Where in the World Are You Now? January 2010

I am in England with The Woodlanders and also in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with the Wonder Boys.

I am in Ancient Greece with Virgil's Doomed Love.

I am in space with the Arisians and Eddorians in Triplanetary by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. A re-read for a Group Read of the Lensman series.

I am in a hill town in Italy nursing The English Patient, also taking regular shopping trips to exotic places around the world guided by Lucia Van Der Post in Things I wish my Mother Had Told Me:Lessons in Grace and Elegance.

Am in Russian again reading Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn.

On the south island of New Zealand living in a tower with The Bone People by Keri Hulme.

In France with Marie Antoinette in Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund

In Spain with Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett. I'm not very far in, but I seriously doubt that it would make my top 10 for 2010.

I am in Sweden consulting with Doctor Glas about a book entitled Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. Not to spoil things, but Glas's heart is neither young nor gay.

In England with Pride and Prejudice and The Pickwick Papers and Ancient Greece with Herodotus's Histories.

I'm in Northern England at Mansfield Park .

I'm in Antartica At the Mountains of Madness.

I am in Ethiopia with Cutting for Stone. Some of the sections describing the surgeries are a little gruesome, but it is a very good read otherwise.

In early 19th century Russia in War and Peace, in contemporary Lebanon with Rachid al-Daif's Learning English, and in mid-20th century Barcelona with Carmen Laforet's Nada.

Ancient Greece and Persia with Herodotus' Histories and somewhere in old Europe with The Song of the Nibelungs.

I'm in Newfoundland with "Galore" by Michael Crummey.

I'm in enchanting Corfu with the wacky Durrell family in My Family and Other Animals mainly exploring the island's varied animal life with the young and inquisitive Gerald. Also hopping between the dirty, crime-ridden London of mid-18th century and the shores of the unknown continent down under with The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. I've also just joined Tahir Shah in Morocco where he is just about to begin the restoration of an old palace called The Caliph's House and discovering that there is so much more to the crumbling structure and gardens than he bargained for.

1970s Iran, with Roya Hakakian's Jewish Iranian family in Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.

Travelled to Argentina to read The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martínez.

I've left The Mountains of Madness in Antarctica with my sanity intact. I'm now in Wales, with The Welsh Girl.

In the Heart of the Amazon Forest with Victorian zoologist Walter Henry Bates.

In Sweden with Merab's Beauty by Torgny Lindgren listening to the stories (and sermons) of residents of a small town.

I've just been enjoying Paris with Anna Gavalda's Hunting and Gathering and am now getting ready to travel to Romania with the memoir Along the Enchanted Way.

I am drawn into Thomas Cromwell's intrigues in Henry VIII's London and wondering how sinister Wolf Hall will be. I am enchanted by Hilary Mantel's writing.

I am in Norway with "Out Stealing Horses" and thinking more about the way men communicate.

Off to Ancient times and Helen of Troy by Margaret George.

I'm in Paris lodged in a Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

p.s. sorry for having mistook the thread

In Senegal where the Beggar's Strike is about to turn the life in the city somewhat absurd.

The touchstone appears fine while I edit, but disappears from the published message???

I'm currently in Buenos Aires, Argentina with Roberto Arlt and his Cuentos Completos full of misfits and outcasts. We may take a trip together to Africa later on, where things may or may not get stranger.

I'm in Sweden with Kerstin Ekman's Blackwater and also in California (so far) with Fault Lines by Nancy Huston, which won France's Prix Femina and was originally written in French, making me only a month late for the translation discussion.

Climbing and suffering in Nuristan in 1956 with Eric Newby in A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush. Love the man.

I'm in WWII Poland in Part I of Maus: A Survivor's Tale.

I was in WWII Leningrad and surrounding countryside, during the Nazi siege with The City of Thieves by David Benioff. It was for one of my RL book groups.

#30> The touchstone appears fine while I edit, but disappears from the published message???

It's a known bug, I believe. Happens from time to time with a book, and then clears itself up.

