Where in the World Are You Now? - April 2010

Still in the mountains of North Carolina in early part of the 20th century with Ron Rash's Serena.

In Ghana in its early years of independence (the 1960s, I guess) with Baako, Juana and others: Fragments.

I'm drinking in 18th century London with Boswell & Johnson in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

I'm currently on the Mongolian plains but preparing to cross the Gobi desert in search of conquest with Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden

Wandering throughout early 19 c. Europe with the brilliant violinist, George Polgreen Bridgetower, in Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica.

Toggling between 19th century London with Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and 19th century Tasmania (or Van Dieman's Land as it was then known) in Richard Flanagan's Wanting. I can see the links between the two disparate stories appearing now.

I'm in Mexico City, at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, learning about the government-led Tlatelolco massacre against student protesters.

Just came back from France, viewing the photographs of Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida.

I'm in Baltimore with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Finishing up my stay at Amherst college with The Season of Second Chances .

New Orleans, with Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum. Baum interviewed a number of people in NO after the Katrina/levee disaster, and distilled the interviews down to short, first-person accounts of their lives, organized roughly by decade. Riveting reading. Makes clear how special this amazing American/Caribbean city was/is.

I'm in Iowa, with Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

I've been At Home with the Marquis de Sade in 19th century France, had a Burning Secret at an early 20th century German spa, and explored the forests of mid-20th century Mauritius with The Last Brother.

Edited to fix touchstone.

I, too, am in Mexico with La Perdida by Jessica Abel, trying to find her ancestral roots and miring herself in unfortunate relationships.

I'm in Poland with Boy in the Striped Pajamas, in England with Coraline, and in Afghanistan and Pakistan with Stones Into Schools.

My book club sent me some suburb in Australia to witness the Slap.

Seeing how historical forces affect the ordinary people living by The Bridge On The Drina.

Enthralled. Paris Trance.

Central Mexico, re-reading Juan Rulfo's two books Pedro Páramo and El llano en llamas (The Plain in Flames). I read them every year or two, they´re amazing!

Turn of the 19th century Briton with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Still waiting for my April Ottoman Empire book to arrive!

In London, earlier this decade, wondering if Solar power will solve the upcoming climate change crisis....

In Togo now, but I guess I am about to move on with An African in Greenland.

Have found myself in Denmark searching The Library of Shadows.

I've left the forests of Mauritius with The Last Brother and am now about to have to flee from Cairo during the second world war with The Levant Trilogy.

On Peak's Island near Maine in Lost and Found by Jacqueline Sheehan .

After surviving in Russia for some time, I decided to do a suite of American palate cleansers before going back. Today in San Francisco, CA with a recently re-released edition of Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter.

In Nigeria: Half of a Yellow Sun.

Egypt, England, and the U.S., with Leila Ahmed's A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey.

I made a quick stop in Palestine with Touch by Adania Shibli. Comments on my thread, but to sum - it was lovely and sad.

I'm in Havana Bay with Arkady Renko. This is my first Renko book and I'm wondering what took me so long.

Still in medieval Kingsbridge amazed at the political machinations of the monks and townspeople in World Without End. Ken Follett has built a beautiful and complex world.

In tense times in Dublin. It's the last weeks before Easter, 1916. At Swim, Two Boys

After spending some time on the west coast of Australia with Breath, I'm now in 19th century India with Sea of Poppies.

I was in Cleveland and surrounding burbs and Indiana, Myrtle Beach and on the road back to Cleveland with Tonight I said Goodbye, Sorrow's Anthem and A Welcome Grave all in the Lincoln Perry series by Michael Koryta.

Now in 1527 Florence, Rome and France with The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner, an LT ER book.

I've just left The Dwarf in Renaissance Italy and am visiting The Sibyl in Greece near the Delphic Oracle -- both by Par Lagerkvist.

In Greenwich, Connecticut, US, reading Dark Tide.

I'm in modern-day Rome with The Imperfectionists, linked stories about people in the various departments of a newspaper office.

I'm in the Salvador, Bahia, Brazil of Jorge Amado, and in the middle of Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos, translated into English as Dona Flor and her Two Husbands.

I'd read the English translation about 30 years ago, and also saw and loved the film starring the incomparable Sonia Braga, but decided a short time back that since I'm now living in Brazil, I should try this thing in Portuguese. No small task! Amado uses very local vocabulary, idioms and expressions that specifically relate to the Bahian variety of Brazilian Portuguese. Many of the words that are unfamiliar to me are also unknown to friends here in Fortaleza (about 1000 km. from Salvador) and they aren't found in the stand Brazilian Portuguese dictionaries. Tracking them down is both a pleasure and a chore.

Even without delving in the Portuguese original, if you want to read a novel that totally captures a time and a place, pick up a copy of Dona Flor. You'll be teleported directly to the streets of Salvador's Pelourinho district 70 years ago.

Riding with LA ex-pats in San Francisco when Jack Wakes Up.

