Before you get overwhelmed, this is a LIFE-LONG challenge! No one is expecting you to read some 195 books this year, let alone one from every country. I want you to look at this as something you keep in mind every year until you can’t read any longer! When thinking about your TBR or visiting shops etc., I want you to simply think “hmm, can I find a book to read from a new country?“. Because reading around the world is beneficial to us all…
Why this challenge matters
Firstly, it’s fun! It’s an interesting challenge to give yourself and you get a dopamine hit every time you tick off a new country. I find learning about other cultures fun and fascinating, too, so if you’re like me, this is a must. It also keeps you from getting bored by reading the same sort of books or authors all the time.
Secondly, it diversifies our reading, thus improving our knowledge and kinship with other languages, artists, norms, customs, and history. We are only taught a very limited history in school and in the literature we access in the West. Most likely, you read books written by or set in the USA and UK more so than anywhere else. But there are millions of amazing books written by, set in, or about other countries.
Don’t miss out!
Thirdly, it sends a signal to publishers that we want more diversity. That we are not okay with settling for the same types of authors all the time. It puts money in the pockets of more people, more countries, and helps the industry to do better for all authors, not just the popular Western ones.
Ideas on how to do it
You can gamify this and make it as fun and engaging a challenge as possible. Here are some ways to come at the challenge that I could think of:
- Gather a group of friends and all pick a book to read each month, bi-monthly, or seasonally from a different country each time
- Go continent by continent
- Start with your own heritage, extended family’s heritage, or friends’ heritage and go from there (you can ask for recs from family and friends this way)
- Start with the countries that border your own and expand out!
- Get a scratch world map and scratch off a country as you go
- Create a journal page with the countries and print off a flag for every country you read
- Input the countries you haven’t read yet into a randomiser site and get it to randomly select the country you need to read from next
- Watch a film or TV show from that country alongside the book and maybe even music too – it fully immerses you in the language and culture this way and adds a bit more fun to it
- Go by colours – start with countries with flags that are predominately red, then blue, then white, then yellow etc.
- Read what creators online are reading for each country and then listen to their review on it
Online Creators doing this challenge
If you would like some visual inspiration from booktubers who are better at this than me, here are some videos to get you started!
What counts for me
The rules for me to complete this challenge are as follows (has to tick at least one of these):
- Author needs to be from that country and has lived there (not just, like me, of Jamaican heritage but never lived there or experienced Jamaican life)
- Set in that country
- Translated to English from the original language of that country
That’s it! Not too hard, right?
Countries I’ve completed so far
- UK – many
- USA – many
- Ireland – Sally Rooney books, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan,
- Japan – The Travelling Cat Chronicles, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Convenience Store Woman, Earthlings,
- South Korea – Crying in H Mart, Kim Jiyoung Born 1982, The Disaster Tourist
- Argentina – The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
- China – The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- India – The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
- Hungary – Flesh by David Szalay
- Netherlands – The Safekeep by Yael van der wouden
- Cambodia – After Parties
- Denmark – The Little Book of Hygge
- Vietnam – She is a Haunting
- Australia – Nevermoor
- Dominican Republic – The Brief Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- France – The Little Prince
- Malaysia – Black Water Sister by Zen Chou
- New Zealand – Greta & Valdin
- Nigeria – The Girl with the Louding Voice
- Norway – Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
- South Africa – Born A Crime by Trevor Noah
- Sweden – A Man Called Ove & Everyday the Way Home (…) by Fredik Backman
- Türkiye – 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
- Zimbabwe – We Need New Names & Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
This isn’t too bad, and probably good by some people’s standards, but I want to keep reminding myself to tick off more countries. It’s a way to travel the world without leaving home!
Excited to get to next (own or can source the books with ease)
Afghanistan (The Kite Runner)
Belgium (I Who Have Never Known Men)
Chile (Violeta by Isabel Allende)
Colombia (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Dominican Republic (This is How You Lose Her)
Puerto Rico (Olga Dies Dreaming)
Jamaica (Soon Come by Kuba Shand-Baptiste)
Italy (Elena Ferrante books)
Malawi (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind)
Mexico (Silvia Moreno-Garcia books)
Palestine (Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad)
Poland (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk)
Philippines (House of Monstrous Women)
Russia (The Master and the Margarita)
Spain (The Shadow of the Wind)
More South Korean books I own: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, and tried The Vegetarian by Han Kang but DNFed.
I also want to tick off “simpler” countries or countries I’m interested in personally, like: Pakistan, Germany, Jamaica (my heritage), Bulgaria (my sister-in-law in Bulgarian), Cuba, Portugal, Brazil, Romania and Egypt.
Recs for each country
Reading Around the World — Plant Based Bride
As pictured below in Jack Edward’s videos
Here’s a tracker I made that can inspire you:
Are you going to join us? I hope you do! Let me know of any recs in the comments, please!
Sincerely,
S. xx
S. R. Crawford 