#Read Around the World

[caribeandthebooks]

Caribe's Top Reads

An Ordinary Wonder by Buki Papillon

Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Adult Fiction

Setting: Nigeria

Description: An Ordinary Wonder is a powerful coming of age story of an intersex twin, Oto, who is forced to live as a boy and adhere to prohibitive Yoruba traditions despite his desire to live as a girl. His wealthy and powerful family are ashamed of him and we see Oto become more estranged from his twin sister and experience heart-breaking brutality at the hands of his mother…Read more on Goodreads/Storygraph

Content Warning information can be found via the above Storygraph link.

#an ordinary wonder #buki papillon #contemporary fiction #adult fiction #books set in nigeria #read around the world challenge #read around the world #diverse books #diverse reads #favourite reads #lgbtqia #queer

[reginasbread]

I don't think I'll be able to finish any more books this year to add to my little project, in which I try to read at least one book from every country in the world. This year, I covered 16 countries:

Oceania:

Fiji - Jacinta Tonga, A remarkable Rotuman Woman

South America:

Uruguay - Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America,

Chile - Pedro Lemebel, My Tender Matador,

Argentina - Sylvia Malloy, Dislocations,

Peru - Gabriela Wiener, Sexographies

North America:

USA - Sigrid Nunez, For Rouenna

Asia:

Oman - Jokha al-Harthi, Celestial Bodies,

Palestine - Adania Shibli, Minor Detail,

Iran - Mahnaz Afkhami, The Other Side of Silence: A Memoir of Exile, Iran, and the Global Women's Movement

Europe:

Spain - Paul B. Preciado, An Apartment on Uranus,

France - Annie Ernaux, The Years,

Finland - Siri Kolu, Kesän jälkeen kaikki on toisin,

Norway - Kjersti Anfinnsen, Øyeblikk for evigheten,

Ukraine - Margaryta Yakovenko, Desencajada,

Czechia - Ota Pavel, Death of the Beautiful Roebucks,

Germany - Katharina Volckmer, The Appointment

I thought that I'd be extremely limited by being able to comfortably read only in 2 languages and that Polish would be more useless than English. Surprisingly, there are many books published in Polish that are unavailable in English. hell yeah for small Polish publishers!

#read around the world #my silly little project

[doitinanotherlanguage]

Reading Around the World: Introduction

An exciting New Year for everyone!

Like for many other people, the New Year always inspires me to try out new things and challenge myself, and this year I've decided to do this by starting the Reading Around the World challenge - a reading challenge where you read books from all around the globe, attempting to read at least one book from every country.

I'm sure the idea has existed in some shape or form for a long time, but, as far as I know, the challenge really kicked off on the internet when, in 2012, Ann Morgan started a blog to document her year-long journey through a book from every country in the world. Since then, many other people have also taken part, and now there is even a website for the challenge.

I've wanted to try something similar ever since I first heard about the challenge a couple of years ago - I love reading, I've studied comparative literature, and from the year 2019 I've been conducting my own "reading through the ages" challenge, where I've read literature from the Antiquity all the way through to the present era. However, during that challenge, I noticed that my reading was very Anglo- and Eurocentric. I wanted to read more from all around the world, so I started looking for interesting books from around the globe and compiling a list of them. Now, I feel that the time is finally ripe, and so I've decided that 2024 is the year I will embark on my literary voyage!

If you want to follow my journey, I will document it here on tumblr, and I might also occasionally post about it on my language-learning instagram.

If you want to know more about how I will personally be doing the challenge, you can read more under the cut:

My "rules" for the challenge:

I have no time limit for the challenge. The challenge can take one year or ten years, or the rest of my life - I have no specific goal.

I will read as many books from each country as I feel like.

I pick books to "represent" a country on a case-by-case basis; I don't have absolute criteria for how I choose the books. That said, my main goal is to read books written by people from and living in different countries and places in the world, and I want to challenge myself to read literature in translation and in other languages besides English and Finnish. However, I will also consider books by authors who have a personal connection to the country/place of which they are writing about (e.g. diaspora and descendant authors or authors who have lived in/visited the country especially for lengthy periods).

My rating system:

5/5: Amazing. I loved it, it's a new favourite.

4/5: Very good. I really liked it.

