Where in the World Are You Now? Sept 2008

I have travelled quite a bit recently. I spent some time in Italy: The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante. Then Hungary: Embers by Sandor Marai. Now I'm in England: By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah.

I'm in California with Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler.

Amanda, I know you and some others (in another group) are planning October to read Australian literature; why don't we make Australia the October theme here also?

edited to add: I've moved this proposal over to here

Right now I'm in Pickax (with The Cat Who Played Post Office) and in Poland (with "Różowe tabletki na uspokojenie"). And somehow in the same time I'm visiting a DiscWorld of Terry Pratchett (with Maskerade this time).

#1 I loved Embers! But I read it a few years ago and couldn't remember the title to suggest it to a friend. I'm so glad you mentioned it.

Still in medieval Paris amongst the varlets in the Square of Miracles reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, and standing with one foot in colonial New England and present day New England as I listen to Tess Gerritsen's The Bone Garden.

I just left Denmark and The Golden Ball. Right now I'm in England, travelling with some strolling players one of whom is the future Sarah Siddons in Caryl Brahms's wild , wacky Enter a Dragon - Stage Center. If you haven't read any Brahms or Brahms and Simmons, I highly recommend the work if you're feeling like laughing hysterically.

I've made it to the London music halls from the village of Whitstable in Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters.

I have just left the unspecified country of José Saramago's novel The Cave. Now I seem doomed to drift eternally farther and farther away from Earth into outer space onboard the malfunctioning space-ship Aniara in Harry Martinson's epos bearing the same name.

Yesterday I was in France in the film adaptation of Harlan Coben's mystery Tell No One. The book itself was set in New York, but this was a French film.

I will be in Iceland shortly with an Olafsson novel (I think) but I have also started Gregory Rabassa's memoir, If This Be Treason: Translation and its Discontents. I've only read a chapter but I'm finding it very readable and truly insightful. It was recommended to me by Rebeccanyc; it seems a book not to be missed by readers of translated books (like all of us!).

Thanks a lot avaland, I had already added six books to my wish list and now you provide another must read.

#8 Annix, how did you like Saramago's book. I've read Blindness and Seeing. I loved both of them, especially Seeing.

>11 urania1:
The Cave was the first book I read by Saramago. I must admit I had very mixed feelings about it. The story itself managed to draw me into it and have me relate to the caracters. The author's twist on Plato's cave metaphor is also somewhat thought-provoking, as he gives it a more down-to-earth interpretation than the traditional one referring to an immaterial realm of ideas. At least that is how I read it. I didn't find it brilliant, but still very good.

The down-side was the language, or more specifically the punctuation used throughout several chapters of the book, which really made me struggle to push through those pages. My copy was a Swedish translation (and I'm not able to read Portugese) so I don't know if the translator is to blame to some extent. In either case it made me feel very dyslectic when for instance all periods were replaced by commas (followed by capital letters) during whole dialogues. Some will undoubtedly argue that this adds something positive stylistically, maybe even helps to convey the cave-shadow nature of the events in the book or something along that line. But personally I only found it a big distractor and a barrier between me and the story.

So all in all I'm glad I read it, but I wish the author had chosen a more orthodox language to make it more accesible.

I've been on the verge of giving up on Saramago after this my first encounter, so hearing that you loved "Seeing" and "Blindness" is indeed encouraging. But I have to ask: Are the other Saramago books similar language-wise? I really wanted to like this thoroughly, and I had a couple of other Saramago books on my wish list until this one made me hesitatant. Maybe you could give me some hope, please?

I just left the Northwest Territory of Canada, having successfully avoided the Ice Trap.

I am also released from The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher in England.

And I just heard about the American Civil War ending, and President Lincoln being assassinated following The Escape From Andersonville.

Today, I find myself in Nigeria watching as Things Fall Apart and contemplating Art in America in a small town near Alamosa, Colorado - although I haven't decided whether to stick around for the whole show yet, or leave early.

My next planned stop is Jar City, AKA Reykjavik, Iceland.

I'm in some relatively small town in Britain with Watson and Sherlock Holmes and the Greyfriars School Mystery.

