, which is delightful.

I’m spending time on Sweetbriar Farm. Not sure yet whether it’s Kentucky or Tennessee. I’m in the company of Maria Thompson Daviess and she is wrestling against crippling rheumatism to tell me her life story.
She’s telling it in seven year packets; thus the title Seven Times Seven. She tells great stories; even if her geography is vague.

>8 gmathis: anything by Joyce Stranger is good. The first book of hers I read was Rex, which caught my eye at the library due to the dog on the cover. I was 8 years old. It's not a children's book, but I loved the dog aspects. As an adult I appreciate her works fully. My favorite is probably The Running Foxes.

>11 fuzzi: Just pulled up the Joyce Stranger author page. I recognized several titles, particularly Kym, but I couldn't tell you if I've ever read any of them or or not. Wouldn't it be fun to retrieve the titles and authors of all the unmemorable books you've read and forgotten over the years from our (at least in my case) rapidly aging brains?

I'm in 1890s Leipzig with Maurice Guest.

I am in Minnesota with Birding Minnesota. The wrong book came up with the touchstones so I just added the name of the book.

>12 gmathis: I do that, see a title or recognize a cover and memories of reading something 40 years ago come flooding back.

Quick wintry sojourn to 1860's Holland with Hans Brinker. One of my church kiddos (fifth grade) brought her copy of Heidi to read between teaching hours today, which inspired me to nab the copy from the 99-cent rack to share.

>16 gmathis: Both childhood favorites!

>17 2wonderY: Her Heidi was an abridged version, and the vocabulary of juvenile readers circa 1865 was a lot more sophisticated, as well as their capacity to plow through an entire chapter of exposition about Holland's geography and history...but we'll see how it goes!

I made it out of the Charlesvaux Ravine with the 194 survivors (680 went in) (see post >7 alco261: above). The read was actually exhausting. I was going to go over to Red China and watch as The World Turned Upside Down and the place was torn apart by the Red Guard but I'm covered in dirt, dried blood, excrement, and gore, I'm mentally spent, my two wounds are badly infected, and I'm starving so I think I'll get cleaned up, get some medical attention, get something to eat, get some sleep and then and sit back and ride around in a Caboose in the U.S. for awhile.

>19 alco261: Whee! Rough times! Glad you made it back.

I’m in Hungary with The Good Master. It’s one of those visiting a far-away place books that was so popular for children in the first half the 20th century.
>19 alco261: Glad you are resting in your happy place for a bit.

Ashfield, somewhere in New England, where the Finches’ Fabulous Furnace shakes up the entire town.

I am in France with Madame Fourcade's Secret War.

I'm somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean with The Dark Frigate. I'm really enjoying it, kind of like Treasure Island.

Sir Walter Scott and I are in search of the hold of a highland robber. We’re looking for stolen milch cows in Waverly.

I am in Ireland at a wedding wondering who killed the best man in Murder at an Irish Wedding.

Cannery Row in Monterey CA. Doing a reread and finding this delightful. I read Sweet Thursday when I got home from an actual trip to Monterey and Cannery Row, then decided I should read this one again since it had been so long I had no actual memories of the story.

I’m in the Dakota territory with Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter also in Paris with Henry James in The Ambassadors.

>27 MrsLee: I love combining traveling with reading novels set in the place like L.M. Montgomery and Prince Edward Island.

I’m in Tennessee over a century ago. I’m visiting new friends and old in Harpeth Valley.

Just got back from Russia via a cargo ship full of livestock overseen by James Herriot ... The Lord God Made Them All.

I'm home from Cannery Row, I love this book and may revisit it again, or intend to, in the future.

Heading out across the wilderness with Marcus Whitman, M.D.: Pioneer and Martyr by Clifford Merrill Drury. Not sure I will finish this, having already read a biography of the Whitmans, but I will give the author a chance to enchant me.

>32 MrsLee: Ever see the Nick Nolte/Deborah Winger film adaptation?

>28 BonnieJune54: I remember saving The Long Winter until the hottest part of summer when I was a kiddo, then reading it ad nauseum while eating Freakies cereal. (I had Little Town on the Prairie virtually memorized, too.)

>34 gmathis: I was hoping for a cooling effect. So far I just feel guilty about being so whiny about the heat.

>33 gmathis: Haha, at first I thought you meant an adaptation of the Marcus Whitman biography! I have not seen any film adaptations of Cannery Row. Are there any good ones? I would almost be afraid to have my mental images replaced by film. I especially do NOT want to see Doc as Nick Nolte!

>36 MrsLee: Uh-oh. Maybe not, then ;) I've never read Sweet Thursday, but I think a good deal of the movie plot was pulled from that as well. The supporting cast provides plenty of chuckle moments, though.

>37 gmathis: I could get behind Edward Norton as Doc. He would do a marvelous job.