3/5: Alright. I liked it.

2/5: Nah. It was okay, but not really my thing.

1/5: Ö-mappi*. I did not like it. * Finnish, "a figurative binder into which any unwanted proposals are archived in order to be forgotten", literally "the binder Ö"

#reading around the world #read around the world #reading challenge #litblr #bookblr #new year

[wordwings]

#free palestine #read palestine #booklr #read around the world #palestinian books #palestine #book recommendations #Instagram

[rachel-sylvan-author]

"The Crocodile Hunter" by Steve and Terri Irwin wholehearted book recommendation by Rachel Sylvan

#Crocodile hunter #Steve Irwin #Terri Irwin #Animal conservation #Australia Zoo #Australian wildlife #faith in humanity #good people #australian books #australian authors #read around the world #24 countries in 2024 #24 books in 2024

[tunacrust]

Read Around the World Challenge - China

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge Speculative Fiction (Science fiction, Fantasy, Fabulism) Best description I have for this book is "weirdly compelling"... it's not a style I typically seek out, but boy howdy I'm glad I did. Each chapter focuses on an encounter with a different strange beast. All are unique in some way, but "other than that, they are exactly like humans." It reminded me a little bit of The Magnus Archives in setup, with seemingly unconnected encounters that build up to a bigger story (although this one is much more personal, rather than world-ending in nature).

If you wanna follow my progress in this challenge, check out my official handy dandy progress map! Anyone else doing this challenge, or just starting?

#reading #bookblr #bookworm #booklover #read around the world #china #strange beasts of china #fantasy #science fiction #fabulism #speculative fiction #books and reading #book recommendation #book review #around the world #the magnus archives #bibliophile

[madmonkeysandrum-blog]

BEST BOOK: Hard month… did I enjoy any of these books? Did I take anything from these books? A few what not to do but… Yeah I don’t think I liked any of them, a bunch of meh. Is this me? Is this what untreated depression does? If I had to pick one… “Hunt for the Shadow Wolf” but yeah, it was also so of meh. WORST BOOK: Maybe “The Murder of Mr. Ma” because I wanted it to be good, but I wanted “The Poisons we Drink” too be good too, and “Scorched Grace”, and “The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder”. But I think “The Murder of Mr. Ma” failed me the most. THOUGHTS: How do I find better books? Looking through the books I’ve read so far this year and books that was more than just a meh, might be 4 books out of 32 so roughly 10%. That’s not great. Out of those 4 books, 3 were non fiction. I can tick off India on my Read Around the World challenge. So maybe I should read more non fiction? I like to listen to non fiction when I work. Not sure April will be that much better, I already have a few books in the pip line… some Netgalley reads, fingers crossed. Maybe books will get better as spring and the sun shows up?

#books #reading challenge #read around the world

[historiaiswritten]

I figured I should do a small update with my reading journey this year. I have read a number of other books between the ones for my challenge. I like to change it up some when I can to help with continued surprised reading. Once stuck in a genre, it seems to get old with clichés and such, (at least for me).

Updating you all on my wonderful reading challenge journey:

A dystopian

Involves a STEM topic

Philosophy book - The Cat Who Taught Zen by James Norbury

One From TBR - Sherlock Holmes and the Red Tower by Mark A. Latham

Themed Holiday

Read Before - A Shameful Life (No Longer Human) by Osamu Dazai

African-American Author

From the Library - Kill Joy by Holly Jackson

A New Favorite Author - As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson

A Novella

Romance

Dark Acadamia

Made Into a Show or Movie

That’s Won a Prize

About Nature

For the main challenge that is, hope to have those reviews up soon!

As for my World Reading challenge, that one hasn't came quite as far:

Latin America

Australia

Scotland

Japan

Egypt - Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Iraq

Russia

Malaysia

Brazil

Iceland

Morocco

Zimbabwe

It doesn't seem like all that much for these first 3 months, maybe to others it's a lot so far, but I have read some graphic novels between all of these that I don't typically do reviews on as I read the latest, wait for the next volume, re-read the whole series, etc. The cycle never stops on those, but, maybe, once those series finish, I'll do one big review on it for the overarching plot and to help with spoilers.