I've found a way around it: if you click on the "(others)" next to the touchstone (if it's there) then you get a list of books which also match your touchstone, and you often find duplicates there, one of which will usually "stick". Not going to work with The Beggar's Strike however, because there is no "(others)" option! :(

I was in a small town outside of Atlanta, Georgia with Real Murders by Charlaine Harris. Book 1 of the Aurora Teagarden mystery series. It is a read for a RL book group.

I'm in Nigeria/Biafra with Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. How I have gone so long without reading this book is a mystery - it is spectacular!

My Swedish author set his book in Texas, and so I thought it perhaps less appropriate for our theme read so I bailed and now I'm in Italy with Openwork by Adria Bernardi.

#36: I guess we'll have to live with them bugs. I think the more common case is the touchstone showing at all, and that can happen any time with any book. I think the phase of the moon has something to do with, or the solar winds...

But Rihata is where I am now, a town a few miles on from nowhere in an unnamed West African country.

I'm at Oxford with Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson

I'm in Cairo making my second attempt at taking a Palace Walk with Naguib Mahfouz, which I'm reading for my f2f book club. I'm on page 50 and hoping something happens soon or it will be a very long walk to page 500.

>42 Nickelini: Don't give up hope, Joyce! Before you know it you'll be completely hooked. I was, anyway, and I hope you will be too.

I ordered a copy of Palace Walk yesterday, so I'll be eagerly waiting to see what you think of it.

Following Freya Stark in Iraq in 1929 in Baghdad Sketches - Freya Stark

I've just touched down in UAE with a collection of short stories -- In a Fertile Desert: Modern Writing from the United Arab Emirates, translated to English by Denys Johnson-Davies.

In London, with Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, in A Study in Scarlet.

In London also.. but a little before Holmes & Watson and four centuries after Wolf Hall (where I have been); now discovering the life of visionary poet Blake.

Oxford, England with The Oxford Murders

In England investigating The Mysterious Affair at Styles with Monsieur Poirot.

Rachbxl & RidgewayGirl - I read another 100 pages of Palace Walk last night and it's definitely getting better.

I'm in Pittsburgh attending The Last Lecture .

Back to Japan again with Oh! A mystery of Mono No Aware.

>53 catarina1: I have that too, beautiful and unique. You prompted me to pull it out again just now for the pleasure of glancing through it. I find myself savoring it as a tbr!

I just returned from Iceland with the Far Traveler, a definite recommendation. I am now enjoying the sea in Hawaii through Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai'i.

I am in Semmering, Austria with a Burning Secret and also in Florida in The Garden of Last Days.

Commuting to and from work, I am, just like Avaland, in Newfoundland with The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. At home, I visit Dublin on and off in the company of Ulysses (which I'm reading for the first time).

I am having a Conversation in the Cathedral in 1960s (?) Peru.

ETA The conversation is taking place in the 60s, but the events recalled happened in the late 40s and early 50s.

Just left suburban Amsterdam by finishing The Dinner Club by Saskia Noort.

I've just started Fault Lines by Nancy Huston.

I can't seem to pry myself out of the Middle East. :) I've now left United Arab Emirates and entered 17th-century Iran with Anita Amirrezvani's novel The Blood of Flowers.

58, rebecca -

You'll have to let me know how that goes. I have that book on my shelf (I love Llosa!) and was saving it for the Dictatorship theme read.

#62 lilisin, I am enjoying it but it is very dense with different conversations between different people at different times all mixed up so it takes a lot of concentration (and sometimes guesswork) to figure it out. Several people here on LT read it last year and were extremely enthusiastic, and I loved The War of the End of the World which I read last year, so that's why I started it now.

Back on the remote Swedish island of Öland in The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin.

As is often the case, I have one foot in England trying to stay Far From the Madding Crowd. The other foot has traveled to Germany to understand the experience of The Magnetist's Fifth Winter.

I'm in Sydney, at the Eureka Stockade and other places needing the military around Australia and the British Empire beginning my Red Coat Dreaming.

