Where in the world are you now? September 2009

I'm in Czechoslovakia in 1929 inside The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.

And in real life it's 6.16 am on the first day of spring!

Spring?? But we didn't even have a winter! *wail*

I'm toggling between drifting down the Mississippi with Huckleberry Finn and boating down the river in Oxford in To Say Nothing of the Dog.

You know, I only just picked up the parallels. *slaps forehead*

Iʻll be leaving the San Francisco of 1942 (Brautiganʻs Dreaming of Babylon to go back to the "ancient" world -- notably the city of Rome and the adjoining countryside with Ovidʻs Fasti, which Iʻm doing a verse translation of.

Argentina with The Moldavian Pimp and in Scotland with The Camomile.

Forgot to mention I am also at Frenchman's Creek in Cornwall, England

Having just finished having Amazing Adventures with Kavalier and Clay in New York City, I'm returning to the sedate meditations of Gilead Iowa.

Río Fugitivo, Bolivia watching the struggles over globalization and cryptography play out in Turing's Delirium.

In Israel with The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret.

A curious collection of very short tales many of which have weird perspectives and twists yet are rooted in our common modern day experience.

>4 englishrose60:. I have Moldavian Pimp but have not yet read it.

what did you think?

#7
Ooh, Etgar Keret is my favorite writer - hope you're liking Nimrod!!

I'm in Sweden, trying to figure out who killed The Ice Princess.

Stupid touchstones!

I am still in an apartment building in modern day Bombay, and Vishnu is still dying, and the people have run amok. Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri.

6> Carlos, how are you finding Turing's Delirium? It sounds kind of intriguing...

I've just escaped from Borges's Labyrinths (including a fantastic essay on what it means to be an Argentine writer) which have taken me all over the world and back, and have been spending some time in Desperance, in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Scotland - The Camomile
Cornwall, England - up Frenchman's Creek
Argentina - playing Hopscotch

Although I have taken excursions to Iceland and the far future, I have returned to continue in New York with Oates's grand gothic tale, Mysteries of Winterthurn.

>9 -Eva-:

I'm in Sweden too, reading The Girl Who Played with Fire, although so far Lisbeth has taken a holiday to the Caribbean which sounded beautiful - apart from hurricane Matilda striking

#14

Hope you're liking it! The last book is a doozy too!

>9 -Eva-:
yes Etgar Keret is a "blast". very different, unique, funny, refreshing. I am thoroughly enjoying his writing.

Still in Peking/Beijing , China with The Jesuit and the Skull .

Back in England after many months, outside London, 17th century, in Instance of the Fingerpost, yet to figure out what a Fingerpost is.

#18: You'll eventually find out what it is later on in the book but if you're hasty you may want to see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Instance_of_the_Fingerpost (no spoilers)

I am now in England in 1826 with illegal anatomists and body snatchers in The resurrectionist by James Bradley.

#11

Liz, I'm liking it quite a bit. I've seen it labelled a "thriller," but I think that's a bit off since it doesn't strike me as particularly plot-driven. I think it's a little bit like latter-day William Gibson with a contemporary setting, a cast of interesting characters, a little dose of paranoia and an awareness of the way evolving technology can shift the balance of power between governments, corporations and individuals. Some of it's stylistic touches (such as the use of first-, second- and third-person narrators) strike me as a little unnecessary, but not so much so as to detract from the story.

I'm currently out of this world, wandering in the land of Pegana via the anthology Short Works of Lord Dunsany. Dunsany was an Irish writer (c. early 1900s) who was quite influential on other writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and the like, as well as on various modern writers and filmmakers.

I've spending time again with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I want to be her when I grow up.

#23

You're going to love her in the last book - she kicks some serious booty! My boyfriend keeps trying to bribe me to read it out loud to him, translating as I go, but that's not going to happen! :)

I'm in Mozambique, hearing the voices of a family in Ancestor Stones.

#5 - I have got to read Gilead! I've heard so many good things about it, and then I forget it. Another one to add to my toread list . . .

#24
I actually just recently read the second book, and loved it so much, that I went back to read the first one again - just in case, I missed something. Can't wait for the third, but I'm chagrined that it will be the last. I just tagged your library - you have some great Scandanavian titles that I want to check into.

