Okay, I’ll admit it up front: this is my third attempt at reading around the world.
The first time I drew up a Really Big Plan with lots of rules about the Sequence of Countries – and when it turned out to be too rigid, instead of just modifying my expectations I abandoned the whole plan.
The second time I went to the other extreme and had no plan at all, and found that just randomly picking countries and books didn’t work either.
This time I’ve got a looser plan: I’m going to read around the world, beginning with the smallest countries or territories (according to population, not area). But that’s an orientation statement, not an unbreakable rule.
Others have completed or are in the process of reading a book from every country in the world. I’m particularly inspired by Ann Morgan who did it in a year (www.ayearofreadingtheworld.com). More recently, the announcement of Sheela (metanarrator on Youtube) that she’s embarking on such a trip prompted me to begin again.
I got my list of countries from https://www.downloadexcelfiles.com/wo_en/download-excel-file-list-countries-world#google_vignette . It includes population statistics and prompted the idea of reading through the countries in reverse order of size, from smallest to biggest. Why do it this way? There are three reasons:
- I’m less likely to have read books from the smaller countries before, so they will be new to me and therefore more interesting;
- It gives me a structure, but one which is not terribly rigid; this will help me to continue with the project when my initial enthusiasm wears off;
- This way of choosing my next book will bring me to all parts of the world in random order, which is more interesting to me than staying entirely with one region or continent for a long period.
I aim to read books from about 230 places, but I’m not going to list them in advance. I will try to post at least a short piece on each book as I finish it, but for me that’s the hardest part and it may not always happen.
What are those places? Well, there are countries, there are dependent territories, there are overseas territories, there are regions that call themselves countries but are not recognized by others as such, there are disputed territories… I’m not getting into the politics of it. If there’s a book from there that appeals to me and that I can access without too much trouble, I’ll read it.
And what kind of books? Mostly fiction, I expect. Novels, short stories. Historical fiction. But non-fiction is good too, especially memoirs or biographies. Anything that brings me, through its pages, to a particular country at a particular point in time (not travel guides). Preferably by authors from that country, though in the case of some places which do not have a well-developed publishing industry that may not be possible.
Books in English, or translated into English; perhaps occasionally a book in French, Italian, or Irish.
How long will it take? Between six and ten years, I expect. I began on August 23rd 2022. Let’s see…
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