I quit reading the Marcus Whitman bio and have moved on to the Scotland and England border in the 1500s, with The Steel Bonnets: the story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. So far I have enjoyed the introduction.

>36 MrsLee: surprisingly, Nick Nolte did a tremendous job as Doc in Cannery Row. It didn’t do well at the box office but it was a great movie.

Heading back in time to the 1700s with a reread of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The last time I read it I was in my 20s and didn't love it. Thought I would give it another go now that I am in my 60s to see if the things I've learned along the way will help me to appreciate it more. Also I recently watched Death Comes to Pemberley (I have not read the book by P.D. Jmes) on the Masterpiece Theater channel.

Let me know how that goes ... I have tried to tackle P&P multiple times over the years and just couldn't make it past the first couple of chapters.

So, I took my break from the fighting in the Charlesvaux Ravine (see above) and headed over to China where I found The World Turned Upside Down. After returning from there a couple of days ago I had to spend the weekend washing all of the blood and gore out of the library carpet. Now that the library is back to normal I am just going to sit down with The Library Book and stay at home for a bit.

>41 gmathis: I think now that I understand the ere she was writing in, and her humor, I enjoy them more. I am also amazed that I have to keep reminding myself that this woman was writing in her times. Sometimes she feels very modern to me.

Bopping back and forth between Houston and Cape Canaveral with The Astronaut Wives Club. I'm not a habitual nonfiction reader, but this is well done and reads like a good story should.

I'm in the cathedral city of Tolnbridge trying to solve a murder in Unholy orders.

I've been in the woods, hills and valleys of the Chilterns in southern England, with the Girls of the Hamlet Club.

>46 Sakerfalcon: Those look right up my alley. Tell me your thoughts on it, please.

I'm off on a Glorious Misadventure with Rezanov. At the moment we are in Brazil where we are reprovisioning our ships and preparing for the run around the cape and on up the coast to our Russian Alaska territory.

>47 2wonderY: The author, Elsie Oxenham, is considered one of the "greats" of the British girls' story, along with Elinor M. Brent-Dyer and Dorita Fairlie Bruce. I've read some of Oxenham's later books in the Abbey series, with mixed reactions. I actually think Hamlet Club is the one I've enjoyed the most. Many of the books aren't actually school stories, more about the old girls and what they get up to after they've left - lots of folk dancing, some charity work, marriage (though husbands stay very far off-stage!), etc. I find the characters' speech tends towards the gushing, and there is a lot of condescension towards the lower classes. But the sense of place is wonderful, and the books centre women and their outer and inner lives at a time when society largely prioritised men and their achievements. I came to these books as an adult reader, but I suspect if I'd discovered them in my tweens/teens I'd have loved them, as indeed many of my friends do. This blog provides plot summaries and shows the best reading order for the series. It also gives a LOT of detail about the folk dance content of each book!

Enthusiastically “getting into” American local color literature lately. Since I love Cape Cod, I took up Joseph C. Lincoln’s Cape Cod Stories (1907), a story cycle about two old coots and their misadventures, and am enjoying it immensely. I also recently finished Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s very entertaining The Cape Cod Mystery (1931), the first in her Asey Mayo series.

>50 PatrickMurtha: Is one of those coots Captain Shadrach?

>51 2wonderY: Barzilla Wingate and Jonadab Wixon, how are those for names!

I’m flying over British East Africa/Kenya with Beryl Markham in West with the Night. The writing is lyrical and there is a terrific sense of time and place.

Today was pretty rough. It was a Black Sunday: Ploesti. For Operation Tidal Wave we flew from Benghazi across the Med, turned towards Romania over Corfu dropped down on the deck outside Pitesti and came in at 20-30 feet. The flak was horrific and we lost a lot of planes in our formation. Our B-24, CHUG A LUG, hit a balloon cable, took five or six hits before bomb release, and then just before the release point we were hit everywhere - nose, waist, vertical stabilizer, two men wounded, one killed. We dropped our bombs, came out of the smoke from the burning refineries and then to avoid the flak we dropped down so low into the corn fields on the other side of the target that we wound up harvesting corn in the bomb bay. Somehow we made it home.

>54 alco261: Very glad you made it! Whew!

I've just finished Episode at Toledo, which actually mostly took place in Madrid and northern Portugal and finished in Scotland.

2024 was pretty gory (see some of my posts above). I barely made it out of the trenches alive on The Eastern Front shortly before midnight last night and I decided I needed something more restful to start off 2025 so I'm now travelling Up and Down California in 1860-1864 with Mr. Brewer. So far (page 48) the trip has been just what I needed....of course things are happening in other parts of the U.S. On page 48 it is Tuesday February 28, 1861 and Mr. Brewer said, " I wish I could be in "The States" this and next week - exciting times! Next week must tell what the South will do on Lincoln's inauguration."