Where in the world are you now? May 2008

I am in a mansion belonging to an aging rock star who has just purchased a ghost on the internet. The ghost arrives in the form of a suit belong to the dead stepfather of one of the rock star's ex-girlfriends. The suit arrived in a Heart-Shaped Box. I'm about 100 pages in and it's extremely and effectively creepy. Author Joe Hill learned his craft well from his father, Stephen King.

I am Getting Stoned with the Savages on the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific.

I am in Jane Austen's england attending a ball.

I am growing up in Iceland, looking forward to a life of travel and exploration, in The Sea Road.

I'm in Moscow with NightWatch by Sergei Lukyanenko

I'm traveling to Mount Athos in Landscape Painted with Tea by Milorad Pavic. Having read a number of books recently that use multiple story lines and tell stories within stories,I find this book is not as successful in that style. Maybe it will pick up.

I've just left the early 20th century forests of Wild Life in the Pacific Northwest and have found myself in Dublin in The Gathering, while still traveling around Russia in War and Peace.

I'm in Franch with Marcel Proust - Le temps retrouvé or Time Regained. I've directed a real-time reading group for the past two years hell bent on reading all of À la recherche du temps perdu. We've finally reached the last book. After that, we're on to the complete works of Dostoevsky. I'm doing my research now. I just left Latinuum (Rome before it was Rome) with Ursula K. Le Guin's Lavinia. More of that on my global safari thread. Right now, I've just dipped one toe over the border of the former Yugoslavia with The Return of Philip Latinovicz by Miroslav Krleža.

Well, I left the 1890s Midwestern USA of The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, made a pitstop in the vicinity of London to read the curious incident of the dog at night-time by Mark Haddon, and am just heading off to Cape Cod and the 1760s with The Widow's War by Sally Gunning.

I'm in a city being sacked in what I believe is the beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire in Umberto Eco's Baudolino.

I just mooched Baudolino......I'll be interested to hear your impressions!

I'm in Paris with Vianne Rocher - the heroine of Joanne Harris's Chocolat. The last timeI saw saw her, she was pregnant by that irresistible gypsy, Roux. Four years have passed. Vianne no longer lives in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. Instead, she lives in Paris under an assumed name: Yanne Charbonneau. What gives? Why has Vianne changed her name? Where is that mysterious ill-wind that has blown her from place to place all her life? Will she ever find refuge? Will baby Rosette cause another one of her mysterious "accidents"? And who is the eponymous girl with no shadow? To find out the answers to these important questions, you'll have to read Joanne Harris's latest book The Girl with No Shadow. Enjoy!

After a late night on Cape Cod with The Widow's War by Sally Gunning I have skipped down to current day Connecticut with Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark. Hmm....I am starting to get the itch for international travel on my next read!

I'm am listening to a neighbor plead with the tyranical husband to take back his submissive wife in Egypt during WWI, with Mahfouz's Palace Walk.

I just ran off after witnessing more than I wanted to about suckling pig preperation in Yolk by Josip Novakovich

I'm in Romania and traveling all over Europe with Vlad the Impaler and The Historian and, hopefully, with Dracula (if they've got it at Half Price Books tonight).

Well, I didn't make it out of the USA after Cape Cod. I am now in Nebraska with My Antonia by Willa Cather.

I'm in 1930s Moscow with the Children of the Arbat by Anatoli Rybakov.

I am having problems with my teeth somewhere in Germany. I am reading Local Anaesthetic by Gunther Grass.

Am coming to Montenegro soon!

I'm in England, post WWII mostly, with The Outcast by Sadie Jones.

I'm in the Red Sea on my way to Burma with The Piano Tuner. The writing in this book is beautiful and evocative.

I am in Egypt with activist Huda Shaarawi during the 1920s breaking through barriers dividing gender and class in Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist.

I'm on my way to Copenhagen in 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson, then I'll be in a little French village in Chocolat and before I go to bed tonight, I'll be in a 12 century UK area in Dragon's Keep by Janet Lee Carey.

That's it, unless you think I should include FDR era Minnosota with Milkman in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison that I must visit for my english class.

In Egypt with Ryszard Kapuscinski and Herodotus in Travels With Herodotus.

It's 1948 and I've just gotten off the boat in London from my Small Island of Jamaica.

like #25, i'm also with Ryszard Kapuscinski, but criss-crossing Africa getting the pulse of the continent under The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life.

In addition to being in 1948 London (see #26) I'm also in 1971 London with Helene Hanff who has become The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.

