Where In The World Are You Now? - October 2010

Just kicking October off.......I am in London with Incendiary and in India with The Weight of Heaven.

I'm still stuck in Russia experiencing the Life of Insects (Viktor Pelevin)

Like Nickelini, I am in Russia, only with the Living Souls of Dmitry Bykov.

Also in Russia... with The Road: Selected Stories, Journalism, and Essays by Vasily Grossman, and Petersburg by Andrei Biely.

I am traveling the entire globe with various different women. At the moment I am in Mongolia and the Gobi desert. I'm reading Maiden Voyages edited by Mary Morris. I'm loving this just as much as I did Ladies on the Loose. It's very similar, and they even share a few of the stories they included, but this time I've also been traveling with the likes of Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Vita Sackville West.

Maiden Voyages sounds like a very interesting book.

I'm in Upper Egypt, with Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery, by Bahaa Taher.

I'm in New Zealand reading As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong.

#7 - I'm also in New Zealand reading Maurice Gee's Plumb. As well I'm making time for Prague, reading Ticket to Prague, and seeing England from a puppy POV with Dogsbody.

I'm in London with Hollis Henry in William Gibson's Zero History. Not as good as Pattern Recognition, the first in the series but better than Spook Country, the second.

I am in Pakistan with a Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif.

#10 I'm hoping to be there very soon - have the same book out of the library!

I've left Egypt and moved over to Israel/Palestine, with City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa, by Adam LeBor.

Mostly just started in Homer, Colorado, in the future wondering about The Passage.

I've never been there before on my bookish travels, but I'm now in Wales with The Earth Hums in B Flat.

Still deciding where to go .

>14 SqueakyChu: I was there last month - I enjoyed the book very peaceful reading that sweeps you up into it's world :)

I am in the USA in the future with Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

> 16

very peaceful reading

I just started the book but so far, I'm really liking its tone.

#14 #16 #17

I think the title is marvellous and, having followed the link, reading the reviews piques my interest. It sounds like one for my TBR wish list.

Still in Congo, now back in time when it was "found" and, ironically, called Congo Free State, governed by good old Leopold II.

Leokongo is an epic poem on the history of Congo from 1870s to 1960s. According to the author this country's history reveals us more about the history of African colonization than any other.

Now I'm mostly in Europe - the Uk, Italy and France, and the US from about 200 years ago to present. I believe I'll also be making some quick excursions into Latin America. I'm reading The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales.

Just got out of WWII-era Washington DC, having finished Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage by Joseph Persico. Haven't decided where I'm going next.

Just got back from England with L'Homme qui Rit by Victor Hugo. Enjoyed it.

In the mines of northern Chile, with Baldomero Lillo's Subterra.

In California in the sixties with Carol Burnett's memoir This Time Together. I'm listening to Ms. Burnett read the book on audio.

In the Ukraine with The Polish Officer by Alan Furst.

I am in London - UK - with Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I am learning to be Singing Saltwater Country in the far far north of eastern Australia. I think I am going to be taken deep into the culture and knowledge of the Saltwater people.

@23: That's great, I was searching for literature about miners in Chile. I will definitively take a look at Baldomero Lillo.

I'm currently moving from Bristol, UK, towards Stevenson's Treasure Island.

I'm in Warsaw - The Polish Officer from #26 has managed to get back from Romania into Poland in September 1939 - and in Zimbabwe as well, reading An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah. This one's a rec from Belletrista, and the two stories I've read so far are grim but good.

I am now in Japan with the Salaryman's Wife by Sujata Massey. I think its set in Tokyo, but just now I am on a train to the Japanese Alps.

Right now I am on dry scrub farmland near Willow Creek, Alberta, Canada with a family of Ukrainian immigrant farmers struggling during the depression era to set up a homestead that can feed them in Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell.

I'm in the UK with Nicola Barker's Wide Open.

I have been traveling in real life, but in my book life, I've been with Vasily Grossman on The Road (which doesn't touchstone) in the Soviet Union, in a Room with an imprisoned mother and son, in evangelical Salvation City in a dystopian, post-pandemic flu future America, and seeing The Whites of Their Eyes with tea partiers and 18th century Americans (all reviewed on my threads and on their book pages). I'm now in The Green House in Peru.

