Where's your reading taking you?

    For the last few days I've been on a farm on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie in the present day thanks to Jane Urquhart's fine novel Sanctuary Line (from which there's a short extract here). Now I'm across the lake in Ohio and I've gone back in time to the 1850s. I'm with Honor Bright, a young Quaker woman from Dorset who has travelled to America in the company of her sister who is to be married to Adam Cox, a draper who emigrated a few years earlier.

    Honor is the heroine of Tracy Chevalier's new novel The Last Runaway. She's an expert seamstress and quilter, and en route to her new home fate has brought her to the household of Belle Mills, a milliner, so in return for board and lodging for a few days, Honor is plying her needle making and decorating hats and bonnets for the ladies of the town of Wellington - headgear far more elaborate than she herself would ever wear. Honor has already encountered Belle's brother, the slave hunter Donovan, and it looks as though that acquaintanceship may prove difficult for her.

    I'm only 50 or so pages in but loving the book so far, and the needlework aspect of the story - which is clearly going to be of some significance - is an added pleasure.

    What are you reading just now, and where's your book taking you in terms of country and period?

Comments

[Mystica]

I'm in the middle of a dismal family - immigrants from Munich - desperately trying to fit in into middle America in the 1940s. Upto now its quite heavy but I am hoping it will improve (The Grave Diggers Daughter). I like the sound of your book.

[Dark Puss]

The fleshpots of Edwardian London and Europe! A re-read of The Vesuvius Club by the wonderful Mark Gatiss of Dr Who and Sherlock fame. Sex, death, intrigue and the splendidly rakish spy Lucifer Box make for a rattling good yarn if my memory doesn't fail me.

Wicked fun!

[Cornflower]

Yes, mine is going well - hope yours lightens up a bit, Mystica.

[Cornflower]

By Jove, sir!

[Tracey]

I am reading The still Point, so I am swanning around a large London house, stuffed to the rafters with antiques and stuffed animals, in the heat of a glorious summer; while at the same time freezing to death in the Arctic!

[adele geras]

Can't wait for this book. As you know, anything with quilts, needlework etc is just my thing. But at the moment I am in North London with Susie Boyt's THE SMALL HOURS. Absolutely brilliant so far (half way) and not like anything else, really. Odd, quirky, riveting. Hope it ends...well, I know it won't end WELL, but appropriately!

[Chris]

I'm on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland with DI Fin Macleod while he investigates a rather grisly murder and recalls his life so far.

[Chris]

... I should have mentioned the title of the book of course, The Black House!

[Cornflower]

I've had that one on my wish list for ages - would very much like to read it (especially as I now have Amy Sackville's Orkney waiting to be read).

[Cornflower]

Sounds good!

[Cornflower]

I am a fan of that trilogy (and have been to many of that book's locations) so I know exactly where you 'are', Chris.

[Claire]

I was lucky enough to win a copy of The Last Runaway in a DGR giveaway. It arrived yesterday and after your review I think it will now go to the top of the tbr pile. I have not read any of her other work.
A couple of your readers recommendations appeal as well. Always facinating to hear what others are reading.

[Sue]

After an extended spell in the Outer Hebrides with Fin Macleod (like Chris), I travelled east to the Shetland Islands to see Jimmy Perez in Dead Water by Ann Cleeves, then it was off to Blackpool and Lytham via Norfolk for Elly Griffiths' latest A Dying Fall. Now I am on retreat In This House of Brede, a Benedictine monastery in Sussex (I think).

[Cornflower]

I hope you will enjoy The Last Runaway, Claire - I'll report on it fully a.s.a.p.

[Charlie]

That sounds wonderful, like you're truly wrapped in the setting. I'm currently in Tudor England where people are hoping Anne of Cleves won't be chosen as Henry's fourth wife.

[Cornflower]

The Rumer Godden is on my wish list!

[Cornflower]

That sounds like a rich read, too, Charlie.

[Joan Kyler]

I'm in Scotland in the two books I've just read or am currently reading and both involve some sort of time travel. I also just finished a book in 1920s/30s England.

This is why I read: to armchair travel and time travel.

[Darlene]

While still in my pj's I've landed in Belgrave Square and there's about to be a Ball! From flannel to silk in no time at all...I love reading.

[Susan in TX]

Just finished with 'Fingerpost in Oxford, and wanted something a little lighter, so I traveled to Botswana with A. McCall Smith and am relaxing in The Full Cupboard of LIfe.

[Cornflower]

An excellent reason, Joan.

[Cornflower]

Hope your dance card is nicely full, Darlene!

[Cornflower]

The perfect contrast (and well done for finishing Fingerpost).

[Karen (at Curate's egg)]

I'm alternating between Richard II and a crowd of drunks in 1930s London. The latter is Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton. Quite peculiar.

