Where in the World Are You Now? August 2009

I've just been in Spain with Dog Day by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett, solving a mystery around dog-trafficking.

I've leapt from the 18th Century English countryside with Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding to London during the 1920s with Harriet Hume by Rebecca West.

Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel. (Ecuador). Start wasn't too bad but after that it did not hold my interest at all. It has taken me months to read this one and I'm glad it's over.

I am in England reading The Judge by Rebecca West.

I shall go back to South America later in the year to visit Argentina.

Staying in England reading Vera Brittain's Testament of Friendship.

In 19th century London, in Sarah Waters' Affinity.

I am in Nigeria with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

I just can't seem to leave England: To the Lighthouse (V. Woolf) and Thames: Sacred River, by Peter Ackroyd.

I am in China with Brothers by Yu Hua, and in Sarajevo with The Cellist Of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

Spain, 1936; the war is on and Man's Hope is still alive.

in Stockholm with The Girl who Played with Fire

I've just left China for England after the death of Mao Zedung with Jung Chang in Wild Swans and have joined Olive Kitteridge in Crosby Maine. Whew, Communist China was a trip! Wonderful terrible story of three generations of Chinese women. A cautionary tale of totalitarianism--the destructive nature of the Cultural Revolution.

I was in Early 20th C Ireland, County Cork, reading The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor and now I'm in India with Animal's People by Indra Sinha.

I'm in Iran with Sandra Mackey's The Iranians (non-fiction) and going to Tajikistan (physically) in eight days

I'm marooned in Hong Kong with The Honourable Schoolboy... I've been there for 12 days now!

I am still in England with Vera Brittain's Testament of Experience.

Trying to get out of the village, in Zambia, feeling the Quills of Desire.

I'm travelling From the Holy Mountain with William Dalrymple, learning plenty about middle eastern Christianity and how it has fared over the years. I'm also all over the place wandering about Borges's Labyrinths.

A brief visit to wintery Boston, early 20th century, where Harry Houdini is jumping into a river with handcuffs and shackles, in Houdini: The Handcuff King.

Not sure where I am now, I've only just started The Year of Magical Thinking!

I'm leaving the Middle East for a little while to visit India, via Mira Kamdar's Planet India: How the Fastest Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World. I'd read Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India last year, and an Amazon reviewer of Luce's book recommended this book by Kamdar (as well as works by Gurcharan Das and Amartya Sen, which I have unfortunately not yet read).

I'm in Edwardian London, where I Thank Heaven Fasting that I am not a naive 17-year-old trying to navigate around the pitfalls of the marriage market.

I just left Barcelona with The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and am about to go to Northern Ontario and I think World War I Europe with Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden.

Still in New York & LA with The Year of Magical Thinking. But it's one of those books that I can't read non-stop (although it's beautifully written and quite an easy read, the subject matter is very hard to immerse myself in for long) so I'm on holidays in Fabletown in New York, in Fables: Storybook Love.

In the Andaman Islands with Lawrence Osborne in The Naked Tourist: In Search Of Adventure And Beauty In The Age Of The Airport Mall.

I'm in Tuscany with Any Four Women Could Rob the Bank of Italy, which so far is excellent. It's by Ann Cornelisen.

I'm in Auckland, NZ, with Opportunity by Charlotte Grimshaw.

I am in the Shetland Islands with Raven Black by Ann Cleeves.

I was briefly in Washington State on an Indian reservation with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie but now I'm in New York City with Frank McCourt and his memoir Teacher Man

I'm basking Under the Sun in Denmark (by Hanne Marie Svendsen)

I stayed in the Shetland Islands with White Nights by Ann Cleeves.

In the village again, this time in Senegal with God's Bits of Wood.

While I still have one foot in 19th century Gothic America with Mysteries of Winterthurn, I have the other in early post-apartheid South Africa with Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona.

In New Orleans with Geoff Dyer in Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It.

>28 janeajones: I would be very interested in your opinion of Under the Sun. I read it a year ago and really liked it.