I'm in Ireland with The Secret Scripture and also in San Francisco with Blind Submission.

I'm in the American South with a biography of Flannery O'Connor, Flannery, and a novel, Garden Spells.

I'm in 1950's India with A Suitable Boy (been there for months, will be still for at least one more), in Vietnam with Up Country, though lately his remembrances of the war have been stomach churning, so I may need a break for a day or so with another book, and in New York in the 1780s with The Book of Negros, but we'll soon be moving on to Nova Scotia.

I'm following two very different lines - one with the globe-trotting Julia Child in Laura Shapiro's charming biography of our favourite foodie; the other, tracking down killers in Manhattan's Lower East Side in Richard Price's gritty Lush Life.

I'm just leaving Staten Island, New York, having just finished Paul Zindel's My Darling, My Hamburger, a look at high school life in the late 1960s.

I am in India, Germany and England with (at least) Two Lives, and also eavesdropping on some Pastors and Masters in an unnamed university town in the UK.

wandering_star, I just loved Two Lives -- hope you do too.

I certainly am - it's excellent!

I'm in pre-war Austria with Frank Tallis's Vienna Secrets.

I've snuck into Northern Ireland with Stella RImington's MI5 and find myself in real and Present Danger. How did I get into three books at once?

As I was in Iran anyway, I decided to stay there, where I'm currently enjoying The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, by Hooman Majd.

I'm in Paris, with Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Which is making me long to be there in real life. It's been too long.

Chloe

Rihata was "somewhere" in Africa and now I am on The Road to My Village in The Gambia.

(By the way: why is it The Gambia?)

I was in Afghanistan from the 1970s to 2003 with A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

According to the book jacket, I am in an 'unnamed dream country' with an Invitation to a Beheading.

I am in Washington DC with Marmee March visiting her husband wounded in the Civil War. March won a Pulitzer, but I started this author with People of the Book and so far that is the prize winner for me.

In Rhodesia watching Mary coming to terms with life in the country with her new husband, Dick. The Grass is singing - 1001 Book

I am in Afghanistan with Peter Levi and Bruce Chatwin in The Light Garden Of The Angel King.

Just leaving Seattle, Washington after watching a parade of Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons.

I am in Bombay, India ( when it was Bombay) with Baumgartner's Bombay by Anita Desai.

I have just had a Conversation in the Cathedral (a bar) in 1950s/60s Peru, and am about to return to the contemporary New York area Where the God of Love Hangs Out.

>85 tropics: I am in Afghanistan with Peter Levi

*smiles* I'm in WWII Italy with Primo Levi -- exploring his relatives and the Holocaust through stories prompted by elements in The Periodic Table.

I am in ancient Asia Minor, and Greece, with Herodotus in chapter 1 of The Histories.

Have been in London and Poland on The Road Home by Rose Tremain.

Now visiting Egdon Heath for The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.

I am in Nantucket with Ishmael and Queequeg in Moby Dick.

Investigating the death of a partner in the streets of San Francisco and watching out for a Maltese Falcon... or indeed any falcon, Maltese or otherwise!

I'm in London with Miss Becky Sharpe, in Vanity Fair.

Just left the suburbs of Stockholm that had been infected with vampire violence in Let the Right One In.

I'm in Lyme Regis on the south coast of England, looking for fossils, with some Remarkable Creatures.

I keep hopscotching back-and-forth between Iran and Iraq. Now it's back to Iraq again, this time with a work of fiction, Sinan Antoon's I'Jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody.

I'm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland (where I once lived) with the Song Yet Sung.

I am Reading the Ceiling in The Gambia.

I am in Scotland and London, going back and forth with Jane maxwell, the Duchess of Gordon from Island of the Swans by Ciji Ware

I'm on Staten Island, New York with Fresh Kills.

I am in a plague-stricken village in Sweden, with Light by Torgny Lindgren.

I'm in Pre-revolutionary China with Wang and O-Lan Lung in The Good Earth .

I've moved over to the mean streets of Dublin with Declan Hughes's The Wrong Kind of Blood.

