Where In The World Are You January/February 2015?

New year.....new reads......where are they taking you?

I've been on a Magdalena Tulli binge. I think that means I've been in Poland, but it isn't always easy to tell.

I love Magdalena Tulli. For my last book of 2014 I followed the goings-on in 1870s Viagata (Sicily) with The Brewer of Preston and now I'm on the Orient Express, aka the Stamboul Train.

>4 rebeccanyc: I picked her up because of something you wrote awhile back.

>5 southernbooklady: I still have one book of hers I haven't read, Flaw. With my goal of reading more from my TBR shelves this year, maybe I'll finally get to it. I'm glad you like her too (which I infer from your being on a binge).

>6 rebeccanyc: I love her. I'm waiting for someone to release her two newer books, Italian High Heels and Noise. They are apparently more narrative, more autobiographical. There's a translation of an excerpt from the former called Bronek here:

http://littlestarjournal.com/blog/2014/09/bronek-by-magdalena-tulli/

and a short write up I did of Dreams and Stones here:

http://bloom-site.com/2014/12/29/the-not-non-fiction-of-magdalena-tulli/

>7 southernbooklady: Thanks for those links. I'm going to come back to them when I'm not so busy keeping up with the flurry of new year activity on LT. Do you think maybe Archipelago will also translate the newer books?

>8 rebeccanyc: I don't know. I expect it depends on the contract with the translator?

I am reading The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

So far this year I've been in Norway, Hong Kong (in an opium den, no less!), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ---> The Leopard by Jo Nesbo.

From there I went to Victorian London ---> A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Now I'm in Sweden, Denmark, 1860s Nevada, and China ---> The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell.

There are some odd country combinations in these books!

I've been solving The Mind-Murders in 1970s Amsterdam.

I'm in Kiev with The White Guard.

Oh, I loved The White Guard!

I am in Nigeria savoring the Purple Hibiscus while also in Egypt getting to know Proud Beggars.

I was comfortably ensconced a couple of hours from home at the university of Münster with Blumenberg, but the action has now rather unexpectedly switched to Brazil. Meanwhile I'm also dawdling around somewhere on the coast of South America in the last few chapters of The voyage out, and making the occasional venture into Bengal with The circle of reason. I should try to have the self-discipline to read one novel at once...!

I've been in Geneva, circa 1905, reading Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. Conrad, or at least his narrator, did not care for the city or its people much. It's described as being barren of feeling, with every ounce of interest and spirit cultivated out of it. He didn't care much for the Russian revolutionaries hatching plots against the tsarist regime much, either. Nor did he care for the tsarist regime. Interestingly, the book was published in 1911, before the Russian Revolution, so Conrad seemingly did have an idea of what was going on among the Russian community spread across Europe at the time. Not a great book by Conrad standards, but still Conrad, so still enjoyable reading, at least for me.

I'm in Dhaka, East Pakistan in 1971 just prior to the Bangladeshi Liberation War, as A Golden Age is about to begin (or end, depending on your point of view).

I've left My Kind of Girl in mid-20th century Bengal.

I am at the University of Washington in the 1930s getting to know The Boys in the Boat, and also in 1700s England holding my breath for Moll Flanders.

I discovered The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and explored love and treachery and history in 18th century Spain.

Escaping to warmer weather, having a second bite of the arancini with Il cane di terracotta (The terracotta dog). I think I might be hooked...

>22 thorold: I was hooked already by Camilleri and Montalbano!

I'm following The Girl in the Road on a trail over the Arabian sea crawling from India to Ethiopia. In the future.

I am in the Mozambique night, Dans la nuit Mozambique, and learning the rules of The Quiet Game in Natchez, Mississippi.

Wielding Weapons Of Mass Diplomacy in Paris and New York.

I've been in 19th and 20th century Russia enjoying Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and in 18th century China following The Three Leaps of Wang Lun.

I spent last week in ancient Masada in Israel in The Dovekeepers and now I'm in Columbia for The Sound of Things Falling

Going to Zurich and Berlin in The Accident.