Reading the World

Heard a very interesting lecture today by someone who mentioned that under the above heading she was trying to read at least one book by authors from 200 different countries. Made me want to look over my list to see how close I was to that goal.

Someone did a popular blog about this in 2012, this was her list: https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/thelist/

I am also trying to read the world, 185 countries and also the 50 states. In 2022 I'm concentrating on Australia (all provinces and territories), Africa, and Asia. Most of my authors are indigenous, however, I use location/setting as my bar.

I'd imagine this would be a hard challenge to make meaningful; do you also filter for novels that take place in that country, or speak to life in that country somehow?

>4 Cecrow: Probably “cheating” to equate a novelist like Graham Greene, briefly resident in half a dozen countries where he set novels, with a Haitian, Mexican, or Sierra Leonese writer. Nor would I regard Pearl Buck as a Chinese writer, or Paul Scott as an Indian one, although the colonial perspective is also worth exploring.

Yes, loved Paul Scott, and E.M. Forster, but I think Tagore is a fairer India bet.

>5 booksaplenty1949: I don't count Pearl Buck as a Chinese writer, but she writes about China. And then there's James Michener......

>7 Tess_W:, I just read The Source this year about the Holy Land, unusually violent for him but good. I'm not sure anyone living there could have so objective a take on it. That feels to me like the catch, or one of them, in these author-should-be-of-the-culture arguments we have these days.

I think this is something I could be pushed to actually try out but I was looking at the entire list in the link above and wondering if other authors could be chosen instead? Maybe it would be interesting to revise the list (we’re almost ten years since 2012)

>8 Cecrow: I agree! P.S. I read The Source in 2018 and loved it. Yes, it was more violent than the other Michener's I've read (Chesapeake, Texas, The Bridges at Toko Ri), except for perhaps Hawaii.

>8 Cecrow: I think the point of “reading the world” is not necessarily to get objective information about, say, Slovenia, but to see how the world looks from a Slovenian point of view, or at least one Slovenian’s point of view. The perspective of the tourist/explorer/missionary/journalist can also be interesting and worthwhile, but it’s in a separate category, to me.

>8 Cecrow:
>11 booksaplenty1949:

I certainly do see the value of all the writing....non-fiction for the facts and analysis and others for the culture. Being a history professor, I've done all the non-fiction and journal essays that want to read, maybe for the rest of my life. I, instead to read about culture, which is often done beautifully in some works of historical fiction such as Buck, Michener, Moran, etc. Although, being just a lil literary "snob", I can't abide historical romance (or any romance, for the most part). I learned more about the Battle of Culloden by reading Outlander than I did by studying European history for 8 years.