I'm a young German soldier five miles from the frontlines in France, growing disillusioned with this war, no matter how glorious our schoolteachers told us it would be, they don't have to fight and die in it, we do. Soon, it will be All Quiet on the Western Front. This is a re-read for me, last having read it in a PoliSci class in college 18 years ago.

I am in the Vatican reading The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Amazing that he introduces at the beginning the sense of play in liturgy, and then goes on to talk about "exitus" and "reditus".

I'm in New Jersey, headed for Boston in The Given Day by Dennis Lehane. It feels strange to be close to home . . .

I am about halfway through Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee and she has taken me from Australia, to New England, to Australia, to a cruise ship off Antarctica, to Australia, to Wisconsin. These book tours can be exhausting!

Just left Canada of the 1860's in the company of The Tenderenss of Wolves by Stef Penney and winging my way to Algeria with Assia Djebar sharing stories in The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry.

I recently touched down in Somalia with Nuruddin Farah's Links. Life is tense here, it's hard to tell who your friends are and I feel like I might get shot at any moment ...

I just left England and Mr. Salteena, who was busily review the remains of the day in The Young Visitors, or Mr. Salteena's Plan. Right now, white Canadians are rioting in Vancouver's Chinatown in Jen Sookfong Lee's The End of East. I ducked just in time to avoid getting hit in the head by a brick. If you don't hear from me again, you'll know I didn't survive the riot.

The second half of Elizabeth Costello took me back to Australia then to Belgium and back to Australia, then to Germany and then back to Australia. Exhausting read! Seriously, it was!

Now I am in current day America with Mao II by Don DeLillo.

I'm sampling Russia at the moment with Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings (1906), which was the first Russian novel, reportedly, to deal with homosexuality. Only three pages in, thanks to annoying selfish passengers on the bus blasting music out this morning and putting me off every second line.

Well, Mao II took me from the USA to Beirut and back. The Mountain Wreath gave me a glimpse into Montenegro, and I just started Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie........starting in, you guessed it, Rome.

I made my way this morning to the village of Nampossela in Mali to spend time with Kris Halloway, a peace corps volunteer, and the midwife who is her host, Monique Dembele in Monique and the Mango Rains. I'm over 1/2 way doen with my trip and will be sad to see it end.

So it turns out that Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie is set in Briton at the time when it was the northernmost outpost of the empire. Oops.

Took a detour from Briton for a sail around the world with Black Wave: A Family's Adventure at Sea and the Disaster That Saved Them by John and Jean Silverwood. Now back to Briton!

I'm in ancient Egypt being smuggled on board a merchant ship with Queen Cleopatra in When we Were Gods by Colin Falconer.

I'm a dog solving a mystery in Manhattan, New York, USA, in A Dog About Town by LT author J.F. Englert. Woof! :)

I have been in Algeria with The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry by Assia Djebar followed by a rapid visit to Gents by Warwick Collins in London. Presently I am still in the UK near Oxford as I read the true story of Julia Hollander called When The Bough Breaks.

Well, a brief sojourn to 1800s England for a terrible read, The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and I am a fan of Hardy. Now onto the early 1800s in the Hunan province of China for Snow Flower and the Secret Fan : a novel by Lisa See.

I was in Somalia for a while with Links, and am now bouncing back and forth between England and Jamaica reading Andrea Levy's Small Island ... enjoying the journey quite a bit!

In London at the moment, but will be jumping about Europe, before ending up on the Titanic in Erik Fosnes Hansen Journey At Psalm's End.

My second trip to the Titianic in just over a month, having been there already with Guillaume Lecasble's Lobster.

I'm in Nigeria with Things Fall Apart.

I am all over ... going East, West with Salman Rushdie, and Spain, Italy, France & the US with Ernest Hemingway's 49 first stories.

I'm in Vancouver BC after immigrating from China in The End of East an Early Review book by Jen Sookfong Lee.

I'm somewhere near Inverness in Outlander.

And I need a new LT group to read obsessively like I need a hole in the head, but you're reading such great books I couldn't help it!

I'm in Morocco with Frank Romano who is in the process of being essentially kidnapped into a fundamentalist mosque because of his own stupidity in Storm Over Morocco. At this point, I won't be too sad when it is time to leave...

I'm in Russia just after the last war with the Turks (late 1800s). The book mostly takes place in St. Petersburg, but we do follow the troops as well. The Crown and the Crucible.

I've just left China and Xinran's Good Women, and have just stuck a tentative foot into Peru, with Crisis Respiratoria, a collection of short stories by Susanne Noltenius (which touchstones doesn't seem to like).