#bookworm #reading #reading challenge #read around the world #Progress is progress #First quarter

[readaroundtheworld]

Book 1

Title: Song of Solomon

Author: Toni Morison

Country: United States

Whenever I think of Toni Morrison, I always think of my senior year English class where I read The Bluest Eye for the first time. That book opened my eyes and shattered my heart to what I, a white woman in America, had never seen through another’s eyes. The fact that systemic racism pervades and poisons so much of US culture was something I understood conceptually, but reading through the eyes of a young black girl desperately wishing to earn the love her mother so easily bestows on the little white girl she works for is nothing short of soul rending.

I think it’s vital to read from the perspectives of other walks of life from your own. This belief was only strengthened when, during the course of that aforementioned class, one of my classmates, a white boy from a middle class family, complained that this book was entirely “unrelatable” to him, and he felt he shouldn’t have to read it. I will never forget the look on the face of my teacher, a black woman, as she tried to explain the concept of empathy to him. She may as well have been talking to a brick wall.

Thinking back on that story, I thought that another Toni Morrison book would be the perfect way to kick off this challenge, as her work now represents to me that spirit of empathy that inspired the challenge in the first place.

Song of Solomon is a tragic story about a man desperately trying to trace down his roots and where he came from through oral histories of families and communities. For much of Black America, these oral histories are the only documentation they will ever have. Unfortunately, as Milkman (our protagonist) discovers, some histories are too painful to be shared by the primary source, your own family. You have to find these things out from others in the community. And what information you do receive can be entirely contradictory, or show malicious bias.

Like all of Toni Morrison’s work, the goal isn’t to have a happy ending and walk away feeling good. The goal, in my view, is to take a good hard look at the truths around you and face them head on. To find understanding for deeply flawed human beings and to learn what made them that way.

If you can’t tell, I love Toni Morrison. This was a great book to kick off my challenge and I’m so excited to share the next one!

#read around the world #toni morrison #song of solomon #reading challenge #reading #literature

[world-literatures]

project read around the world

40/198

a project in which I attempt to read one book per country in the world. my favourite book from each country (so far) will be recorded here and swapped out as necessary.

africa

equatorial guinea - la bastarda by trifonia melibea obono

nigeria - things fall apart by chinua achebe

somalia - the last nomad by shugri said salh

south africa - black bull, ancestors and me by Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde

sudan - season of migration to the north by tayeb salih

asia

afghanistan - a thousand splendid suns by khaled housseini

china - strange beasts of china by yan ge

india - interpreter of maladies by jhumpa lahiri

indonesia - beauty is a wound by eka kurniawan

iran - darius the great is not okay by adib khorram

iraq - frankenstein in baghdad by ahmed saadawi

japan - norwegian wood by haruki murakami

north korea - princess bari by hwang sok-yong

south korea - love in the big city by sang young park

malaysia - queen of the tiles by hanna alkaf

palestine - mornings in jenin by susan abulhawa

saudi arabia - a girl like that by tanaz bhathena

singapore - crazy rich asians by kevin kwan

taiwan - want by cindy pon

vietnam - we'll meet again in san francisco by duong thuy

europe

denmark - the copenhagen trilogy by tove ditlevsen

france - giovanni's room by james baldwin

greece - the iliad by homer

ireland - normal people by sally rooney

italy - my brilliant friend by elena ferrente

kosovo - bolla by pajtim statovci

poland - once by morris gleitzman

spain - the spanish love deception by elena armas

sweden - beartown by frederik backman

united kingdom - pride and prejudice by jane austen

north america

canada - station elevent by emily st john mandel

dominican republic - clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo

jamaica - wide sargasso sea by jean rhys

mexico - amulet by roberto bolano

united states - the city we became by n.k jemisin

oceania

australia - taboo by kim scott

papua new guinea - a faraway familiar place by michael french smith

south america

argentina - things we lost in the fire by Mariana Enríquez

brazil - the alchemist by paulo coelho

colombia - one hundred years of solitude by gabriel garbia marquez

venezuela - it would be night in caracas by karina sainz borgo

#pratw #world literature #global literature #read around the world

[whyamihereat4am]

my favourite thing about chuuya nakahara is that he's just kind of. chill. about everything. he's like, my tragic backstory has no hold on me, i went to therapy and i'm all good now. i'm a bad guy cuz it pays good and my found family happens to be here. what do you mean that's not a good reason, you a cop or something?

