Reading around the World – Fifty Countries, Fifty books!

At the start of this year, I read one too many books set in an American high school. There were jocks and cheerleaders, cliques and geeks, prom queens and homecoming dances. The problem wasn’t that these were terrible books (ok, some of them probably were). The problem was that I realised American culture has been dominant in my reading choices ever since I first picked up a Babysitters Club book at seven years old. And I was tired of it.

I’m always one for setting myself challenge, to prove a point and indulge in some behaviour changing self-experimentation. So, I decided that reading a book from every country in the world seemed like a lofty goal. I’m not sadistic enough to try and do it all in one year, this is in the long-term life goals category. Maybe I’ll get there by the time I turn 40?!

Over the last nine months, I’ve made it a quarter of the way through my list and read books by authors from fifty different countries. Here are a few things I’ve learnt:

• Life is really, really hard for most of the world. It’s something we know but can easily forget about or not want to dwell on. Most of us will hopefully never live in a war zone or under an oppressive communist regime, but reading about different experiences develops awareness, empathy and gratitude – along with anger, despair, and all those other healthy emotions. I cried, quite frequently, and learnt to stagger heavier and lighter reads.
• Humans are amazing and resilient in the face of adversity. Many of the books I read were memoirs, or based on true stories, and I often found inspiration in their stories to be more courageous in my own life. 
• I’ve narrowed in on what I like and dislike in a book. Give me an adventurous plot, fascinating characters and juicy relationships. Don’t give me weird lit-fic where nothing happens to characters I don’t even like. Although one of the goals of this challenge was to open myself to new experiences, but I soon learnt that I can’t stick with a story that I’m just not into. This really added an extra layer of challenge onto by book selection process. Which leads me to…
• The amount of research needed to select books is almost as time consuming as the reading itself! It’s a good thing I work in a library. Some useful websites I found were: Women in Translation, which has a comprehensive list of translated books by female authors, A Year of Reading the World, the blog of Ann Morgan (who read around the entire world in 2012 and wrote a book about it!), and NoveList Plus, a library eResource where you can filter by author nationality. There’s also a bookstagram community of others who have taken on the #readtheworld challenge if you need more inspiration.
• Reviewing books is exhausting, and maybe was the hardest part of the challenge to keep up with. I wanted to keep a good record of what I'd read, but sometimes saying more that 'I liked it' or 'It sucked' was very challenging. That said, thanks (in part) to this challenge I'm now the #80 top reviewer in NZ on Goodreads... and I've never been 80th in the country at anything before. I’ve also added most of the reviews onto Bibliocommons, so you’ll see them if you look at the titles I've read in the library catalogue.

I found some books that I unexpectedly loved, and others that I wanted to love but just couldn't. However, every book was worth reading, as I was constantly learning about new cultures and experiences. Here are a few of my favourites…

Afghanistan: Open Skies by Niloofar Rahmani

Aotearoa New Zealand: Auē by Becky Manawatu

Bangladesh: The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam

Bulgaria: Foul Days by Genoveva Dimova

Hungary: Abigail by Magda Szabó

Ghana: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Nigeria: The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

South Africa: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Taiwan: The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-yi

Togo: Michel the Giant : an African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie

Check out the full list of my round the world reads.

So where does that leave me now? I’m having a break over summer, to indulge in simply reading whatever comes my way. But this has been such a fun and enlightening way to diversify my reading (and I can’t leave a challenge unfinished), so I’ll be back next year to continue reading around the world. Watch this space!