#12 Annix,
Saramago's prose style didn't strike me as particularly difficult. I'm not sure if this is a translation issue or not. Lately, a lot of writers in English hav been playing around with dialogue. Some have stopped using quotation marks altogether, so one has to infer who the speaker is. And after Joyce and Proust in French or in translation, pretty much any writing style comes naturally . . . although there is Heidegger.

>15 urania1: ha ha, you can blame rebeccanyc for that one!

>15 urania1: urania1,
thanks, I'll give Saramago a second chance sometimes in the future!
It wasn't the lack of quotation marks that annoyed me, but the total absence of periods between the otherwise complete sentences uttered by the first and second person speaking. It didn't really make it more difficult to interpret. I found that the major effect was that it interrupted the flow of the text, as it appeared totally uncalled for, thus making the reading experience less enjoyable. After the first hundred pages or so I got used to it, though. And he certainly wasn't in the Joyce league...

Anyway... For my literary travelling: I've left outer space and am now in Iceland, having read The Blue Fox by Sjón, and just started out on Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness. I expect to spend a very long time with the latter as the copy is a parallel bilingual edition and my knowledge of Icelandic, well, stinks. So, I will most likely alternate it with some lighter reading. I'm just not sure what exactly yet.

I have left the White Nights of the Shetlands, and am back in Japan in the late 1940's, with An artist of the floating world as he tries to help get his daughter married and reflects on his life.

I'm hanging out in California right now. It's just A Way of Life Like Any Other . . . divorces, dysfunctional families, etc., etc.

I've ended up in London yet again, Tipping the Velvet with Sarah Waters.

#16 avaland, not clear what you're blaming me for here!

#21 for recommending the Rabassa to me, of course! (and doesn't that make you ultimately responsible for urania1's adding it to her TBR pile:-)

While being in Rabassa's head (is that a place), I'm also in the UK but headed for Iceland in Olafsson's The Journey Home.

I'm helping Inspector Sejer solve the horrific murder of an Indian woman in the remote Norwegian town of Elvestad, in Calling out for you by Karin Fossum.

That's when I'm not in Poland, obviously...;) (currently Koniec Swiata w Breslau - I'm enjoying my detective stories at the moment).

Rachel, so how do you like writing of Krajewski? I have first book of him on my TBR pile right now ;) But not this one - Widma w mieście Breslau

I'm not in happy places.

I'm in Mississippi with William Faulkner's Light in August; I'm in Bosnia watching relatives shoot up a party with How the Soldier Repairs the Gramaphone and in the Kingdom of Albania recording epics and getting spied on in The File on H by Ismail Kadare.

I'm in the Scottish Highlands with Death of a Dreamer by M.C. Beaton.

I'm in London with Little Dorrit and her creator Charles Dickens. Just arrived.

Back to 18th century Germany with The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald.

It's 1968 and I'm with Norman Mailer in Miami and the Siege of Chicago, which is really appropriate considering the last two weeks of conventions, but I'm heading for modern day Portugal in The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro.

I'm in the United Kingdom when women were fighting for their voting rights with Der haus der Schwestern. And still in the USA with The Stupidest Angel and somewhere in the DiscWorld with Maskerade.

I've left Zanzibar to spend the weekend in Finland: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson.

I'm spending the weekend in Heian Japan with Lady Sarashina 's As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams.

Working my way into the society structure of 1903 Chicago while Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.

Sticking with the detective novels, I'm in Jerusalem, helping Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon solve the Bethlehem Road Murder (Batya Gur).
And still in Poland as well, with the same old Breslau mystery...

I am reading Heartsnatcher by Boris Vian laid in an imaginary costal village in France. A real romp of a an Oulipo novel.

While I was away taking care of my Dad, I finished Black Swan Green (England) and A Way of Life Like Any Other (California). I loved both books. Right now, I'm in Paris contemplating The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I highly recommend this contemplation for navel gazers everywhere.

I have left Japan, and have just spent the weekend with Scott Douglas in a library in Anaheim. Quiet please

I'm in nowadays Russia with Generation P.. Besides I'm discovering middleages in France with The virgin blue. And having fun (or not? ;)) with The stupidest angel in the USA.

I keep forgetting to post to this thread! So I'll attempt to turn over a new leaf. After spending lots of time in England with various novels, I'm now in Nigeria just after a military coup. The Purple Hibiscus are in bloom. The patriarch in this family is a bit of a tough customer!