someone will betray him and he'll go ok well that's pretty upsetting. they probably had a good reason though. i'll forgive them if they let me get a good punch in. if they're really just a hater they're giving me bad vibes and i don't wanna deal with 'em at all tbh.

things have been done to him that would warrant a lifelong crusade of revenge for anyone else, but for chuuya nakahara it's just, that was super not cool but i'll let it slide if you get therapy with me.

chuuya is down for any crime and thinks moral boundaries are for losers and stuff but he's the nicest guy in the port mafia when it comes to not mistreating his subordinates and probably helps old ladies cross the street. he shows up for a solid 10-20 minutes of screentime per season and makes all the fans fall in love with him while doing the bare minimum, and despite technically being a villain i don't think he's worked against the agency a single time (although to be fair this is often not on purpose). he also does the bare minimum every time he's asked to help in-universe and clearly isn't even trying, and he sweeps anyway because he is ridiculously overpowered and could probably kill literally everyone if he actually wanted to, and i just. no one is doing it like him. you go you unbothered king.

#i haven't gotten around to reading stormbringer yet (although i have read some spoilers) so this may not be entirely accurate #but these are the vibes i get from him from what i do know and i love them #guy who could probably destroy or take over the entire world if he really wanted to but he's too cool for that #he just wants to day drink and look fabulous and make lesbians swoon #bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd chuuya #chuuya nakahara

[caribeandthebooks]

Caribe's Read Around The World TBR - Part 3

Books set in Asian countries <3

#read around the world challenge #read around the world #book tumblr #booklr #bookblr #books #tbr jar #tbr list #if you could see the sun #ann liang #skull water #heinz insu fenkl #crazy rich asians #kevin kwan #the housekeeper and the professor #yoko ogawa #in the shadow of the banyan #vaddey ratner #the coroners lunch #colin cotteril #books set in asia #asian books #reading challenge #diverse reads #diverse books

[petricorah]

scenes i loved from Real Enough to Get Me Through by @marriedzukka <333 [ids in alt]

#zukka #zukka fanart #sokka #sokka fanart #zuko #zuko fanart #atla #atla fanart #avatar the last airbender #zukka fic rec #myart #yall. yall. dani. this FIC #first off it made me cry twice. not like 'oh im crying' internet speak no. like. eyes are too blurry to read let me stop this for a sec #it is SO GOOD #your prose? amazing #your insights on grief? life changing #THEM??? THEM their relationship and trust #'zuko looked at him and his world shifted on its axis' #ive been thinking about that line for WEEKS STRAIGHT #i can't tell you how many passages i screenshot just because of how beautiful or cute they were #the moment of seeing the painting of sokka's mom? how did you manage to make it so telling character wise--so sweet so PAINful AND so #cute with their relationship?!!?! #'oh so you think i'm beautiful too' #GOD #i had so many scenes i wanted to draw it was crazy #also #'Our loved ones leave impressions on us that can still impact our decisions and feelings even after they're gone' #fuck. had me crying AGAIN #seriously this fic is so wonderful and not just through a zukka lens. truly life changing you're an AMAZING writer #the fandom is so lucky to have you and i can't Believe it took me so long to get around to reading this masterpiece

[doitinanotherlanguage]

Reading Around the World: Italy

Viola Ardone: Oliva Denaro (2021; The Unbreakable Heart of Oliva Denaro)

Original language: Italian

Translation read: Finnish translation Nimeni on Oliva Denaro (2023) by Laura Lahdensuu

Genre: Historical fiction

Summary: In a Sicilian small-town in the 1960s, a 16-year-old Oliva refuses the advances of a man, who consequently kidnaps and rapes her in order to force her to marry him out of shame (i.e. trying to bully her into a "rehabilitating marriage"). The novel is loosely based on the kidnapping and rape or Franca Viola.

Review: 4/5. Small towns and women-centric storylines with feminist themes? Say no more, I'm in! This was a powerful novel about girlhood and growing up as a woman, and of standing up against unjust traditions. The aftermath of the real-life Franca Viola's trial ruled that rapists were no longer able to avoid punishment through marriage to their victims, eventually leading to the law about "rehabilitating marriage" finally being repealed in 1981.

