Where in the World Are You Now? October 2009

I'm in Oriente, a district of Cuba owned and operated by United Fruit Company. I'm on a sugar cane plantation, it's 1958 and the political climate is just a bit chaotic. I'll be working on a Telex from Cuba.

Extremadura, Spain, having a reunion with Bene of The South and Bene but in Spanish this time.

I just crossed the border from Viet Nam into Laos looking for Caciatto in (of course!) Looking for Cacciatio by Tim O'Brien.

I have no idea where I am. Probably in the country formerly known as Prince.

I'm mainly in Papua New Guinea and northern Australia, but also being whisked around the globe to sit with Nicholas Evans at the death bed of languages on the point of extinction and their Dying Words.

Twitham, Dying Words sounds great. On to the ever-growing wishlist it goes. Meanwhile, I'm spending my time between the mean streets of Depression-era North Winnipeg in Under the Ribs of Death, by John Marlyn and in some unnamed but Portuguesesque city in Blindness by Jose Saramago.

In Djibouti, which means Jab (death of) Outi (the ogress), and is apparently a Land Without Shadows.

I was in Leaford, Ontario, Toronto and later California with The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens. I am now in Montreal and will be leaving for Cambodia in The Disappeared by Kim Echlin.

Russia - War and Peace Book 2 by Leo Tolstoy.
England - Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier - audiobook.
Brazil - Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado.

St Petersburg/Leningrad during WWII.

City of Thieves by David Benioff. INto the 4th chapter - pretty much 1 chapter a night before bedtime and it is delightfully well done- it has suspense, good humor and a human touch. THe characters have already captured my interest and I am rooting for them.

>3 SqueakyChu:- Squeeky- I loved Looking for Cacciato by Tim O'Brien when i first read it several years ago. O'Brien is well known and respected as one of the best chronicalers of the Vietnam war. His The THings THey Carried is a modern classic and Caciotto is absurdly funny.

I've just left Sparta, New York, USA with Joyce Carol Oates's Little Bird of Heaven. A compelling tragedy! I am headed to Asia with Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women's Writing (sorry, no touchstone), which I will probably read in tandem with a novel.

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I've read (and loved) The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I just had the good fortune to see and hear him in person at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, a week ago. I was truly impressed. That's why I'm reading Looking for Cacciato now and have pulled out two other Tim O'Brien books to read very soon as well. His reading of "Letter to Timmy" was heart-rending.

I'm about to be caught up in the Middle East conflict in an Arab village in Israel with Let it be Morning by Sayed Kashua.

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Oh, what a wonderful book and wonderful author!! Kashua became a favorite author of mine after reading two of his books. Have you read his other book called Dancing Arabs?

In D.C. reading Sorcery and the Single Girl .

In England visiting The House of Doctor Dee and also in Japan visiting Blind willow, Sleeping Woman.

Madrid, Spain -- spending lazy afternoons with the regulars at Café doña Rosa, people who believe that what will happen will happen, and there is no point doing anything to change anything.

Edit: Oops, forgot the book title: The Beehive.

In Venice with Commissarrio Brunetti in A Sea of Troubles and following his movements around the city in Brunetti's Venice

I am wandering three continents: in Ireland still listening to Joyce's Ulysses, in Portugul moving bones with Eca de Quieros's The City and the Mountain (almost done), in an odd dreamscape, wandering various namely cities, carnivals, deserts, and other barrens in Mahfouz's Dreams (just started), and, if that weren't enough, somewhere in the land of Western Liang with a Tang Priest, a Monkey, a Pig, a Sand Demon and a White Horse, now in Volume 3 of The Monkey King in my reading to my son.

I did a brief stopover in Iceland with Arnaldur Indridason's latest mystery (in English), Hypothermia. As usual, it was a wonderful - albeit brief - entertaining novel.

I am Nowhere in My Father's house in Algeria with Assia Djebar.

I am enjoying Love and Summer in Rathmoye, a small village in Ireland.

In Edgerton, Illinois following da trail of Mr. X and in da Louvre trying to crack da Vinci Code.

Moved from the September thread, because obviously jet lag has gotten to me.

While traveling between NYC and LA in real life, I was also in France, Canada, and Vermont with Mavis Gallant and The Cost of Living, in Harare North, aka London with Brian Chikwava, on The Skating Rink on the coast of Spain with Roberto Bolano, and in 1920s London and rural England with Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

I am in Charleston, South Carolina just South of Broad by Pat Conroy

and outside London visiting The House of Doctor Dee.