I'm in one of those can't-focus moods, so now not only am I still in Auckland, NZ with Charlotte Grimshaw's Opportunity, I'm also in Sydney, Australia with Debra Adelaide's The Household Guide to Dying, and in Sweden with Kurt Wallander in Faceless Killers.

I am stretched rather thin across the globe! :)

I'm in a villa outside Florence, hanging out with Fenny.

i was in the south of france with daudet and letters from my windmill and am now in post-war germany with the bread of those early years with heinrich boll. next i'll be flying down to indonesia, though it's not an all night fair, with pramoedya ananta toer.

I am on Cape Breton island, The Bishop's Man.

I just left Austria with Night Work by Thomas Glavinic. I'm almost ready to leave New Orleans after Katrina with Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, and I've just arrived in France withLittle Dorrit by Charles Dickens, although I'm sure we'll soon be in Marshalsea prison in London.

I was in Tasmania but now I have moved to NYC with The Secret of lost Things by Sheridan Hay.

I'm on a trip around the world and through the ages courtesy of A Little History Of The World .

I'm in London and Paris with Smiley's People by John le Carre,and I'm very scared.

I'm in the fictional town of Blossom, Alberta with a bunch of amusing people in Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water.

Had a brief holiday in Tehran and Vienna with Marjane Satrapi in Persepolis. And am now back in cold Sweden with Kurt Wallanger in Faceless Killers.

I was in Berlin with Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjis and am now in Liberia with Helene Cooper's The House at Sugar Beach.

In Spain, finished Man's Hope this morning (first thoughs about it here), and I have two roads in front of me: I could go on with the Spanish Civil War with the Soldiers of Salamis or maybe I should rest a while in The Shadow of the Wind.

In Argentina lost in Labyrinths with Jorge Luis Borges.

I'm in Sri Lanka and London in Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne.

I've had a brief visit to the Happy Days retirement home in a small town in France in Happy Days by Laurent Graff.

In Bolivia hanging out with fictional hackers in Turing's Delirium and struggling not to see it as a copycat version of Cryptonomicon.

I am in South Africa during apartheid in a township near Johannesburg with Tsotsi by Athol Fugard

Still lost in the Labyrinths of Argentina. Also in Wales with Sharon Kay Penman's Falls the Shadow.

Jumping between New York state and Far East in A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee.

I've just left Nagasaki for New Delhi in Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie.

CHINA - recently finished Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo. Set in Beijing it is a snappy, catching tale of a 20'ish peasant girl who is determined to "make it" in the big city despite the frustrations she meets moving from one dead-end job and apartment to another.

I've just traveled from South Africa to an unnamed Arab country With Julie and he-who-calls-himself-Abdu in Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup. It's the first work I've read by this Nobel winning author.

I'm also back and forth to Bombay in Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters which I'm reading for my 3D book club. I'm finding this one very sad as my own father is elderly and not in the best of health.

I just started And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander. It is an historical mystery set in Victorian England. Book 1 in the Lady Emily Ashton series. I found out about the books from LT (ER program).

I am in London, and Africa (on safari with the eventually deceased husband) and may end up in Greece too.

33> depressaholic, I finally finished Under the Sun by Hanne Marie Svendsen -- I really enjoyed it (and your review which I thought was spot-on). I'm not sure why it took me so long to finish except that I was reading it in bed and kept falling asleep -- it did induce some interesting dreams. I particularly liked the rather understated quality of the story-telling: it seems to capture how we manage to cope with shattering events, yet continue on with our lives -- hallucinatory, as you said.

I am now in North Korea with Inspector O mystery series in A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church.

>56 streamsong:, Are you enjoying The Pickup? I loved it - it didn't follow the path I expected it to.

I'm just about to return from the Heart of Darkness.

In Spain, said goodbyes to the Soldiers of Salamis and going next to The Shadow of the Wind, or to see The Painter of Battles.

On a boat ship, with a dragon, during the Napoleonic Wars with Throne of Jade.

ETA: Oh dear, I called it a "boat". I'm obviously not the nautical type.

I'm in Dublin reading about how a young widow & her group of friends move on with their lives after the accidental death of her long-term boyfriend in Pack Up The Moon .

