My latest method of cheating on Middlemarch is a book I picked up called The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh.  I thought that it would just be a book I would read "someday." Instead, I got taken with it from the first sentence.  I like it because it is the story of a woman on a professional quest in India.  While she has an ethnic connection to India, most of her growing up was done in the United States-- Seattle to be specific.  I can certainly identify with the cross cultural challenges, but I also like the universal contemplation that the book gives.   I find myself wishing to be her traveling companion in the form of a fly on the way. Actually, I also want to be talking with the other characters as well.  Hopefully, this feeling will continue as I go deeper into the novel.