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

Ahah, now I've found the right thread...

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

I've been Breathless in Bombay. I just left to catch my breath.

I have been with The Europeans in Boston, USA.
Mrs de Winter in England.
Daisy Miller in Europe.
Continuing my visit with Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands in Brazil.
and still battling with War and Peace in Russia.

I've been on a little classics travel --

in 1900s Yukon Territory watching Buck yield to The Call of the Wild

now with Celie in The Color Purple, where Alice Walker has stopped the story for 50 pages -- so far :(( -- while Celie (and I) read her sister's letters from Africa

Hello all.
I am yet in Transylvania with the Count,
in Boson with The Bostonians; (it being Henry James "Author of the Month and all), and in England with A Room of One's Own. So I am just rather all over the place right now.
Just sitting here remembering the very first time I read The Color Purple; what an emotional experience that was for me. When it ended I was so drained, I just laid my head down on my arms and wept. What a wonderful piece of literature Ms. Walker wrote. Enjoy............or appreciate.
belva

I've traveled from Oxford England to Houston TX and will soon be following The Snow Geese on their migration to the Arctic Ocean.

I am in San Francisco with the gang from South of Broad, looking for Trevor.

I'm following Balthasar's Odyssey by Amin Maalouf, waiting the year of the beast (1666) to come, on a journey from Lebanon to Genoa , trough Costantinople , Spain and London

Grelobe, I've got that one sitting on my shelf waiting to be read - what do you think of it?

I'm hanging out with Death in San Francisco in Moore's A Dirty Job .

I'm in LOndon with Zimbabwean author Brian Chikwava. He's joining thousands of fellow economic and political refugees in London which they now call Harare North the title of his book.

I'm back in familiar territory, following The Three Musketeers in France (and D'Artagnan's brief trip to London).

#35 and #36, I read Balthasar's Odyssey a few years ago and really liked the first 3/4 or so, but not the rest. I can't remember why, and I had heard rave reviews so might have been expecting too much.

In Costa Rica, in Years Like Brief Days.

#36 A Musing (Balthasar's Odyssey)

I tried to read it, ten years ago, more or less, but I quit after 40/45 pages, at that time I found it to slow, and also I didn’t like the form in which is written, , a diary kept by the main character, or more likely I wasn’t in the right mood. Now, instead, I find it captivating and I like to follow it at the right pace, step by step. I’m only at page 119 out of 390 and while I am at work , can’t wait to be at home for going a little further on (if my daughter allows me, of course. Ten year old and lately she wants to play at card all the time)

I am in post WWI NYC getting to know Homer and Langley, and also in London staying at The House of Doctor Dee.

Grelobe - The description of the book interests me, especially partially being set in Genova. Are there other books that you could recommend that are placed around Genova or that area of Italy?

I was going to Africa, but "because of last minute difficulties in buying tickets, I arrived in Barcelona at midnight on a train different from the one I had announced, and nobody was waiting for me."

I'm with Andrea of Nada.

For my Foodways course, I'm just beginning to wander from Maine to Louisiana with visits at various spots in between in Serious Pig : an American cook in search of his roots by John and Matt Lewis Thorne. Following that I'll be off to Deer Camp : last light in the Northeast Kingdom by John M. Miller.

I just left Scandinavia (c. 35,000 BCE). The weather was cold but The Dance of the Tiger was good.

Forever Peace had me wandering around quite a bit. Stints in Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and the US. Didn't stop long enough in one place to count it for the challenge though.

I am in a German concentration camp with other captured Russians and an Italian priest, contemplating Life and Fate.

teelgee, I shall arrive there on Monday. Meanwhile I am in Australia with Oscar and Lucinda as well as Russia in War and Peace.

I read many books at a time, so I'm in many places at the same time. But today, I'm carrying with me "The Living Reed," by Pearl S. Buck. It is subtitled: "A Novel of Korea," so that's where I am, and very enjoyably so, I might add.

I'm in the Basque region, sensing the impending doom of the Spanish Civil War that is about to start in Guernica by Dave Boling.

I am in New Caledonia with a group of children who are illustrating local legends.

I'm in Mannahatta discovering what New York City looked like in the hours before Henry Hudson arrived in 1609.

I'm in Russia right now doing a cost/benefit analysis of Crime and Punishment.