Been in Japan for 3 books now: The Salaryman's Wife, Zen Attitude and The Flower Master all by Sujata Massey

In London thinking that it's A Long Way Down.

In Indonesia feeling like I'm having (a long) tea with the author, in Durga/Umayi

I was in a post-apocalyptic (most-likely) US in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Review on the book page.

Not often I get to post two read books in one month. Ha!

Last night I was in Egypt looking at the hieroglyphic for giving birth in Red Land Black Land by Barbara Mertz AKA Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels.

But today 2 more Patrick O'Brian books came in for me at the library so I'm watching a court martial and hanging, off Barbados.

Well, at least the Barbara Mertz book is mine and I don't have to worry about deadlines.

I am various places investigating Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and in 1950s England tasting The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

I'm in England prior to the turn of the 20th Century with The Picture of Dorian Gray, in Siberia in the 1950s with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Yemen with The Unfinished Presidency.

I'm, more or less, in outer space right now (or more accurately, following Mary Roach around the world as she does her research). Yup. Reading Packing for Mars.

I have just sailed around the world with Jessica Watson in True Spirit. Now I am on the South Island of New Zealand with the romantic entanglements of Design for Life.

In Kinshasa Before the Birth of the Moon. (Which seems to be the 1960s -- I never knew the Moon was that young.)

I'm being rather un-global and am in London asking The Finkler Question.

I'm mainly in Prague this month, having just finished Bruce Chatwin's Utz and still reading Magic Prague. I'm also spending some time in Tikva, a North American town in the dystopian world of Marge Piercy's Body of Glass.

Right now I'm in Victorian England courtesy of Angelica by Arthur Phillips.

I am still shuttling back and forth between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia with Hitler and Stalin but am also in the jungles, deserts, and The Green House of Peru.

Had a lovely time in New Zealand - but now I am in India with Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn.

I am in Finland, getting increasingly unsettled by Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo.

I am in Marblehead and Salem, Massachusetts in the modern day and in the 1680s with The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe.

I'm in Tehran with The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer.

I'm in Iraq, reading Barefoot in Baghdad.

Just been in northeast England with David Almond's Clay and now following a detective around Auckland, New Zealand with Ben Sanders' debut The Fallen. I'm also in London watching the Rubin family fall apart in When we were bad.

LMAO in Elizabethan England with Pocket The Fool .

I'm on my way to the South American jungle with Theodore Roosevelt, courtesy of Candice Millard's River of Doubt. I'm looking forward to this!

In 1985 Moscow, immersed in The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Russian expat Olga Grushin. It is wonderfully treading the path by the precipice of being overwritten but somehow staying well clear of the edge, and I'm loving it.

I just took a train back to New York City (New York, USA) in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. I finally reached home tonight, but my parents do not even know I'm in town! Shhh!

ETA: > 50

Wish I were back in Finland. Sinisalo's book was such an entertaining read!

I'm in Brooklyn being haunted by Madeleine's Ghost.

I am in 1950s England tasting The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and in three locations, Nebraska, Michigan, and the edge of the Arctic Circle where I Await Your Reply.

I am in Angola. The country is going through the pains of post colonial power struggle, and the return of the Water Spirit adds a twist of magic to this otherwise quite realistic story.

I'm in Ireland watching the Heather Blazing.

I'm lurkingin the London Library and in a basement flat in London, wondering when I'll be taken over by Possession.

I am in Siberia in the USSR (1980s) with Red Snow by Edward Topol

I'm in Sri Lanka where I just got a job as a servant in Reef by Romesh Gunesekera.

Cape Town, South Africa chasing the bad guys in Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer.

I've left the Great House of New York, London, and Jerusalem.

I am now in Lahore, India with Kim and also in WWII France learning about Sarah's Key.

I am in New Zealand back in the 1920s with As the World Turns Silver by Alison Wong

I'm on my way from the UK back to the WWI front in Europe with Strange Meeting by Susan Hill.