[Erika]

I'm another lucky DGR winner of this book and am so impatient to read it. Have you noticed how readers are able to find the best blogs? It is so friendly. I only read 5 regularly, with 2-4 around the edges, and the same contributors pop up again and again-- lovely.

Meanwhile, I am reading, with delight and learning from it, Lucy Coats' children's book "Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths" . I am sending it to my granddaughter so I need to hurry and finish it, her birthday being on March 3rd. I thought I knew my Greek mythology but now have found all sorts of unknown treasure.

[Mary]

I have Tracy Chevalier (also thanks to DGR) sitting on my desk and looking far more tempting than what I'm reading which is A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks. Trying to do for London what Tom Wolfe does for New York and not pulling it off. If only he'd write another Birdsong!

[Cornflower]

I think I'd stick with Richard II !

[Cornflower]

The world of the book blogs is a lovely, friendly - and knowledgeable - community, I think.
(Your granddaughter shares a birthday with my mother, Erika.)

[Cornflower]

DGR's bounty is spread widely!
I did enjoy Sebastian Faulks' most recent book, A Possible Life.

[Lucy Coats]

Why, thank you, Erika. I'm so glad you're enjoying it, and hope your granddaughter will too. Atticus seems to go on being popular, despite having been out for over 10 years now, and it's always lovely for an author to read nice comments like yours! I just wish I could have left even more nuggets of information in, but the publishers balked at the length, and I had to cut more than I wanted to - but then I'm a terrible hoarder of useful snippets...

I'm a lurker on your blog, Cornflower, but always enjoy it, so thank you too while I'm here!

[Cornflower]

Thankyou for saying hello, Lucy - delighted to have you here!

[Victoria Corby]

I've come back from Vienna with Waiting For Sunrise, went to Wandsworth prison and Cornwall in Patrick Gale's Rough Music (can't think why I've never read him before) and am currently around Bristo! with M R Hall's The Coroner.

[Cornflower]

I loved being in Vienna with Lysander & co., I've never read Patrick Gale but I do have one of M.R. Hall's books waiting so perhaps I too will be in Bristol soon.

[Geraldine]

Have just landed in Seatown - better known as North Berwick, through re-reading Young Mrs Savage by D E Stevenson with the DESsies email discussion group. Book began in England, probably Kent and has now moved to Scotland. DES used to holiday in North Berwick in her childhood so she's writing of what she knew intimately.

Also reading the Cazalet series, moving between London and the countryside.

[Cornflower]

North Berwick is quite brisk and bracing, usually!
I've read the first Cazalet novel and fully intended to follow on with the others but it hasn't happened yet.

[cath]

Having left Houston,Texas we - that is William Fiennes and I'm looking through his eyes -have just seen our first Snow Geese at Eagle Lake. Our next stop will be Austin, following the snowgeese as they journey up north.

[Dorothy]

I am freezing in the Arctic Circle and Greenland while on the trail of the bad guys with Edie. Caribou blankets sound really toasty!

All this from 'White Heat' by M.J. McGrath.

[Ed]

I have just been to Finland having read "The Summer Book" by Tove Jansson. It is set on a small island in the Gulf of Finland which was home to the main characters. It made me want to go to Finland in mid summer. And just before that I was on the "Coast of Bohemia" because I read Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale".

[Belle]

Elementary! I am definitely on Baker Street in London reading 'The Brothers of Baker Street' by Michael Robertson and 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I do take side trips to France to visit Montaigne worrying over his essays in his library. His biography by Sarah Bakewell "How to Live" is fantastic.

[Moira]

I'm currently in a romanticised part of Suffolk in the first half of the 20th century with yokels who tug their forelocks and believe in Pharisees (fairies) as I'm re-reading the Margery Allingham canon for comfort in these dark dreary days.

[Cornflower]

That is a WONDERFUL book!

[Cornflower]

I have M.J. McGrath's latest, The Boy in the Snow, on the TBR pile.

[Cornflower]

The Summer Book is lovely; The Winter's Tale is a play I've never read - or even seen, I think.

[Cornflower]

I'm glad to hear that about Sarah Bakewell's book as it's another from my wish list.

[Cornflower]

Perfect!

[Alex in Leeds]

What fascinating answers! I've spent of this week taking tea and madeleines with Marcel Proust. I'm finding the way he uses nostalgia and scent in Swann's Way fascinating...

[Alex in Leeds]

Ugh, I do have more words on my mind than fascinating, I just need a little more green tea to help them rise to the surface. :)

[Cornflower]

Another book from my "I've never read ..." list.

[Cornflower]

Maybe linden tea instead!

[Ann]

I'm thoroughly enjoying "And now the Shipping Forecast" by Peter Jefferson. So I guess I'm all over the place!