I'm still in Paris in the throes of the French Revolution looking for A Place of Greater Safety but I take short side trips to escape all that anger and violence.
I went on The Walking Tour in Wales, which was very atmospheric if a bit confusing and now I'm solving ancient crimes with Gordianus the Finder in The House of the Vestals.

Just left 16th c. western Ireland with My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison.

Somewhere in Lapland in The Golden Compass audiobook
Lost but enjoying the scenery in The City and the City by China Mieville

Heading back to Brazil and Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado.
Experiencing War and Peace and Life and Fate in Russia.
Sitting for The Portrait of a Lady in Europe.
Also Crawling at Night with Nani Power.

>58 jmyers24: You're somewhere in central Europe with the Miéville:-) "Somewhere" is the key word there.

I've drifted into Romania with Land of the Green Plums by our newest Nobel laureate Herta Müller (and I'm keeping one foot in Asia with the anthology I'm reading).

#60

Are you liking it? That's the one I'm planning to read for the Dictatorship-month. I visited Romania once during the Ceausescu-era, so it'll be interesting to see that time from a Romanian perspective.

I'm currently in England with Sense and Sensibility, and occasionally in New Orleans with Ignatius J Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces.

I'm in New Zealand, reading Potiki.

I'm also giving away Ancient Japan to anyone interested ;-) I'm giving away a copy of White as Bone, Red as Blood on my blog to residents of the US and Canada, if you're interested in getting a copy.
The giveaway is open until October 20th. Enter here!

I am driving through Zimbabwe in the car of The Boy Next Door.

I'm also still in Tudor England with Wolf Hall - real life is interfering with my precious reading time!

I've just left Wolf Hall and Tudor England and so am returning to ancient Egypt with Joseph and His Brothers.

I'm about to descend to Alexandria in Ancient Egypt to meet The Guardian of the Flame.

I just left WWI England where I was keeping A Diary without Dates.

In Barcelona playing The Angel's Game

I'm somewhere in Japan with The Housekeeper and the Professor.

Currently I am in Spain with King Philip and Ana de Mendoza deep within the pages of For One Sweet Grape by Kate O'Brien.
And I am here, there, and everywhere with The Virago Book of Ghost Stories for "Ghost and Goulies" month.
belva

In 1745, Africa, on my way to South Carolina, on a slave ship, with Aminata Diallo in Someone Knows My Name.

I'm enamoured of a very rare book I've found in post-war Spain in The Shadow of the Wind.

>72 varielle: I loved The Shadow of the Wind. Zafón has another one out but I haven't read it yet. I heard it's similar to Shadow.

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, on The Island of Dr Moreau.

I'm back on the trail of The Snow Geese in South Dakota, where they've gathered in the tens of thousands on Sand Lake.

Am back in the USSR with the new and decidedly 'Western' translation of The First Circle by Solzhenitsyn.

Survived the Reign of Terror in Paris hiding in A Place of Greater Safety.

Now I'm in Forks, Washington state, hanging out with some vegetarian vampires. Twilight by Stephanie Mayers.

>77 Selliers: hope you have good rain gear. Forks is one of the rainiest places in the country!

I'm in Ramallah, Palestine, reading Sharon and My Mother-in-Law by Suar Amiry, thanks to Akeela's recommendation and the wonders of Wellington's library system! It's really good - eye-opening, sad and very funny all at once.

I've turned the touchstone off because it's going to a spam link, but there is a proper work page for the book...

In The Keep, nestled in the Transylvanian Alps, specifically Dibu Pass, Romania, as something stalks and kills the Nazi soldiers who have taken up residence there. (Definitely not the Jennifer Egan book.)

In Chicago, just beginning The Demise of Luleta Jones.

I am in modern day Finland with Troll by Johanna Sinisalo.

I'm stuck in a block of Flats in Paris, with Life: A User's Manual. I think I'm over it!
;-p

KimB, how far through did you get? I've had that book waiting here for 5 years...

Haven't quite given up....yet!
But at last count I think I was up to page 165.
I'm not feeling any empathy for the characters, despite all the excruciating detail of their items in their flats.

I am shipwrecked on the Scottish shore with David Balfour, after being Kidnapped.

I'm being dragged around the United States, from New York to Oakland, CA, to Chicago as Dorothy Day is growing up to experience The Long Loneliness.

I'm in a hospital in Des Moines, Iowa; I'm just Waking from a coma after a car wreck that killed my father and sister -- a memoir by Matthew Sanford, now a paraplegic yoga teacher.

