Read Around the World Challenge

A couple of years ago when I first heard about Ann Morgan's resolution to read one book from every country, I thought it was a nice idea, an exercise too impossible for me to bother with. Lately though, with the growing momentum behind the various reading diversely campaigns I've started to see how dismissive I was. Even now, it certainly isn't an easy goal but it's not impossible. Not to mention with the (slowly) growing attention being paid to the lack of international and translated literature, projects like this are just as important now as they have been. Part of the reason I started to read more diversely was to draw attention to diverse literature, to seek it out and learn about it and to share it with others. To ignore the larger global scope of the problem is, at best, foolish.

Because I already have my 2016 reading goals in place, I'm not making this a challenge for 2016, but I am making this part of my resolutions; I want to read more diversely on an international scale.

I don't want to restrict myself too much, so I've tried to keep the guidelines simple:

• I'm including as many forms of writing as possible: prose, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, full length novels, novellas, and short stories are in. I'm also including plays and written reports. Individual articles, blog posts, and similar short media don't count for this project, but are definitely welcome.
• To count for a particular country the author must have been born in that country and/or lived there for an indeterminate but "significant" period of time. In short what I want, as much as possible, is a native's perspective on the history and culture of an area or a country. While I know this is subjective, I want to avoid seeing things through the lens of an outsider. What little I already know about a lot of these places falls within that realm and I'm looking for something different.
• While I'm most interested in writing that reflects the current state of the world or recent historical events, larger scale or older works may be included as long as they have some relevance to the current state of things.

Because I can't resist a good excel spreadsheet, I've divided my list of countries up into thirteen groups each with roughly 20 countries. I'm aiming to read one to two books from each group per year. I know continuing at this pace will mean it will take me at least six years to finish, but I'm not too concerned about that right now.

To make my list of countries I started with the UN list of sovereign states then added a couple of unlisted (mainly autonomous) areas like Tibet and Iraqi Kurdistan. Currently I do have a number of territories and commonwealths included as well, although I'm not sure if those will remain in the project or not. I've also broken down the UK and Canada (by province- yes, I really needed an excuse to read more Canadian lit) and excluded countries like the U.S., England, and Australia from which I've read at least 10 books in the last three years. In total I currently have 255 countries listed: 206 sovereign states, 13 Canadian provinces/territories, the 4 countries of the UK, and 30 autonomous areas, dependent territories, and commonwealths.

To track my progress I wanted something with more visual immediacy than a list so I've created a map. At first I thought pushpins would be fun, but at a smaller scale that would be impractical, so I've gone with color coding despite it having its own issues, particularly when dealing with smaller areas and islands. While I would prefer something I can put together easily and can use at a glance to gauge my progress, I'm thinking of including inserts for parts of Oceania and the Caribbean, unless someone can suggest something better. The color coding process itself was a breeze: grey countries are those I've excluded as explained above, yellow are unread, light green are countries from which I read at least one book between 2013 and 2015, and dark green countries (none yet) are countries from which I've read at least one book since the start of the project in 2016.

And because I'd like to encourage you all to join me (to whatever extent you're willing) and because I'm forever misfiling bookmarks, I've included the list of resources I've started to compile.

General (or Multi-Country) Resources:

• Ann Morgan's Ted Talk: My Year Reading a Book from Every Country in the World
• Ted Idea's interactive map with recommendations from Ann and Ann's blog with the list of books recommended to her
• Magic in Every Book's read around the world 2016 (tumblr) tag
• 2016 Reading Challenge (Good Read's group) around the world in books challenge
• Wikipedia: list of novelists by nationality, list of authors by ethnicity or nationality, list of notable poets (country is noted), and list of playwrights by nationality and year of birth 
• Wikipedia's books published per country per year has several book lists linked in the references
• Reddit: In your country what/who is/are...: famous authors/journalists?, the classics/famous books?, the literature of your country like?, indispensable books for understanding your country?, non-European/North American classics?, the "great non-American novel"
• GoodReads: Read a book from each country (group), literature at every latitude (recommendations)
• A Celebration of Women Writers browse by country
• DMOZ: world literature by country
• Publisher/retailer catalogues (browsable online): Fantastic Fiction authors by country
• The Modern Novel
• English Pen's world bookshelf
• The Complete Review's reviews by nationality/language
• Three Percent reviews translated literature

Country or Region Specific Resources

• African Book Club's authors by country list
• From the Library of Congress: the South Asian literary recordings project: all authors- listed by country
• GoodReads: Indian redditors' favourite books by Indian authors (list)
• Arab Women Writers list of recommendations 
• Publisher/retailer catalogues (browsable online): African books collective, Halban Publishers (Middle East)