All over Venezuela, not needing an Oyster Cocktail.

I'm in Sweden with Kurt Wallander in the Pyramid and four other Kurt Wallander Mysteries.

I am back in 1985 in a little town north of Los Angeles called Oak Knoll in Deeper Than The Dead by Tami Hoag.

I'm in Moscow, Russia, with Chekov, in My Life (Short Novels).

I'm being transported north to the byways of Sweden's financial institutions with the THe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

England and England, with The Pickwick Papers and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes.

I am in 12th century Heian-Kyo (Kyoto) Japan with Memoirs of the Warrior Kumagai by Donald Richie. It is fiction, based on a true event and a true person.

Just got on The Last Bus to Woodstock, Colin Dexter's first Inspector Morse book.

I'm all over the place with several books on the go but mainly in Western Australia with Jasper Jones and Germany with The Blue Flower.

Still in England with The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and having Great Expectations with Dickens.

Moving around Europe and Russia and about to stumble on The Defense

in California with Kinsey Millhone in J is for Judgement. I realized that the two towns south of her fictional Santa Teresa are named Perdido and Olvidado, which I believe translate to 'lost' and 'forgotten'. That gave me a chuckle.

111 -
How is that going for you? I love Japanese historical fiction.

I'm currently reading Voice Over by Celine Curiol which takes place in Paris, France.

In Austria, sometime after WW1, with the Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig - an author, a country and a time period that are all new to me.

I am in Paris with The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

> 117 lilisin,

I am enjoying it. It is a bit dry, and you probably need some background in medieval Japanese culture to appreciate it. I am about 100 pages in and it quietly sucks you in.

The main character alternates between his reminiscence and the modern day (1204 ?) of his writing the memoir. He tells about the differences in culture between then and now. A lot is about politics and conflicts between different noble houses and the emperor. Some conflicts are subtle and some are violent. Because it is supposed to be a memoir, there is a lot of telling, rather than showing.

I actually have a lot of background in Japanese culture: medieval, feudal, modern, etc...

How would you compare it to Eiji Yoshikawa's style (assuming you're familiar with him of course)? I recently finished Taiko and loved it.

I would say it was dryer than Taiko, more of a definite re-telling than being immersed in what is happening.

Just moved into a "small timbered house close to the end of the bridge" on Hedeby Island in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Wish I'd brought some warmer clothes...

I'm in Northern Sweden with a newly arrived midwife in God's Mercy by Kerstin Ekman!

Spent a week in The Gambia Reading the ceiling and just moved to Senegal to read So long a Letter (though it feels a bit uncomfortable to be seeing other people's mail).

*waving to eairo (#125)* - I'm in Senegal too, reading the same book!

#126: I thought I saw something moving under one of the mango trees at the beginning of the chapter 6 ... maybe it was you waving? \0/

I'm in Molching with Leisel in The Book Thief

I've been in Russia the past week with Crime and Punishment and will probably be staying here for a few more days yet.

I'm in Paraguay after the resistance was quashed reading Son of Man

>123 shieldslass: Steig Larssen really does cold well, doesn't he? I thought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was one of my best recent reads. I hope you enjoy it too, shiedslass.

I'm in the Arctic with Franklin expedition in The Terror by Dan Simmons.

I've just entered the state of Maharashtra in India, with Vasant Moon's Growing up untouchable in India : a Dalit autobiography.

I've just left the house known as "La Novela" outside of Buenos Aires in Macedonio Fernandez' Museo de la Novela de la Eterna. (And, yes, it is Eterna's house.)

#134 - that is a confusing booktitle. Especially with the explanations it came with.

Yesterday I finished reading So long a letter in Senegal and today I moved to Guinea with The African Child.

I'm in Japan looking for a cat with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in my backpack.

I'm in Slovenia finding out why Veronika Decides To Die .

I've left Ghana and The Wife of the Gods and England where I visited A Place of Execution and am currently in Minnesota meeting Mr. Was and in Boston with The Killer's Cousin.

Shall someone start a February Where in the World?