I am in Florence waiting out the aftermath of social disgrace along with Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright and Loving Frank.

Heading for Bagdad in They came to Bagdad by Agatha Cristie and in the Congo with The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Again, I'm spread out. I'm still in various places with Rabassa's memoir, If This be Treason, I'm in a post-apocalyptic future (somewhere) in Aileen La Tourette's novel Cry Wolf, and I'm in my home state of Maine again, not far from Olive Kitteridge, with Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work: stories by Jason Brown.

I just received tickets today from Israel and the Unitd States for the Olympic Games in Mexico City and Munich with stps in London & Belgium and elsewhere as I read about Shaul Ladany, a champion racewalker in "From Bergen-Belsen to the Olympic Games/King of the Road: the Autobiography of an Israeli Scientist and a World Record-Holding Race Walker." (early reviewer copy)

I've been in Bombay & other parts of south India and in Pakistan with The Girl from Foreign by Sadia Shepard and I'm now in the Philippines with Tree of Smoke.

I'm on Guernsey, Channel Islands, visiting the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Wonderful folk.

#45 I really have resisted (and resisted and resisted) adding this book to my list. *Sigh,* I've now lost the battle.

You won't regret it maggiemay. It's a stunning book imo.

#47 Say it ain't so teelgee. Say it ain't so. I, too, am resisting. Are you saying that I need to hie myself to the nearest bookstore and nunnery to purchase said book?

Hie, hie, hie!

I'm resisting too!

Not me - just brought it home today!

YOU WILL NOT RESIST.....YOU WILL NOT RESIST.....YOU WILL NOT RESIST.......

**says she who bought it almost as soon as it came out**

Don't resist! I'm with teelgee, it's a wonderful book.

Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated into the Guernsey Literary Society...

So the Borg teelgee said......

Aaagghhh. Something has taken control of my brain. My fingers are about to hit the "add to shopping cart" button for Guernsey . . . no, no, no, I can't say it. Aaagghhh *demonic voices heard cackling wildly*

bwwwaaaa haahahaahaaahahahhaaaaaa

I live to obey.

I'm on the Guernsey waiting list at my library.

Meanwhile, I don't want to say goodbye to summer, so I am having a chicklit break with Summer in the City and am hopping back and forth from London to New York.

I'm on the Guernsey waiting list at my library.

Meanwhile, I don't want to say goodbye to summer, so I am having a chicklit break with Summer in the City and am hopping back and forth from London to New York.

I'm spending time in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo dictatorship, with Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat.

Having finished up in Nigeria with Things Fall Apart, I've travelled to Iceland to observe the investigative skills of Erlendur as he solves crime in Jar City.

For a couple of weeks now, I've been hanging around Behind the Scenes at the Museum in England, but (thankfully) am about to finish up that little job.

I'm on the island nation of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina, corresponding with Ella Minnow Pea. Our alphabet is disappearing.

I immigrated from Scotland to become The Midwife of Blue Ridge in the wilderness of the American colonies.

#63 teelgee, so sorry to hear about your disappearing alphabet. I wonder what will happen to young Ella if she eats elimentopeas. When I was young, I theorized that only himbelongs (as in "little ones to") ate elimentopeas. I had a vague notion that himbelongs were the animals also know as pastrami. I felt quite upset because himbelongs were far too nice to eat.

I am with Jeff Noon's Automated Alice in a 20th century farcical Wonderland.

Loved that clever book, teelgee.

>able to resist potato peels using my super powers.

I've left the post-nuclear war future (thankfully) but am still with Mr. Rabassa in the world of translating and in Maine with Jason Brown's wonderful short stories (see message 42). I was quite naughty this past week so new (and a couple of used) books are piled up around my computer taunting me. . .

I'm in 'a fairly large town' in the middle of the deep South (US) in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

I'm still in the deep American south in the last century, listening to Intruder in the Dust, my second William Faulkner in a row, after being bewitched by an audiobook of Light in August (I've added a review, click on the book link).

But I'm also in post-Great War Austria, starting on the second of Three Novellas by Joseph Roth and in medieval Sweden with Kristen Lavransdotter by Sigrid Undset (there's a reading group getting going over in the Literature group).