One foot (unbound) in the Hunan province of China with Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: a novel by Lisa See and one foot in Los Angeles listening to Survival of the Fittest by Jonathan Kellerman

I'm currently in England with The Scarlet Pimpernel, but plan to travel with him to Paris shortly! ;)

ankhet, I read it a few months ago and had a great time! I hope you enjoy it too.

I was in Jamaica, and I'm currently in Dominica during my sail across the Wide Sargasso Sea. I expect to be taken to England before the journey ends.

I just finished immigrating to Vancouver from China in Jen Fooksong Lee's The End of East. I remain in Canada but travel to the north central part along Hudson Bay in The Tenderness of Wolves.

Time travelling from late 19th century midwestern USA in A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, back to revolutionary times in the USA with Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation by Cokie Roberts.

Leaving Oxford pesent day England and going back in time to Belsen, the second world war concentration camp in The Children of Belsen by Hetty Verolme

I'm heading for Kolyma island and the gulags, with Alexandr Solzhenisyn's The Gulag Archipelago. Its not fiction, strictly speaking.

I'm in Senegal with The Abandoned Baobab by Ken Bugul, a memoir (Ken Bugul is a pseudonym for Marietou M'Baye). I'm also in India and the US with poetry collections by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Nadine Sabra Meyer. I'm waiting for my books to arrive for the former Yugoslavia theme read (I'm late to the party).

I'm in contemporary New York City (and, occasionally, London) with Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.

I have finally departed Russia, having conquered War and Peace. I'm now in Vancouver, BC, The End of East by Jen Sookfong Lee and with The Duchess of Devonshire in Chatsworth, Derbyshire, Counting My Chickens.

I'm in Constantinople/Istanbul at the end of the 16th century with The Aviary Gate.

If it's 2 a.m., I must be in England with Trollope and Miss Mackenzie. At 12, I was in Woolworths with Rachel Ferguson and the Brontes: The Bronte's Went to Woolworth's. Earlier, I was in Iceland. Right now, I have no idea where in the world I am. I do, however, know where I've been. I've left California and Cassandra at the Wedding. She's a rather darker version of another Cassandra who captured a castle (or so says Dodie Smith author of I Capture the Castle. I wish both Cassandras well. I have also been with Felix in TCFKAY (the country formerly know as Yugoslavia). He couldn't decide what his name is. I know what mine is . . . I think. Both of us were suffering from existential angst and doctors who were trying to cure us so we could die healthy. I still need to write up that review for my May group read. I looked over at my bed just now and counted 16 books there. Last night my husband decamped to another room. He said he felt a little crowded sharing the bed with me, 16 books and all their attendant characters, to say nothing of the dog. I told him not to worry. This time next week we'll have a new puppy to add to the heap, so I'll probably put the books in a spot safe from teeth, pee, and poo. However, her first lesson will be "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Mess with Momma's Books."

Despite big plans, I haven't ventured far this year. I have, however, just left Albania: Broken April by Ismail Kadare. Fascinating!

I'm in Paris fresh from Tunisia with Fatima in Fatima's Good Fortune.

I just left a non descript university town in England (might be Oxford) with Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, and quite enjoyed my visit there and the quirky characters I met, not to mention Jim's often perverse sense of humour.
Where shall I go next? I might still stay in England with Margery Sharp or Angela Thirkell or migrate to another continent altogether.

P.S. #69>urania1, we got a new puppy a week ago, and I am going through all that!!!!!

I'm in the Mediterranean with the Rhodian navy in 246 B.C in Gillian Bradshaw's latest, The Sun's Bride. We've just landed in Athens, having already stopped by Rhodes, Alexandria, Ephesus, and Delos.

Where to next? I'm not sure.

I'm (finally!) in Nigeria with Half of a Yellow Sun as well as beginning to explore what The World Without Us might be like.

I am in a boat ,slowing following the Seine to Paris, in A Journey to the End of the Millennium by A.B. Yehoshua. in about 999 A.D. and also in Washington D.C in 1901 with All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones.

I'm in Inner Mongolia with a young man from China during the Cultural Revolution in Wolf Totem.

Moved from Belsen to 1938 Prague in the company of a journalist Mary Douglas meeting many who describe themselves as 'not people, we are exiles'. Mary is becoming passionately involved in the plight of the hunted victims of Nazi rule. Written by Martha Gellhorn, herself a journalist and a war correspondent in the Spanish civil war A Stricken Field is compelling reading.

I am stranded in New Hampshire, present time, and becoming engrossed in the mystery of The Secret History by Donna Tartt. What a good read!