Repost from the August thread (where did summer go???)

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.

#26

Yeah, it's sad he died so early - he was a good guy that did a lot of good work. Also sad that he never got to see his novels published and know that they are so popular.

I'm in Suffolk County, England and in my journal I Capture the Castle where my family is living in poverty.

Argentina - The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin.
England - The Parasites by Daphne Du Maurier.
England - The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
Also had a short trip to the South Seas with William Dampier's Piracy, Turtles and Flying Foxes

I am in England in the future with Keith Brooke's The Accord. At least at the time when I am not in the virtual reality which seems also to represent England so far):)

I'm undergoing A Change in Altitude while climbing Mt. Kenya in Anita Shreve's upcoming novel. Shreve evokes a real feeling of the climb, and when I'm finished I'm looking forward to re-reading Michael Crichton's excellent essay "Kilimanjaro" in his collection,
Travels.

I was just in 10 European cities in Decapolis: Tales from Ten Cities. Ten tales set in ten cities by ten different, mostly youngish international authors. I liked some better than others, of course.

avaland,

This sounds interesting. Which are the cities?

"In" Winnipeg, briefly Ottawa, and rural Ontario, with John Craigʻs In Council Rooms Apart (1971).

A very neglected novel, it would seem, but I donʻt see much Canadian writing.

Could it have taken place anywhere? Well, yes -- in any Allied country of WW II.

It takes place about a quarter century after WW II, when the war is not yet firmly "history" -in the strict or the popular sense of the word -- and is no longer just "old current events". without giving away the main point, it is about a revisionist view of one crucial point in the history of the war.

I couldnʻt find the above (Craigʻs i C R A) under LTʻs "Search" by title, and I wouldnʻttry to look up a "John Craig" --anticipating saturation.

I am in St. Petersburg with The Insulted and Humiliated by Fyodor Dostoevsky, uplifting title isn't it? I am also in Tehran during The Septembers of Shiraz and still in Scandinavia with Beowulf.

Argentina - The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt.
England - The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith.

Been a busy traveller as an Avenger. Spent some time in Bosnia before returning to New York. Quick trips to Panama and the United Arab Emirates have also featured and I don't think I've stopped there.

I've been in Czechoslovakia, Vienna, Switzerland, Cuba, and Massachusetts with The Glass Room.

Portugal, where else? Out of The Dedalus Book of Portuguese Fantasy and into Declares Pereira

I am in Uppsala Sweden in 2003 with The Cruel Stars of the Night by Kjell Eriksson

I'm still floating down Thames: Sacred River with Peter Ackroyd. It's been a slow, meandering, but very pleasant journey.

Yesterday, I was in Vermont (US) with Jeffrey Lent's A Peculiar Grace. Now I'm trying to decide where to do next...

>19 eairo: Thanks eairo. Especially needed the wiki link since I gave up on Fingerpost at page 120 or so - too meandering with religious debates for me.

Now I am back in the US in NYC reading about Seymour in Raise High the Roofbeams Carpenters.

Cornwall, umm, 17th Century I think, in Frenchman's Creek.

I'm in Nigeria with The Thing Around Your neck

Right now I'm in Enniscorthy near Dublin but about to embark on a journey to live in Brooklyn (Colm Toibin's newest).

I'm in New York with Tess Chaykin, trying to solve the mistery of The Last Templar.

Having left the Canada of John Craig ( In Council Rooms Apart --#35), I am in a rather mundane Manhattan of some time in the 2nd half of the 20th c. with Rex Stoutʻs Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. (Copyright 1985, but the setting of the bookʻs 3 short novels is no doubt somewhat earlier.)

A very different New York from todayʻs, I suppose (I havenʻt seen NYC since the 1970s), but youʻre not so aware, in reading, of the ambience; the plot overrides that.

The State Library System has this book only in audio- not in book-form, so I may donate it when finished. (Death Times Three, 1985. )

Argentina - The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Cesares.
United States - The Eleventh Hour byLynn Erickson.
United Kingdom - Egg Dancing by Liz Jensen.

#50, rolandperkins, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels were written from the 30s through the 70s; Death Times Three was published posthumously.

Relaxing on The Beach in Thailand.