Still in Argentina with Labyrinths. After a brief visit to the States to The Murder Artist by John Case I am now experiencing WWII with a community of Londoners, with Harry Bowling's Backstreet Child.

I'm in the English countryside where the upper crust are being witty as they play Hunt the Slipper.

I have just returned from a nail-biting tour of Russia, Israel, and various locations in Europe and the United States, with Daniel Silva guiding me on a failed mission to rescue The Defector. Gabriel and Chiara live to fight another day!

Still working my way through Labyrinths in Argentina and about to see The Shape of Water and The Snack Thief in Sicily with Inspector Salvo Montalbano, both by Andrea Camillera.

I'm "Kindling" in Scandinavia with Beowulf, listening in the USA trying to Handle With Care, and I am reading and imagining listening to The Cellist of Sarajevo, in Sarajevo.

I'm in Warsaw in 1989 with Timothy Garton Ash in The Magic Lantern: the revolution of '89 witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague.

Lost in Labyrinths in Argentina and also having a That Summer in Eagle Street in London.

Edited for typo.

I am in Jerusalem with some excursions to Aleppo, Syria with Aleppo Tales by Haim Sabato.

I'm now in NYC attending The Fiction Class .

I'm on a small island in the Swedish archipelago with Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell.

I am in China, Japan, and Mongolia around WWI and WWII with The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley, It is an ER book and I am enjoying it.

I am relaxing with That Summer in Eagle Street in London, and also looking for The Tango Singer in Argentina.

-->70 englishrose60:+75
englishrose,
could I encourage you to post your thoughts on these books on the March thread - the Argentina group read. The group reads tend to go dormant when their month ends, but it would be great to keep them going. I have some Argentinian books I will get round to at some point, and will add them to the thread. Just a thought.

You have encouraged me depressaholic. I had forgotten about the Argentina thread. Off to read it now.

Leaving Scandanavia, temporarily, and moving on to Mexico with Luis Alberto Urrea and Into the Beautiful North

I am starting my travels in my home country and visiting the capital city of London with JG Ballard's Millennium People.

*Edit for touchstone

Continuing my visit to That Summer in Eagle Street in London as well as enjoying my trip to Argentina where I am about to start The Peron Novel followed by Santa Evita both by Martinez.

I am revisiting 1970s New York City as I Let the Great World Spin.

I'm in turn-of-the-century Scotland in the village of Crossriggs.

I'm in a small Australian mining town, Corrigan, in the 1970s, along with Jasper Jones.

I am in Ireland, mid 20th century, Love and Summer by William Trevor.

1946 London One More for Sadler Street and Argentina The Peron Novel.

Hanging out with Freddy Junglewalla and his friends the Crow Eaters in Lahore, Pakistan.

I'm in Germany, trying to get to Hamburg, in The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert.

#85-Tomas Eloy Martinez is a treasure.

I have Santa Evita to read after The Peron Novel. I am enjoying these books by Martinez.

Currently in Tokyo on a murder investigation with Minami and his team in Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace.

to #90 -
I have that, Tokyo Year Zero , but it got put aside a couple of months ago and not finished yet. Let me know how you liked it, so I''ll know whether it is worth digging it out of the pile.

I have arrived in Sweden to witness the sweet love story of Benny And Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti .

Other readers can probably pinpoint this better than I, but I'm somewhere on the Mississippi in the 19th century with Huckleberry Finn.

(Oh, I was wrong up above. Jasper Jones is set in the mid-1960s, not the early 1970s.)

wookiebender

Best username ever.

#94> Why, thank you! Although most people seem to feel sorry for the Wookie. (Although it is a Simpsons reference, not a Star Wars one.)

My cat's breath smells like cat food.

#96> Bingo! I love Ralph Wiggum.

I had a habit for a while of just throwing out a random Ralph Wiggum quote any time that things started getting a bit too absurd in on-line discussions.

In Argentina with Santa Evita and Waggoner's Way, London.

was in Russia- Siberia, St Petersburg, Moscow, etc via Robert Littell's The Stalin Epigram - a fascinating novel about Osip Mandelstam and other Russian poets and artists who were suppressed and tortured by Stalin's police state.

