rocketjk's 2018 reading around the world

I've had fun charting my travels the last eight years. 2017 brought me to sixteen countries, including the U.S., up from fifteen the year before. Within the U.S., I read to 10 states, as well as several books that I considered non-state specific. With luck, I'll be a happy globe trotter this year, as well.

As always, I don't select my reading to purposefully "travel" around. Rather, I just have fun seeing where my more random reading choices take me! I'll be writing at greater length about each book on my 2018 50-Book Challenge thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/281080

THE HIGH SEAS
The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad

ASIA
Burma (Myanmar) & India
The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh

China
The Incarnations by Susan Barker

EUROPE
Austria
Madensky Square by Eve Ibbotson

England
The Conscience of the Rich by C.P. Snow
Murder in Bloom by Lesley Cookman
Speak to Me, Dance with Me by Agnes de Mille (memoir)
The Light and the Dark by C.P. Snow
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

France
Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc - The Rangers Who Accomplished D-Day's Toughest Mission and Led the Way across Europe by Patrick K. O'Donnell (non-fiction)
The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan (non-fiction)
Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano

Germany
If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr (also listed in Cuba)
Field Gray by Philip Kerr

Ireland
Dolly's Cottage: The History of a Thatched House in Strandhill, County Sligo compiled and written by the Strandhill Guild of the Irish Countrywomen's Association (non-fiction)
A Little Bit of Ireland by John Finan
Newport - Our Own Place by Macra na Tuaithe Youth Club (history)

Romania
The Appointment by Herta Muller

MIDDLE EAST
Mesopotamia
The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by N.K. Sandars

NORTH AMERICA
Cuba
If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr (also listed in Germany)

The United States
Non-State Specific
The Armies of Labor: a Chronicle of the Organized Wage Earners by Samuel P. Orth (history)
So Wild a Dream by Win Blevins
Beauty for Ashes by Win Blevins
On Watch by Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. (memoir)
Hank Greenberg: the Story of My Life by Hank Greenberg with Ira Berkow (autobiography)
Groucho: the Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx by Stefan Kanfer (biography)
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (essays)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

California
Three Street by Will Stevens
The Chinese Parrot by Earl Der Biggers
The Grandma Stubblefield Rose: The Life of Susan Stubblefield, 1811-1895 by Edna Beth Tuttle and Dennie Burke Willis (biography)
Behind that Curtain by Earl Der Biggers

Hawaii
Day of Infamy by Walter Lord (history)

Illinois
The Hangman's Whip by Eberhard G. Mignon

Lousiana
The Lord God Bird by Russell Hill

Michigan
True North by Jim Harrison

Montana
The Surrounded by D'Arcy McNickle

Nevada
Dragonfish by Vu Tran

New York
The Caveman's Valentine by George Dawes Green
When the Yankees Were On the Fritz: Revisiting the Horace Clarke Years by Fritz Peterson (memoir)

North Dakota
The Score by Richard Stark

Rhode Island
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry (non-fiction)

OCEANIA
Australia
Voss by Patrick White
Wilderness Trek by Zane Grey

Since this is really meant to be a fiction-reading group, I generally don't comment individually on the non-fiction books I read, although I do include them in my overall listings, above. But since this is my first book completed of the year, I'll just mention having read and learned much from Patrick K. O'Donnell's detailed and very readable history of a group of elite U.S. forces who fought their way up the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day and then across France and into Germany during World War 2: Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc - The Rangers Who Accomplished D-Day's Toughest Mission and Led the Way across Europe. I'm counting this for my own purposes as a non-fiction visit to France.

I made up a category for myself several years ago, the High Seas, that I use for novels set entirely, or almost entirely, at sea. That's the setting for this year's annual January Joseph Conrad read (or, more commonly, re-read), The Shadow Line. It was satisfying indeed to enjoy one of the few Conrad works I hadn't read yet. A great sea yarn with Conrad's usual insight into human nature. The shadow line of the title is that spot in each person's life where the freedom of late youth ends and the challenges, joys and obligations of full adulthood take hold.

C.P. Snow's wonderful novel, The Conscience of the Rich, takes us to England between the World Wars to examine the pressures that generational issues and changing times bring to bear on an old and prominent Anglo-Jewish banking family.

I finished the Australian classic, Voss, by Patrick White. It is long and sometimes ponderous, but in the end I found it satisfying. You can find my more in-depth comments on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Well waddaya know? I pulled Zane Grey's Wilderness Trek out of my pulp paperback cabinet, expecting to go out west, only to discover that the novel takes place in the Australian Outback! So there I was again, having recently read Voss. We follow the fortunes of two American cowboys on a long and dangerous cattle drive across the Australian wilderness. Villians and snakes and lovely damsels are all on hand. But Grey's detailed and obviously loving descriptions of the topography, flora and fauna along the way make this truly a reading trip down under.

>2 rocketjk: That's a BB for me!

>7 Tess_W: If it seems of interest to you, you'll probably like it. It's quite well done once you get past the training chapters. This seems in general to me to be a difficulty for most military books and movies about individual groups of soldiers. Even the first episode--the training segment--of the excellent HBO series Band of Brothers dragged for me, as did the first part of Full Metal Jacket, come to think of it. Perhaps if I had experienced a boot camp or basic training camp myself I'd feel differently about it. At any rate, yes, once they hit the beach the book becomes quite good, indeed.

I recently finished Murder in Bloom, the fifth book in Lesley Cookman's "Libby Sarjeant Murder Mystery" series. As a mystery, it was good, not great, although cozies are not really my style, and your mileage my very well vary. The books take place in Kent, England.