Hi rebecca nyc,

Thanks; I couldnʻt find individual dates of publication for the 3 items in Death Ties Three

I knew he first published a novel some time in the 1930s, at age about 40.

Right now I am alternating between Van Diemen's Island (Tasmania) and London, England in Richard Flanagan's Wanting.

I am marching across Syria sometime BCE in the "baggage" of Cyrus' The Lost Army

I'm in England with The Other Hand.

I remain in St. Petersburg with The Insulted and Humiliated, and I am also now in China with Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie.

UK - Egg Dancing by Liz Jensen
Argentina - Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig.

Taking a break from The Other Hand with the supremely fluffy Murder with Peacocks so I'm currently in Virginia, US.

I'm in L.A. which apparently is Not the End of the World according to Christopher Brookmyre at least.

I am now in China with Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch and also in Seattle visiting The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

I'm in rural China (ca. 1920s) with Women of the Silk. hemlok, bring that couch by so I can have a rest!

Still in Portugal. Pereira left and I moved from his small but respectable afternoon newspaper's editing office to the local population register to learn All the Names.

I think I'm somewhere in Europe, with it's prehistoric forests, but as it's never explicitely said, it's a bit hard to guess. Still it's the only place I can think of that has forests and where both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived, as is the case in The Inheritors by William Golding.

I am in Modern day China. Was in Beijing and now have gone to some mountain some where with Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost.

Now I am in Sweden with The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson and also in Seattle at The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

I'm now in Israel, with Look for Me, the second part in Edeet Ravel's Tel Aviv trilogy. I'm very happy, because I have found a new favorite author!!

I am now in Ethiopia in the 1950's in Cutting for Stone by Abraham Vewrghese.

Argentina with The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene.

Cambridge, England with Jackson Brodie and the Land sisters and Binky Rain (all wonderful characters) in Case Histories

I’m in the middle-east groping my way because I’m in Baghdad Without a Map(and Other Misadventures) by Tony Horwitz
I’m also in a isolated mountain village the year is 1666 while the plague is spreading in a Year of Wonders a Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

I am on a trip thru present-day Ireland in McCarthy's Bar .

I'm in Iceland watching The Draining Lake with Arnaldur Indridason's detectives.

I'm in Belgium just starting Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald and will be traveling after that to Tokyo for Gail Tsukiyama's The Street of a Thousand Flowers.

I am in Edwardian England and the modern day with The House at Riverton by Kate Mortin.

I am in Sweden with The Girl Who Played with Fire and starting out in Vermont with The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster.

Brazil - The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza.
Paris, France - Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin.

About to visit Sweden with The Girl Who Played With Fire.

I am now in Sweden with The Demon of Dakar by Kjell Eriksson.

Am in another Dakkar, in Senegal, with Xala.

OMG how many have been to Sweden via The Girl Who Played with Fire ? LOL

Well I sadly have left there, and am now in London reading Buried, by Mark Billingham- which seems kinda boring to me actually :(

I am in Sitka, Alaska with The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon.

I have given up on being in the "Western Desert" (Libya/Tunisia?) of the WW II Era, having read just a little of Pressburgʻs The Killing of Rommel.

I am moving to Arkansas (an unnamed big city -- Little Rock(?) ), with Grif Stockleyʻs Religious Conviction. A lot of it is Arkansan, a lot more is things that could have happened in the Legal ambience of any city.

I am in 1916 Mexico with an aging cavalryman and an expedition of inexperienced horse soldiers on patrol for the elusive Pancho Villa in Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead. This is my first Olmstead novel and so far I am really enjoying it.

#82> OMG how many have been to Sweden via The Girl Who Played with Fire ? LOL

I know, it's quite the popular one at the moment! I'm reading it because the third in the series is coming out RSN (next month, I think) and because my workmate wants to discuss it finally (she read it some months ago now).

Brazil Inferno by Patricia Melo.

I'm still in Sweden with The Girl Who Played With Fire but wanted a lighter book for bedtime reading, so am now also heading towards 19th century London from Cairo with the intrepid Amelia Peabody (and her trusty parasol) in The Deeds of the Disturber.

I am in a graveyard in Ireland in Ulysses while I'm also moving some old graves in Portugul in The City and the Mountains by Eca de Queiros.

I read dead people.