Stefano Benni: Baol: Una tranquilla notte di regime (1990; "Baol: A Quiet Night Under the Regime")

Original language: Italian

Translation read: Finnish translation Baol: eräänä rauhallisena yönä valtakunnassa (1998) by Laura Lahdensuu

Genre: Satirical dystopia

Summary: In 1991, the citizens of City T. live under a totalitarian regime in a society that is ruled by cruel hierarchs who monitor their subjects and where reality is being shaped by government officials in secret underground studios. In this brutal world, the last baol wizard is trying to understand a secret about his life, and in the process gets drawn into a plot to save the reputation of a past-his-prime comedian.

Review: 3/5. Funny, exciting, weird. A fabulous satire of the modern world that also slightly scares me with its focus on control through distorted media presentations of reality. This would make an absolutely thrilling movie! Minus points for some casual sexism.

Umberto Eco: Il fascismo eterno (1995; Ur-Fascism)

Original language: Italian

Translation read: English translation Ur-Fascism (1995)

Genre: Essay

Summary: A short and intelligent essay on the fascist movement and ideology, written by a man who grew up in Italy under Mussolini's fascist rule. The essay gives a definition of fascism and lists its fourteen typical features.

Review: 3/5. A very important and necessary read now as neo-fascist movements and parties are on the rise again. Unfortunately, there's a lot I recognise from modern politics.

Lorenza Mazzetti: Il cielo cade (1961; The Sky Is Falling)

Original language: Italian

Translation read: Finnish translation Taivas sortuu (1965) by Pirkko Wass-Colussi

Genre: Autobiographical psychological fiction

Summary: 10-year-old Penny has been orphaned together with her little sister Baby. They now live with their rich, Jewish uncle and his family in a large manor in the Italian countryside. It is 1943, and there is a war raging somewhere in the distance, but the children play and go to school in the village, learning to sing fascist songs and write essays about Il Duce. Then, the war creeps closer and eventually brings along chaos, blood, and destruction.

Review: 3/5. I saw a reviewer describe this novel as "perversely naive", and I couldn't put it any better. The novel cleverly describes the world of children and the world as experienced by children, particularly war as seen through the eyes of a child. Penny idolises Mussolini and is proudly a little fascist, having very little understanding of what is actually going on in the world of adults, until it all tragically blows up in her face. The events portrayed in the novel parallel those that happened to the author's real-life uncle, the cousin of Albert Einstein. This novel seems to have some sequels, so I'm planning to pick those up in the future.

Goliarda Sapienza: L'arte della gioia (1976/1994/1998; The Art of Joy)

Original language: Italian

Translation read: Finnish translation Elämän ilo (2014) by Laura Lahdensuu

Genre: Historical fiction

Summary: Written between 1967-1976, this novel was published in full only in 1998, after the author's death, because the novel was initially rejected due to its length and its portrayal of a woman unrestrained by conventional morality and traditional feminine roles. The novel follows a woman, Modesta, who is born on 1 January 1900, through her life in twentieth century Sicily as she pursues cultural, financial and sexual independence.

Review: 3/5. This door-stopper of a novel was a gripping, thought-provoking, sightly disturbing reading experience. With around 700 pages, this novel of growth and development packs in free-love and queerness, social climbing, strong-willed women, murder, and (sort-of) incestual relationships. At the centre is a woman's pursuit of independence. I was left wanting a bit more of the political and historical stuff regarding Mussolini, fascism, socialism, and the world wars, since the novel was quite indrawn. As a sidenote: I heard that there's an Italian TV adaptation coming out this year, which I'm very much looking forward to!

#reading around the world #read around the world #italian literature #litblr #bookblr #reading challenge #world literature #book reviews

[rachel-sylvan-author]

"First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" by Loung Ung book recommendation by Rachel Sylvan

#24 books for 2024 #24 countries in 2024 #24 books in 2024 #read around the world #Cambodia #cambodian genocide #Memoir #Nonfiction #Autobiography #diverse book #diverse authors #diverse books #diverse reads #diversity

[ya-world-challenge]

Current progress

15 books read out of 208 countries/regions

#updates #its a start #ya world challenge #read around the world #bookblr #booklr #bookworm #bookish