Although Agnes de Mille was American, her memoir, Speak to Me, Dance with Me describes her fight to gain a name for herself in the world of English dance in the early 1930s. de Mille was a dancer and choreographer who eventually gained great fame designing dance numbers for Broadway musicals like Brigadoon and Oklahoma. At any rate, I'm counting this well-written and interesting memoir as a non-fiction reading jaunt to England.

I've listed The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh above as Burma, but it really deserves a co-listing for India. With an historical sweep ranging from the British invasion of Burma in 1885 to the time of the book's publishing in 2000, Ghosh examines the complicated relationship between Burmese/Myanmarese and Indian culture (the narrative moves back and forth between the two countries), and the relationship of both with their British conquerors/occupiers during the days of the Raj.

The first 60% or so of If the Dead Rise Not, the 6th entry in Philip Kerr's "Bernie Gunther" noir series, takes place in Germany, more specifically Berlin in 1934, as the Nazi regime is ramping up power and asserting control. The latter section moves Gunter 20 years ahead to the early days of the Bautista regime in Cuba. The books marks my first reading trip to both countries this year. Another brilliant novel of crime, corruption and moral ambiguity from Kerr.

I recently took a reading trip to France via Honeymoon, Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano's beautiful reverie about memory, melancholy and regret.

I went back to C.P. Snow's "Strangers and Brothers" series, and thereby to England, via the excellent The Light and the Dark. As the world edges ever closer to World War Two, the English upper classes are split as to whether Germany should be opposed or appeased. Once the war begins, the divisions evaporate. But that's all just the background for Snow's brilliant and highly readable story about depression, in the person of brilliant linguist Roy Calvert.

I recently finished the entirely charming novel, Madensky Square, by Eve Ibbotson, about a perceptive and compassionate woman living in 1911 Vienna (so, Austria, of course).

I took a reading trip back about 4,000 years, to ancient Mesopotamia, via N.K. Sandars' prose translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Sandars' well constructed and insightful introduction is as fascinating as well as for her rendering of the story itself. The introduction fills in the background of the discovery of the ancient tablets that contain the story, plus the mythological and cultural background of the mythology. The introduction in itself takes up the first half of this Penguin paperback edition's 120 pages, but no complaints on that score. I had heard of this classic, but knew essentially nothing about it. I found it particularly interesting to learn that our understanding of the work has been formed by excerpts of carved stone tablets found hundreds if not thousand miles about, written by people of widely divergent cultures, centuries apart from each other. All of it buried and entirely unknown to us until the archeological digs of the 1800s began across the Middle East. My edition was printed in 1972, at which point it already contained two revisions as new information has arisen with new research. I don't know how much new information has been discovered since that time. According to wikipedia, though, the most recent revised edition came out in 1987, so I guess that means my copy is somewhat out of date. Sandars died in 2015 at the age of 101. Seems she had a fascinating life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Sandars

Normally I wouldn't read an introduction or forward before reading the work itself. Too often you'll find irritating plot spoilers therein. In this case I broke that rule, and I'm glad I did. Having that foreknowledge helped me very much to enjoy this tale of an all powerful king who goes on a quest for immortal life that captured the imagination of so many for so long.

I brought back A Little Bit of Ireland, a very slim book of short stories about rural life in County Mayo, from the recent vacation my wife and had there this July. We wandered into a pub owned by the author in the town of Charlestown. To give you an idea of this great pub, which you have to walk through a small hardware store to get to, take a look at this very short (1:30) youtube clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvtTWZtSUfE

Mostly (not entirely), these are charming tales about friends and couples who have reached a graceful old age, looking back with affection and a tear or two on good times gone by. Finan has a fine ear for conversation, a gentle touch with character and a lovely gift for descriptions of nature. A few of the stories are a little sappy. So be it.

I recently completed the very enjoyable novel, The Incarnations by Susan Barker. The book takes place in modern day Beijing, interspersed with vivid chapters describing the various lives of a reincarnated soul (hence the book's title) throughout Chinese history. Quite good all in all. Barker is English but lived in Beijing while researching Chinese history for this book.

Today I finished The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. This story of the life of a relatively small rural town in early 19-century England centers around Maggie Tulliver and her family. The characters and their relationships are, for the most part, artfully drawn, and the reflections on human emotions and motivations are often astonishingly insightful. Well, you don't need me to tell you about what a good writer Eliot was.

Read back to Germany, via Field Gray, the seventh book in Philip Kerr's scandalously entertaining "Bernie Gunther" Berlin Noir series. The book jumps around in time, taking us back and forth from Berlin, circa 1931, through Russian front World War 2, to the opening of the Cold War in Berlin, 1954. Kerr is scrupulous in historic and physical detail, bringing the reader into those dangerous times and evil situations.

I finished The Appointment by the Nobel Prize winning Romanian author Herta Müller. This novel takes us into the soul-numbing world of life in Romania under Ceausescu's totalitarian Communist rule. It is the details of a drab and fear-ridden life, which nevertheless cannot entirely suffocate the human spirit, that so skillfully build this harrowing world, rather than anything graphic or extreme. This is a beautiful if saddening book.

OK, so that's a wrap for 2018.

2017 brought me to sixteen countries, including the U.S., up from fifteen the year before. Within the U.S., I read to 10 states, as well as several books that I considered non-state specific.

2018 was less productive, in terms of my reading globetrotting: twelve countries including the U.S., plus one Joseph Conrad novel that I counted as "The High Seas." Once again I got to 10 U.S. states, with several non-state specific.

I'll have a 2019 thread up soon.