I am in a graveyard in Ireland in Ulysses while I'm also moving some old graves in Portugul in The City and the Mountains by Eca de Queiros.

I read dead people.

I'm in the Czech Republic - well, it was still Czechoslovakia at the time - reading Mawer's The Glass Room.

I'm bouncing back and forth between Sweden The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo and Zimbabwe site of Harare North (Brian Chikwava) and my own work We Are All Zimbabweans Now

Breaking the heat of Inferno in Brazil with A Doll's House in Norway.

I'm in upstate New York with Joyce Carol Oates's latest, Little Bird of Heaven.

Wanting to be with Richard Flanagan in convict Tasmania and Charles Dickens's London.

I'm in a village in Wales listening as The Earth Hums in B Flat.

Found my way out of the huge Central Registry somewhere in Portugal where all the names can be found (or lost) ... and now back to Spain to meet The Painter of Battles.

I am in Foxborough, Massachusetts near past and present with the New England Patriots, and the non-fiction Then Belichick Said to Brady by Jim Donaldson.

In Atlanta, Georgia, USA with Genesis by Karin Slaughter.

I'm in Scottsboro with an Orange Prize nominee

In Asakusa--where else?-- with The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa.

I'm in Portugal discovering The Sin of Father Amaro.

I just found this group and realized that I'm actually currently reading from this month's theme nation. :)

Still in Sweden with The Girl Who Played With Fire and about to head off to Cape Town, South Africa in Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.

I've found myself just outside Peking (as it was) with Teilhard de Chardin and a team of scientists looking for Peking Man among dragon's bones in The Jesuit and the Skull.

In England in the midst of a modern war -- How I Live Now by Med Rosoff.
Really thought-provoking.

I am currently in Moscow, Russia just breaking well into War and Peace. Amazing how much it reminds me of his Anna Karinina.
belva

In Brazil in the City of God by Paulo Lins.

Also, having a trip on the Thames with Three Men in a Boat by courtesy of Jerome K. Jerome.

And I have experienced A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire with Anton Chekhov.

I'm in 1915 Ontario, interested to learn what happened The Day the Falls Stood Still.

I'm in Mexico City in the Zocalo with Gonzalo Celorio

I am in Cameroon with Susana Herrera watching Mango Elephants in the Sun.

I am in NYC with BottomFeeder by B.H. Fingerman.

I am in Leningrade during the Nazis’ brutal siege. I’m in jail for looting a dead Nazi’s pilot , my cell mate is such Kolya , he has been charged of desertion; but we will not executed , if we find a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake; all this in City of Thieves by David Benioff the same who wrote The 25th Hour

I am still messing about with Three Men in a Boat on the Thames and about to Kiss the Girls Goodbye in London.

I am also at War and Peace in Russia and will be for the rest of 2009.

About to engage with The Cobra's Heart in East Africa.

Just had a brief sojourn to Vancouver, Canada with Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus!.

I am in Kyoto, Japan with Geisha a non-fiction, by Liza Dalby.

I am in Boston/London, with On Beauty and Ireland in the 1960s with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Packing my powdered wig for a trip to revolutionary France in A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

I'm in San Francisco with Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber.

Taking a break from Stockholm as the tension in The Girl Who Played With Fire is all a bit too much sometimes, and am now in New Orleans with Ignatius J Reilly, in A Confederacy of Dunces.

Met The Painter of Battles on the coastal Spain, but he left. Moved on inland Spain to a so far unnamed city (probably Madrid) to enjoy the company of ladies of questionable reputation, or Izas, rabizas y colipoterras : drama con acompañamiento de cachondeo y dolor de corazón.

I'm in current day Naples, Italy with For Grace Received, by Valeria Parrella.

I am bouncing back and forth between Russia with War and Peace and Transylvania with the Count in Dracula.
belva

I am bouncing too Belva between Russia, War and Peace and had a recent foray into England with The Virgin and the Gipsy a love story by D.H. Lawrence.

Bouncing between England in the 16th century with Joanna Denny's Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen and Iraq in the 21st century with Åsne Seierstad's A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal

I have been jumping around Africa suffering enormously with the new Oprah pick (while I usually don't jump at her pic, the boyfriend is Nigerian, and this author is Nigerian, so had to get it!) with Say You're One of Them. It was quite depressing. I am now moving to Algeria with Women of Algiers in their Apartment.