I've now left the Amazon and Theodore Roosevelt as I've finished River of Doubt by Candice Millard.

Now I'm in France, and I believe I'll be traveling to Kazakhstan courtesy of Paolo Coelho's The Zahir.

I'm covering the North American Continent today by being in Nova Scotia with A New Kind of Country, in Mexico with Into the Beautiful North and Atlanta, Georgia with The Unfinished Presidency.

I am starting The Mistress of Abha by William Newton, an LT ER book.

Set in the 1930s in Cairo, Arabia and Yemen.

Human Love (Vain rakkaus) will take me from Angola to Siberia to Cuba and back, I think; from the 1970s to the 2000s. I am only two chapters into the book, and I have a feeling it is going to be great. Brutal, cruel, and good.

Change of plan! Now I'm in the Midwest - Nebraska to be exact, about 120 years ago or so. I'm reading My Antonia by Willa Cather.

I am in 1938 Czechoslovakia with Far To Go by Alison Pick.

I'm in Labrador, visiting Annabel who at this point of the story is called Wayne. Labrador, in my opinion, has got to be one of the most obscure parts of Canada.

Just finished digging Holes in a dry lake-bed in Texas.

I just moved to New York City, being newly separated from my soon-to-be ex-husband in Almost: A Novel by Elizabeth Benedict.

I'm in Edward Garnett's office and home in London, reading the letters sent to him over his long correspondence with Joseph Conrad.

I am about to stop Dreaming in Chinese in contemporary China and find Nothing to Envy in contemporary North Korea.

I left Nebraska a couple of days ago and have been hanging out in Stockholm and Hedeby Island, Sweden with Blomqvist and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I am in Pakistan, a bit bored, hoping to watch someone open a Case of Exploding Mangoes.

Cuba! I needed to balance out the South-South American bent of my recent readings, and decided to get some books from Cuba in preparation for a big read that I've been meaning to undertake for a long time: José Lezama Lima's Paradiso. I'm starting with Severo Sarduy's De donde son los cantantes, with a really long introductory study by a guy named Roberto González Echeverría, which puts his work in cultural and historical context and relates his literary output to that of two giants of Cuban literature, Carpentier and Lezama Lima. I'm intrigued.

I've been in Western Australia and Paris, London and Nagasaki with Dreams of Speaking and Black Mirror by Gail Jones.

In Century City with glam unsavories some of whom own Imperial Bedrooms

I am in London in the 50s and 60s .... so far, with Keith Richard's Life

I'm at 221 Baker Street in London with Holmes and Watson, of course, courtesy of A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I'm gambling in ancient Greece by casting knuckle bones with Alcibiades in Achilles His Armour.

I've left England for India in Secret Daughter.

I have been in the war-time, polio-plagued Weequahic section of Newark, NJ, but have just left for the Poconos. I'm reading Nemesis, the latest by Philip Roth.

I've been hanging out in Eden in Israel. Not having as great a time as I had hoped, but still. :)

I am in pre/post WWII Japan with The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz

I am in Paris with the tortured tale of Sarah's Key and in Burma doing what else but taking Burmese Lessons.

I'm back in 1980s Boston, reading Follow the Sharks, the third installment of William Tapply's Brady Coyne mystery series.

I all over Southwestern Texas and the Mexican border, with All the Pretty Horses.

I am in London wondering about The Finkler Question, especially whether I will start liking it soon.

I'm not sure, but it feels I'm inside an MC Escher painting! I'm reading Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.

Actually, I think I'm in Buenos Aires at the moment. Don't be scared off by the reference to Escher. This is an amazing book!

South of Nowhere ... listening to a monologue of a veteran of Angola war.

Oops ... wrong month.

I am in modern day Boston and Western Mass in The Snake Eater by William Tapply. It is the first novel in A Brady Coyne Omnibus

@98: you may enjoy this article about how some of Borges's ideas prefigured later events in the cyber world. It's a little brief and I think the idea could have been more thoroughly and deeply investigated, but it's neat to think about.

Cyber Borges

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POST your whereabouts in the November thread...
otherwise you'll be MIA...