I'm in a cemetary that is suspiciously like Highgate Cemetary (so I am told, I've never actually visited it!) in The Graveyard Book.

Russia - War and Peace and Life and Fate.
Brazil - Tent of Miracles by Jorge Amado.
Europe - The Golden Bowl by Henry James.
USA - The Question of Max by Amanda Cross.

Sepharad is a mental journey all over Europe, on the trail of of the lost, disappeared and mistreated -- but still deeply rooted in Madrid.

>61 -Eva-: I liked it very much and it is indeed a perfect book for the dictator/dictatorship theme. I left my comments on my thread in this group and on the new Herta Müller discussion thread.

I have left Romania, and am continuing my slow progress through Asia, visiting Japan now (Speaking for Myself: an Anthology of Asian Women Writing); and I am spending my evenings back in Barcelona with Death Rites by Spanish author Alicia Giménez-Bartlett.

Hanging out with conquerors and eating curry in India - Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. Check out the India thread for recent comments on and updates about this fascinating tale.

Bedford, Maine in The Keeper.

I'm in Paris with the Casuists in A Corner of the Veil by Laurence Cosse, and really enjoying my random library find! Someone has just proved God's existence beyond any doubt.

#85 KimB thanks for the update - you're not encouraging me to bump it up the TBR pile!

>90 englishrose60: englishrose: I think you need to step it up a bit. Such a lightweight. ;o)

Thanks teelgee! :-o

I'm between Haiti and New York with Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. It is great!

I'm in New England following Ned and The Good Thief' adventures by Hannah Tinti

In Belfast playing Harry's Game.

I am in Rio de Janeiro with The Taker by Rubem Fonseca, and also moving between Paris and London keeping up with Eve's Ransom by George Gissing.

I've been in Poland during the Holocaust; now I'm heading over to the

I've been in Poland during the Holocaust; now I'm heading over to the Sundarbans to check out the Hungry Tide.

One of the books I'm currently reading (rereading, to be precise) is a facsimile edition of an original Nancy Drew, copyright 1930, called "The Hiden Staircase." So I am in the fictional town of River Heights, located in the very real Middle West of these here United States. :)

After roaming in France with The Three Musketeers I am now back in feudal Japan with the Taiko. I had to put it down when I left for France back in August (as in, actually flying to France) 'cause it was too heavy so now I'm back to finish it.

Travelling east on the Trans-Siberian Railway in Le canapé rouge. (Well, I'm not travelling in the red sofa as such, that one is staying safely back in Paris, but ah, whatever...)

In a small, corruption-riddled, mining town in America, called "Personville" but mostly known as "Poisonville" in Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.

I have left Lucinella in 1970s New York, Joseph and His Brothers in the ancient middle east, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in Wall-divided Berlin, and am now sitting at my computer wondering where to go next.

It seems as if I am somewhere in Denmark in Per Petterson's new book In Siberia. (No, I'm not in Sibera...yet!)

I am in 1939 Liverpool in the very lightweight Goodnight Sweetheart by Annie Groves; the first of a quartet of books on the Liverpool homefront in WWII. It is just a nice, sweet, comfy, cozy read.
belva

Oh I do so love comfy reads. I have been promising myself one for a while, but the closest I have gotten is the slough of despair otherwise known as YA literature.

In Liguria, Italy with Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the italian Riviera where Every Month is Enchanting. This is where my ancestors are from and it does sound enchanting.

In Mongolia with Eastern Jewel, aka Yoshiko. Started off in China, then moved to Tokyo before heading to Mongolia - something tells me she won't last long here... (The Secret Papers of Eastern Jewel)

I've moved to Pyatigorsk in the Soviet Union during WWII.

In England Berg (Film - Killing Dad) with Ann Quin.

I've fled from the crushing economic despair and burning mill of Bedford, Maine in The Keeper and landed in the haunted Milburn, New York of Ghost Story.

I'm back in Manitoba, Canada with The Kiss of the Fur Queen.

I am still in Rio de Janeiro with The Taker by Rubem Fonseca, and I am also now in China with Peony in Love by Lisa See.

I am in 17th century Italy with Galileo's Daughter.

Off to Paris with The American by Henry James.

I've just returned to Melbourne with Nick Trakakis whose time as a post-doc at Notre Dame University in Illinois was somewhat of a Via Dolorosa.
I've now just moved to an isolated cottage in Scotland to enjoy A Book of Silence with Sara Maitland.