In Portugal (I think). I'm hanging out with death, but there are interruptions.
Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

In Spain, going to The South, or El Sur seguido de Bene, from Barcelona (and not Madrid as I earlier thought in #120).

I’m in Jerusalem getting ready to follow Marco Polo's footsteps . So I guess in a week , more or less, I will be In Xanadu a Quest by William Dalrymple

Having read Darkly Dreaming Dexter I decided to stay in Miami with the next in the series, Dearly Devoted Dexter. I thought that I might as well finish off the omnibus edition before moving on to pastures new.

Brazil - Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado.
England - My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier.
USA - Magnetism by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Oh! And still in Russia with War and Peace.

And I shall be going to the Circus with Alistair Maclean somewhere in Europe.

In Santiago, Chile with The Dancer and the Thief and the prison warden.

Well, I started out in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris, France (in which hangs Foucault's Pendulum) but am now hanging out in Pilade's talking about Templars--as well as cretins, fools, morons and lunatics.

>132 CarlosMcRey:
Cretins, moron and lunatics - I do so love Umberto Eco.

in Venice with Commissario Guido Brunetti in A Sea of Troubles and in Alabama with The last of the Scottsboro Boys

In Montreal, reading a very interesting story based in another region of the world!
The Lost I, by Choghig Kazandjian
(highly recommend it to anyone looking for something to read)

In Tehran...having a go with Reading Lolita in Tehran for the 2nd time (and hopefully, this time I'll finish it, too!).

I'm experiencing Too Much Happiness in southern Ontario, hanging out in Wolf Hall in Tudor England, and am in the process of escaping from Dracula's castle in Romania.

I am in modern day Northern California with The Parrot Who Thought She Was a Dog by Nancy Ellis-Bell.

I am roaming around Umbria - again - this time with James Cowan and finding Francis: A Saint's Way.

I'm in England, having an Ordeal by Innocence with Agatha Christie.

I'm in England, France and Italy, hanging out with The Disastrous Mrs Weldon by Brian Thompson.

I am pondering the terrors of WW I and the grip of morphine in a trench in Somme, France, 1916 with "Three Day Road" by Joseph Boydon.

Russia - War and Peace Book 2.
England - Daphne by Justine Picardie.

Still in Spain, left The South and Bene behind and now I'm hanging with the family of Pascual Duarte.

Currently in 1930s Edinburgh with The prime Of Miss Jean Brodie .

Back in the USSR, taking a break from Reading Globally Challenge, laughing with The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire.

Slightly distracted from A Confederacy of Dunces, I'm now visiting The Hundred, a spooky old collapsing mansion in England, with Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger.

Getting in on the October theme reading a bit early!

I'm in London 480 years ago in Wolf Hall.

148--Same here, after having just left the "spooky old collapsing mansion in England, with Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger" mentioned by wookiebender.

Russia - W & P
Germany - Mary by Vladimir Nabokov.

I've just left an unnamed, collapsing city hit by an epidemic Blindness (José Saramago). I enjoyed it a lot more than my previous (and first) read by him, The Cave.
Now I have just arrived in Rio de Janeiro with Colombines kyss (Original title: Um Beijo De Colombina, Eng. Columbine's Kiss, not yet published) by Adriana Lisboa, who by the way has been given the Saramago Award. I'm also spending some time in Elizabethan Britain listening to Orlando by Virginia Woolf. I've understood I am to remain there for a few hundred years.

Edit: Typo and attempting to fix touchstones.

I'm in New England celebrating Banned Book Week with Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Sweden with Karin Alvtegen in Shadow

In Barcelona playing The Angel's Game. My goodness but I'm impressed!

for A Hundred and One Days A Baghdad Journal
I will be other there writing it

Bouncing between Iraq with A Hundred and One Days and England with True Murder by Yaba Badoe

I am in a Welsh country village in the 50's in The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan.

I'm in England with Agatha Christie in An Autobiography

In a small town in South Australia in the early 1960s, learning Everything I Knew.

I'm sneaking around the back streets of Milan with a left-leaning British spy looking for A Cause for Alarm.

The year's going too quickly!