I am in medieval Norway with Kristin Lavransdatter and listening to contemporary Los Angeles with a certain Compulsion, by Jonathan Kellerman.

I'm in Vietnam in the middle of the Tet offensive in Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson, and more peacefully in the prehistoric caves of France and Spain with The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis.

I'm on an island off the coast of Senegal, dreaming of emigrating to Europe across Le ventre de l'atlantique/The Belly of the Atlantic by Fatou Diome.

I'm in a French Opera House in The Phantom of the Opera.

I am about to join Auxililier Lacouture "the mother of Mexican poetry" as she becomes famous as the sole person who resists the army's 1968 invasion of the university in Roberto Bolano's Amulet.

I am now entering The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert. I expect to spend my time in Germany.

I've been in Chcago with The Rosary Bride by Luisa Beuhler, then in medieval Britain, in and around the area of Shrewsbury, with four Brother Cadfael books, the last being The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters.

Continuing my journey in medieval Norway with Kristin Lavransdatter, I am also in Florida, recovering from a serious head injury on Duma Key by Stephen King.

I am in Paris with Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner.

Having had a chicklit break in London and New York, I am now ready to face more serious issues. I'm about to visit various countries in Africa with Uwen Akpan in Say you're one of them. We'll be in Kenya for an Ex-mas feast.

I left England and Northanger Abbey for Long Island, New York with The Sea of Monsters, also in Iceland with Fish Can Sing.

I am in Congo shortly after independence with the woefully ignorant and underprepared Price family in The Poisonwood Bible and feeling very out of place in many ways in North Korea Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader.

I'm in 17 century Copenhagen in Music and Silence by Rose Tremain.

I'm in Italy and Alaska, thanks to Carlo Lucarreli's carte blanche, and Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union respectively.

Two detective stories, one more so than the other, but both belonging to that bracket of the genre where the murder/mystery becomes a way for the author to examine bigger themes.

Lucarelli's story is set in the dying days of fascist Italy, while Chabon's book (which is superb) rests on a premise that after WWII and the destruction of Israel, refugee Jews are allowed to set up a temporary state in Alaska.

I'm in Italy with The awful mess on the Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda. Thanks to aluvalibri for telling us about Gadda. He's marvelous even iin translation.

I've just spent a good stretch in ancient Egypt via Twice Born by Pauline Gedge. Had a great time and wrote about my trip:http://freshinkbooks.blogspot.com/

I am glad to be out of Jones Beach, off the Triborough Bridge, through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and generally finished with the megalomaniacal, racist, and elitist Robert Moses in The Power Broker. Nonetheless, it was a great read and insight into NYC politics. Now I'm having a curious time in Madrid as the search for rare manuscripts unfolds in The Club Dumas.

I've been in LA, and made a brief trip to Las Vegas, as Perry Mason solves The Case of the Shapely Shadow. Now I'm in Navajo country near the Utah-Arizona border as Joe Leaphorn talks to Listening Woman to try to find clues that were previously missed, as he investigates some months old cases still on the books, including a murder and a heist involving a missing helicoptor.

Thanks to aluvalibri for telling us about Gadda

You are very welcome! I am glad you are enjoying Gadda, a writer I love.
:-))

P.S. Who is the translator?

# 84 thanks also aluvalibri - my copy is the nyrb edition and the translator is William Weaver with an introduction by Italo Calvino. Thanks also for referring in a recent post to Italo Svevo .. I have found a copy of Zeno's Conscience also translated by William Weaver. This edition has an introduction by Elizabeth Hardwicke (VMC author).

Say you're one of them in various countries in Africa is excellent, but very intense. So, while I am there, I am also dipping into England, in a cozy mystery way Dreaming of the bones with Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James.

I'm in Switzerland for the first time this year with The Geography of Bliss and still in Iceland with Birds Can Sing.

i recently left The Congo/Zaire viaThe poisonwood Bible...and am now in the vicinity of Milwaukee, WI..headed for who knows where via Any Given Doomsday...hey, things/life can only get better, right?

I'm in Britain in my first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. So far, I'm not impressed with the character.

I left the Congo in exodus with the women of The Poisonwood Bible, tried and failed to settle in Florida with The Grift and finally returned to Africa, Nigeria specifically, with The Purple Hibiscus.

