I’m with combat courier and artificial person Friday Jones, looking for work in Las Vegas. After surviving death several times in a series of world wide terrorist attacks, she has become homeless and unemployed due to the death of her employer/surrogate father.
But I know what’s gonna happen because I LOVE this book! (Friday, by Robert Heinlein)
It’s New England, the early 20th century. Something…undescribably hideous has happened. I shudder to remember it, and I’m only glad that I—or any man—lack the intellectual capacity to comprehend the true scope of the horror of the event.
Perhaps I’m mad.
Good lord…please let me be mad.
I’m at a pueblo delivering gifts to the family of a man who essentially committed suicide-by-buffalo-stampede.
Wild Indigo, by Sandi Ault
It’s 1920-something, and I’m partying out with Dick and Nicole Diver on the French Riviera.
Tender Is the Night-F. Scott Fitzgerald
I’m on page 4. The unidentified man* has reached the cliff top and has peered over the edge to find a scrap of red cloth. He is thirsty, tired and bereft.
*this is a technicality; the back blurb IDs the guy as Peter Lynley. Yes, I am giving Elizabeth George one last chance to redeem herself.
We are just about to go over a cliff in a kluged-together glider. I hope the Krenegee is ready for a workout!
The Practice Effect - David Brin (12th reading or so)
At the moment, I’m feeling a little sick, as the old Russian truck I am in bounces along a dusty road away from Kabul, and towards Jalalabad. I think we are moving because Russian troops are heading towards our old home. Will I ever fly a kite there again, I wonder.( Or chapter 10, in The Kite Runner.)
It’s 1944, Harlem, New York. I’m hanging with Bird and Diz and sitting in at Minton’s. Just starting to get known as a player.
Miles: The Autobiography.
I mean THOMAS. No idea where Peter came from. :smack:
Daniel Waterhouse is explaining to Enoch Root why he would be the perfect choice to go and try and arrange a reconciliation between Newton and Liebniz in a Massachussets ale house.
-Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
We’re in 1685 in London, at Whitehall Palace, watching Charles II die, and worrying about what’s going to happen when his Catholic brother succeeds to the throne as James II.
(Quicksilver, just started book three. A little relieved to be done with the very confusing book two.)
Jumping back and forth between 1950s New York City and 1990s Texas. I’m 150 pages in, and i’m stil not really sure where this book is going. Luckily (?) there’s another 600 pages for things to become clear.
Underworld, by Don DeLillo
Would you describe the experience as “eldritch?”
I personally am in London, and we’ve just received word that Napoleon has landed at Cannes. As a result, the market crashed and poor Amelia Sedley’s family has been ruined. Speaking of Amelia, did you hear that her old friend Becky Sharp has married Capt. Rawdon Crawley? Can you imagine?! Her mother was a dancer, for goodness’ sake. Of course his aunt is furious and has cut him off completely.
(Vanity Fair, about a quarter of the way through.)
I’m in Europe. Specifically, standing on the far edge of Scandinavia, perched precariously to the left of Africa, noticing that although there are 342 pages of places in Europe to see before I die, none are in Estonia, to which I have just organized a visit.
1,000 Places to See Before You Die
It is August 23, AD 79, the day before Mount Vesuvius erupts, and I am the young engineer in charge of maintaining the Aqua Augusta. I am trying to figure out why the water has stopped flowing to several nearby towns and, with a team, have just located the section near the volcano where the earth seems to have mysteriously buckled up, blocking the flow of water. We’re about to attempt to make repairs, while unbeknownst to me, the betrothed daughter of a corrupt local millionaire is making a dangerous nighttime ride to try to locate me to tell me her father plans to kill me out of fear I’ll discover his illegal recquisitioning of water for his luxurious new bath operations, because he realizes I am unbribable. She loves me.
Pompeii, by Robert Harris
It’s dark and I’m sitting in a boat with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, who’s getting rowed ashore for his secret spy mission thing with the Catalan guy.
The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O’Brian
It’s the late 1800’s (not sure exactly what year, but at least a decade or so after the Civil War), and I’m on a cattle-drive to Montana. Lorrie got abducted by Blue Duck, and has had a rough time of it, but Gus got her back. Jake turned out to be a coward and has left to go gamble.
*Re-reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.
Jesus is slowly drawing together his group of disciples and getting ready to begin his ministry. He just turned water to wine at Maggie’s brother’s wedding in Canaan and got shit-faced.
“Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Jesus’ Childhood Pal”, by Christopher Moore
I’ve finished a third of Tariq Ali’s “The Book of Saladin”. I’m at the part where Saladin, newly crowned the Grand Vizier of Cairo, fights with his army against a rebel group of Nubians who wanted to avenge the death of one of their respected leaders, a eunuch called Nejeh.
Im standing near a statue in Helsingfors, listening to a group of 20 or so suicidal finnish people explaining why they tried to kill themselves on a whim in a garage belonging to a diplomat from Jemen. One of them is holding a wire cage that used to contain a very agressive wild weasel.