>72 aluvalibri: aluvalibri, do you work for the Office of Homeland Security. I just received a new (to me) Margery Sharp novel today: Something Light. I'm suspended over my newly acquired book basket in a state of near paralysis. Shall I read Sharp's book first, Clive James's Unreliable Memoirs or Under the Sun by Hanne Marie Svendsen. I want to start all of them simultaneously. Meanwhile, I have just finished Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson - an old book, described by several reviewers as hysterically funny. Funny it was not. It's been quite some time since I stumbled across such a vicious, self-serving, utterly unlikable collection of characters. I suppose the "humor" was in the character typing. I did enjoy the book immensely; however, I wouldn't describe it as funny. Sad more accurately describes my response. Coincidentally (or not) aluvalibri, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is also is an academic novel. Vis à vis Lucky Jim, I found the novel amusing, but I think the titular character is a misogynistic prick. Of course, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes didn't present women in a particularly favorable light either. On the whole, they were rather worse than the men, definitely stupider, which isn't saying much. Ah well, I've left them all to their dyfunctional relationships and am moving on to some other pasture (of an, of yet, undetermined state of green).

>78 hemlokgang: Tartt is a good read, but as the suspense mounted toward the inevitable conclusion I had to read the book in small doses.

#79> urania1, I agree with you, Jim is a 'misogynistic prick', in spite of which I found the absurdity of the situations amusing.
Margery Sharp is a light and delightful read. I started Martha in Paris this morning, on the train, and have Something Light to look forward to.
I must say that our similarity of reading(s) is at times uncanny, urania1.
Perhaps, if I did work for the Office of Homeland Security, I would not follow you so closely!
;-))

>80 aluvalibri: aluvalibri, If you liked Lucky Jim, you should definitely read Straight Man by Richard Russo. I've read lots of academic satire and this one is absolutely the zaniest, funniest, and most humane of the lot. I howled all the way through it. About Homeland Security, thank goodness you're right. Do you imagine, the it has actually accomplished anything?

I am in New Orleans, Louisiana with the pompous Ignatious Reilly and The Confederacy Of Dunces!!

#81> urania1, I will definitely put Straight Man on my wishlist!!!
:-))

I'm in Bulgaria searching for the unmapped monastery Sveti Georgi, in hope that it will lead the way to the tomb of Vlad Tepes ( a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Dracula).
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

After a stint in an unknown city in Ferenc Karinthy's Metropole, I'm now out in Kyrgyzstan, in Chingiz Aitmatov's Jamelia.

Smack in the middle of Russia with War and Peace.

Finally, a trip out of the USA with The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. I am in the slums of Bombay.

I'm in Sarajevo with Bin Laden in Pretty Birds.

Having finally made my way out of Russia and War and Peace, I am finishing up the month both in post-war London with Barbara Pym's Excellent Women and in New York's West Harlem fighting off the corner boys in Home Girl by Judith Matloff.

I just left George Eliot's England (Middlemarch) and am now back in Tolstoy's Russia (War and Peace).
I guess I'll stay there until June 22.

I have just left the 19th-century Iceland of Sjón's The Blue Fox with its eponymous and mystical, blue fox. I shall be posting a more thorough review later on the Iceland thread. Prior to Iceland, I had been unable to tear myself away from England and Lise Lillywhite. Jules Vallès and I are currently in 19th-century France with The Child otherwise known as Jacques. Our bottoms are sore and we are bored, not only in school, but (to quote Jean Stafford) "on Sundays" as well. I do not expect our situation to improve much unless we manage to grow up, escape, or both. It's a mad, mad world my schoolmasters!

I've left Senegal and Belgium and am now in China in the 1980s with Socialism is Great!, a memoir by Lijia Zhang and I'm also in various places in central Europe with The Cricket Beneath the Waterfall by Miroslav Krleza (short stories). I am also in Sydney with one of several travel books we have.

I'm in the heart of Egypt with the wilful 19-year-old Ruby who has gone to Cairo to seek refuge (from her mother) with her grandmother whom she doesn't know at all, in Rosie Thomas's Iris and Ruby.

Travelled back to the UK - Harrow, Wealdstone to be precise as I witnessed The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West a Virago Modern Classic. Now I have taken some time travel back to 16th century Iran in th ecompany of a young girl whose father has died in The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani - a 2008 Orange Prize nominee, a first novel and sadly not the winner.

Feeling a bit warped from time travel, i am simultaneously in 12th Century England with Pillars of the Earth and in "almost Pakistan" trying not to feel Shame.

I am in Switzerland, Portugal, Africa, Australia and who knows where else with Heavenly date and Other Flirtations by Alexander McCall Smith.

I'm in Nova Scotia, Canada with The Birth House by Ami McKay; but still keeping fingers in several other places also...