Edited due to missing words...

I've just left Canada from At a Loss for Words by Diane Schoemperlen
review here:http://freshinkbooks.blogspot.com/
and now I'm in Pennsylvania with ornithologists and bird artists In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld.

I've left Madrid and The Club Dumas and detoured to Arkansas with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou to celebrate Banned Books Week. In a day or two I'll be in Iceland with Jar City.

I've been hither and thither. Currently, I Who have Never known Men am in a bunker prison. I don't know where it is or why I'm there.

I'm dizzy I'm in so many places.

By night, I'm in North Carolina in the middle of a family squabble over inheritance with Lionel Shriver's A Perfectly Good Family. And I'm also in hell with a new, unpublished collection of short fiction by Robert Shearman (the first story involved ..er..the devil).

By day, I'm in 17th century Massachusetts with more nonfiction books than I care to list, all of which are very good in their own ways. I'm hoping to move ahead in time soon so I can have a hot shower.

I'm in way too many places and times at once!

I just returned from the totalitarian World State in a dystopian future where I was the inventor of Kallocain, a drug that will make anyone reveal his or her inner thoughts. I'm also keeping Night Watch by my mother's deathbed in contemporary Iceland, but am also in the same country in the 17th century with Iceland's Bell. Inbetween I jump in and out of 14th century Norway, trying to keep up with the group read here at LT that follows the adventures of Kristin Lavransdatter.

I am now in Sarajevo with The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway. I just left Germany with
The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert.

I've just left Nigeria with Purple Hibiscus but hope to return to Africa quite soon. Right now I'm in the thick of the US's relatively absurd cultural problems with Why We Hate Us by Dick Meyer.

I've left the upstate New York area in Goldengrove and was all set to go to Kenya with Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong'o but it unfortunately got soaked even inside my bag in today's ferocious rainstorm. So now I"m letting it dry out and will have to decide where to go instead.

I'm Remembering Babylon in Queensland with the European settlers (David Malouf). Closer to home, I'm just moving into the house I've just had built in the countryside outside Warsaw, and doing lots of things I swore I'd never, ever do, in Nigdy w zyciu! by Katarzyna Grochola. And I'm also a bewildered guest in a strange small Central European town full of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Having just left 14th century Norway and said farewell to Kristin Lavransdatter, I about to jaunt over to Guernsey for a meeting of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I will also keep one foot on Duma Key which has a mysterious hold on me as well as its characters.

I'm in a small unnamed (so far) town on the sea in England, with an asylum-seeker from Zanzibar, in By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah, thanks to a recommendation from avaland.

I'm attending dinner gatherings in an unidentified location where the after dinner "entertainment" is solving little mysteries that have perplexed the groups' guest, in More Tales of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov.

Fun question.

I'm currently splitting my time between Pittsburg, PA in Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys and 12th century Paris, France (for starters) in Umberto Eco's Baudolino. Whirlwind excitement abounds!

I agree with Annix and Avaland, I am in so many places that it makes my head spin. At work (breaktime) I am in Mexico with Cape Weathers trying to solve a murder, Greasing the Pinata: A Cape Weathers Investigation by Tim Maleeny, on my commute I am on the planet Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, and at home I am in 19th century New Orleans roaming the streets with Benjamin January in search of a murderer {A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly or in Ireland listening to Irish history in The Story of the Irish Race. Maybe I should slow down my globetrotting some.

After a brief, yet pleasant attendance at The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in the Channel Islands, I still have one foot on the ghostly Duma Key in Florida, but I am shifting the other foot to modern day Tokyo and beginning the experience of Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb.

I'm stuck in the middle of the Second Seminole War back and forth between Tampa and St. Augustine in River in the Wind by Edith Pope

Okay, this is a little bit like playing the classic game, "Twister". With one foot still on Duma Key in Florida, the other foot shifts from Tokyo and a state of Fear and Trembling to Zimbabwe and a state of Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga.

No 111 - how do you find Nervous Conditions? I'm thinking about reading it, so it could help in taking the final decission ;)

#112 - I will let you know as soon as I get into it further, agatatera.

I'm in Scotland facing an assortment of mysteries in a variety of time periods in the anthology, Murder Most Scottish.