-->100 berthirsch:
I am reading Hope Abandoned, a memoir by Osip Mandelstam's widow Nadezhda. She is also fascinating. Solzhenitsyn talked about Mandelstam a bit in his Gulag Archipelago, as one of the most high profile cases of oppression in the world of the arts in pre-WWII Russia. I wasn't aware there was a fictionalised account as well.

I am both on land and on the water, mostly with aboriginal people, in the Carpentaria region of Australia.

I am in Columbine, Colorado with The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb, Sarajevo with The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway, and Scandinavia with Beowulf.

I just left Paris and Cairo with Apricots on the Nile: A Memoir with Recipes by Colette Rossant.

-->100 berthirsch:- THe Stalin Epigramis recently published. Littell has a long track record of writing intelligent and suspenseful yarns. i highly recommend this book.
Osip's wife,Nedezhda, is a main character in the book and in the author's epilogue he talks about her two memoirs. I think this would be an excellent companion piece to her book which i would like to hear more about- is Hope Abandoned worth reading?

another fascinating fictionalized account of Stalin is The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin by Richard Lourie.

I'm in a small town in Georgia, US in Quite a Year for Plums, by Bailey White. It may not be exotic to some people, but it sure is to me!

I've just left WWII Nazi Germany in Black Cross by Greg Iles and have moved over the North Sea to an English country manor in The House at Riverton by Kate Morton.

I was in NYC, around the Dutch countryside, in Trinidad, and in England with Netherland with Joseph O'Neill. Then in LA and San Diego and Portland Oregon, but mostly on-line with The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. Now I am in Bombay, India with The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri. All modern day or near past time periods.

-->105 berthirsch:
I am fairly near the end, but reading has been slow. I will post in full on my Club Read thread in due course. I'll let you know.

Still in Argentina with The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vazquez Montalban and England with The Murder in the Museum by Simon Brett.

Visiting Portugal with The Dedalus Book of Portuguese Fantasy. Things start a bit too slowly for my tastes but the stories are short so I hope there will be improvements later on.

"Iʻm in" San Francisco, 1942, with Richard Brautigan: Dreaming of Babylon. "Private Eye" novel written about 25 years after its year of setting, and perhaps bordering on parody of the private eye genre. The "I" of the book is a little too much of a slob (though thatʻs what conventional literary P.I.s tend to be). He is a Spanish Civil War, anti-Franco side, veteran, not eligible to be drafted because of having been wounded in Spain ("shot in the posterior" as the 1950s movie Tap Roots puts it, which isnʻt quite the way Brautigan puts it.)

In the real life 1942, I was a 10 year-old living in Woburn, MA., and san Francisco was only a name to me. I didnʻt see it until (very briefly at) age 40.

Still drifting down the Mississippi with Huckleberry Finn, but am also in Cambridge jumping through various eras in the time-travelling To Say Nothing of the Dog.

It is the 1920s and I'm just outside Peking/Beijing , China as De Chardin helps discover "Peking Man" in The Jesuit and The Skull .

I’m in Jerusalem in the studios of Israel Television and while a movie is being shoot, a corpse is found with his skull smashed out, apparently by a marble pillar that fell, but not everything is so clear so the Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon embarks on a tangled and bloody trail of detection , trying to resolve a Murder in Jerusalem by Batya Gur

At the same time I am in Pakistan , after a failed attempt to reach the K2 peak,om my way back I got lost and find shelter in a little village in the Karakoram mountains, where people take care of myself for several day . At the moment I’m sipping Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

I am in Iran with The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer, wandering across the plains states in the USA enjoying being So Brave, So Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger and I am still in Scandinavia with Beowulf.

#116 Hemlokgang, I read The Septembers of Shiraz for a RL book group. I will be interested to see what you think when you are done.

It's the the early 1800's, and I'm aboard a boat in the Arctic Sea, seeking the Northeast passage. We plucked a man more dead than alive off a passing ice flow. After several weeks aboard, he's recovered enough to tell us his name and Viktor Frankenstein is about to tell his story.

And it really is September everywhere and there's a new thread for it!