Having finished all those I listed in #15 above, I've moved on to Iran with The Septembers of Shiraz and in Chicago, IL with Travels With Charley.

I'm drinking coffee on The Bridge on the Drina watching empires advance and retreat

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy back in...the southern part of the Eurasian continent, maybe...in Clan of the Cave Bear.

I am observing the Greek Gods Behaving Badly in contemporary London.

I'm in British Columbia in the 1930s with Sheila Watson's Deep Hollow Creek.

I'm in Spain (near Pamplona) with Hape Kerkeling in Ich bin dann mal weg - doing the St Jacques de Compostela pilgrimage.

I am in Oran on the coast of Algiers in 194?, with The Plague by Albert Camus for a group read.

I'm on a plantation in Jamaica in 1785, living with the slaves of The Book of Night Women.

I'm still in the Sea of Poppies (which seems to be somewhere on the ocean between Calcutta and Mauritius), but had a quick dip into Galway, Ireland with The Guards.

Back in Africa, in The Sudan worried about the Cry of the Owl.

I'm in Bulgaria, Russia, Spain and France, pre WWII, with Night Soldiers by Alan Furst. I picked up all 8 of his recent books at a book sale this weekend. This is a time and place of which I have read little previously.

#50 Catarina1, I'm very jealous! Read The World at Night last year and really liked it.

I am in the ancient (1300 BC) Mediterranean Basin with Discontinuity in Greek Civilization by Rhys Carpenter.

In a steampunk Europe on the brink of The Great War, with Leviathan.

To CMT - The World at Night is one of the 8 that I found at the book sale - I think all 8 probably belonged to the same person since they all had the price tag from one store on them. I plan to read all 8 in the order of publication even though they seem to be "stand alones". These books are very far removed from my usual reading (you can see from my library that I probably have every book every written about Japan) but this is all due to LT. I'm not sure what I think of the genre yet - WWII and espionage - but I really like the author's description of the time period, the place, the feelings of the characters to the situations they are faced with.

Near DC and in the swamps of Brazil searching for an unsuspecting heiress to $11 billion in The Testament.

In Chicago with wizard Harry Dresden in Death Masks.

I am in the Hotel Savoy, somewhere on the eastern reaches of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, and in the US southwest where Once They Moved Like the Wind.

Just got off the plane in Zimbabwe with The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe by Douglas Rogers.

In Russia in 2017.

In Japan with The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

In the Charpurson Valley, Pakistan headed for the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan with Greg Mortenson in Stones into Schools
Also winging my way to Buenes Aires with Valentine in the second book of a triology by Adriana Trigiani Brava Valentine

I was in the franchise city of Singapore Three with The Shadow Pavilion by Liz Williams.

I'm in Japan on The Eighth Day. I'm tearing through this book! Will finish it tonight hopefully!

Planting pines and doing odd jobs on the border between NSW and Victoria, Australia, wondering when I'll meet The Accidental Terrorist.

I am all over Northeastern USA during All the Days and Nights and in Quebec learning A Rule Against Murder.

I spent yesterday afternoon with the staff in a Gents lavatory near a London underground stop. Now I'm in Japan with Oh! A Mystery of mono no aware -- a physically beautiful book that's perfect for dipping into, reflecting, then dipping again.

Oddly enough I am still in the New York vicinity with both All The Days and Nights and Brooklyn.........

I'm still in Chicago, but this time I am Passing in the 1920s. And I did have a side trip to Rome with The Seventh Sinner over the weekend.

Just moved to the Mojave Desert learning about Jacob's Hands.

I was on the Spokane Indian Reservation and a small town outside of it with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

I am now in 1888 Buenos Aires but will also be in Paris with The Paris Enigma by Pablo De Santis

Now...it has been a traveling sort of day.....I am at Home in Gilead and also in India beginning The Moonstone.

Debating whether to stay in Japan with a new book or go to another country. Still thinking...

Just came from Spain/England with Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear by Javier Marías. Now on to Japan with J and Seventeen: Two Novels by Oe Kenzaburo.

With An African in Greenland I went from Togo to Greenland, and back, sort of ... then on to Ouidah, one of the biggest slave-trade port back in the 19th century Dahomey--which now is Benin where I stay face to face (Kasvokkain) with Vivi-Ann Sjögren.

I was in Nigeria and the US. with The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

In the Kentish Weald (no, I don't really know where/what that is either, but it's English countryside; Wikipedia has info, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weald) in The Children's Book.

Am in on Park Avenue, Manhattan, NYC worried about Homer and Langley.

I am in the Mongolian Plateau with Genghis Khan and his daughters getting ready to take control of the Silk Route. Forgive me I know it isn't fiction...but it is exciting traveling in this time.The Secret History of Mongol Queens by Jack Weatherford

The President's Last Love by Andrey Kurkov took me to the cold of Ukraine. A fantastic novel. The President enjoyed the cold and liked to have cold baths of ice to clear his head. An amazing author.