I'm in Prague, rereading Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- I had forgotten what a really marvellous book this is.

I am on Lonesome Lake, British Columbia, 1932 or so, reading Ruffles on my Longjohns by Isabel Edwards. Before that I was in England running spies in At Risk by Stella Rimington.

About to find out What Maisie Knew with Henry James in USA and France.

I'm in 15th century Seville in an artist guild's stall. But I'm also in 20th century Boston and London. I've been from Spain to Venice to Sarajevo. It's a fascinating journey with Geraldine Brooks in The People of the Book.

I'm in Nelson DeMille's cold-war Russia, about to discover The Charm School. Pubbed in the '80s, the thriller evokes the era and setting ... and the absence of cell phones, etc., is positively startling, a real reminder about how much has changed, and how fast.

I'm scattered -
in Wisconsin with A Reliable Wife
in Sri Lanka with Love Marriage and
in Australia with The Lost Dog

In doubt to go to see if is it true that "Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue" by Paul Bowles mainly in Sri Lanka and Morocco , or to stay in the U.S.A. trying to discover who really Sebastian Knight was, following the words of Vladimir Nabokov in "The Real Life Of Sebastian Knigth"

ps. sorry I have troubles with touchstone

I took a short journey to Tokyo with Strangers by Taichi Yamada, but am now in Un Lun Dun.

I left Barcelona Saturday (Death Rites by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett) and made a quick pass through rural Southern India with Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya, a bestseller in 1955 apparently (I had the distinct feeling I had read the book before...).

Now dashing through the Balkans with Eric Ambler looking for clues about A Mask for Dimitrios. This pre-World War 2 writer of spy novels is a revelation.

#131

It is excellent, isn't it. I'm almost afraid to look up other Ambler's books for fear they won't be as good.

>131 TedWitham:; 132:

Ambler seems to be uniformly good. Travel Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and Turkey with Cause for Alarm, Journey Into Fear, The Light of Day, and The Schirmer Inheritance.

South Africa. Just finished an old book (1990) by Sindiwe Magona, the first black woman to publish novels in South Africa. It's an interesting reminder of the hardships of the period, much like Maya Angelou, though not a lyrically written. The overlay of Xhosa tradition and idioms add to the impact.

I'm done with the Ghost Story of Milburn, New York and have joined some 'urban spelunkers' or Creepers as they explore long-abandoned luxury hotel in Asbury Park.

I am in China with Peony in Love and now also going from WWII Poland to Greece with Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels.

>133 LisaCurcio:. Thanks for that, LisaCurcio. I plan to read as many Eric Amblers as fast as Penguin Classics can print them, and as fast as my library gets them in!

In New England with Herman Melville having a cup of tea and discussing mysterious spirits at the "Apple-tree Table."

I'm crowded in The Small Room by May Sarton, with Lucy Winter and staff and students of a small women's college in New England.

As soon as get out of there, I'm off into "The Gathering Storm" prepared by Robert Jordan for the 12th volume of his Wheel of Time series.
This book probably should not be counted because the action takes place in an imaginary world. But you do get to jump around that imaginary world a lot.

Off to Norway with The Redbreast.

I'm in New York with Joe Pitt in Charlie Huston's noir vampire Every Last Drop. And also in Germany (but I'm sure it'll relocate to Australia soon) with Alex Miller's Landscape of Farewell.

After having dwelled in Morocco for a while Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blueby Paul Bowles, I moved eastward, and I am now traveling in the Empty Quarter of Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

I am in Columbia, about to finish One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Still in Asia with my anthology but nights I sneak over into Algeria with The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry by Assia Djebar.

I'm actually the closest to home I've been all year, in southern Wisconsin with an American Wife.

Hey, I'm in France too with I Am Madame X.

I've just hit the streets of Dallas and Fort Worth looking out for a Double Cross.

I've gone from Iran/Persia with "Sohrab and Rustum" in the Shahnahma to India with Shakuntala. Presently I'm in 16th c. Ireland for a Michaelmas Tribute by Cora Harrison.

Malta during WWII with The Information Officer by Mark Mills--ER copy.

I'm in Afghanistan trying to get out of a burqa in The Kabul Beauty School.

I hope people realise we're now in the middle of November ;)

I fell in a time warp.

I'm currently re-reading a children's classic. I won't tell you the title; I'll just say that, globally speaking, I'm currently in "Wonderland."

(And lots of other places too. I juggle many books at one time -- I'm a biblioholic!:))