Read Around the World: USA

Next up: The United States of America.

I’d say that about 80% of what I read is American. So, who gets to represent the USA? I’m going to choose John Steinbeck and his novel East of Eden even though it has been awhile since I’ve read him. In 1962 Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and I think he’s worthy of representing the USA.

Every time I read Steinbeck, he pleasantly surprises me and this novel was no exception.

A very brief plot summary: Basically, the story follows several families in the Californian Salinas Valley in the time before world war II. The Hamiltons have a large family and are trying to survive on infertile land and everyone struggles to find their place in the world and ‘make it’ in their own way.

Read Around the World Progress:

Read Around the World: Canada

First up: Canada.

Being Canadian, I’ve been reading Canadian literature all my life. But which book will I choose to represent Canada in my Read Around the World challenge to myself?

Oops. I just ran into a hitch. Shoot. Already. I said books written by an author in one country but set in another didn’t count. The problem is that the last two books written by Canadians (The Flying Troutmans and Divisadero) that I’ve read were set in the USA. Damn.

Now what? Do I skim through my mind’s reading archives until I come up against No Great Mischief or The Stone Angel? Something so quintessentially Canadian it couldn’t be anything else?

No. I play dirty. (You can’t say I didn’t warn you.)

The Flying Troutmans begins in Manitoba, and the characters are kooky Canadians. The story setting is a character in the novel, but it isn’t so major that it makes the story non-Canadian–if that makes any sense. So, The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews gets to represent Canada. Ta-da!!!

Plot summary: Main character comes back from France to place her sister to the psych ward and then take care of her niece and nephew. She decides she needs to find the children’s birth father and off they go in an aging minivan across the US, hoping to find a man nobody has seen in over a decade.

Reading Around the World Progress:

Read Around the World: Part 2

Okay, this is how my read around the world challenge/event/mission/thing is going to go down…

Each time I read a book from somewhere in the world, I’m going to brag about it, I mean post it on my blog to keep me accountable. That is, until I realize that this challenge is a grossly mislead idea and a stupid fit of inspiration that hit me way too late at night for my inner critic to do something about, and I sneak in and delete all my posts that contain even a whisper about me reading my way around the world. That’s right. I play dirty.

And because I play dirty, I am also going to come flying out of the gate on this challenge. You might want to stand back. I am going to go a little postal. I mean, a little post crazy. A small difference, yet a very important one. So… wait for it. It’s coming. Many posts today.

Alrighty then. Still with me?

Here goes: each post will have a short blurb about the book, a world map with the country of the book’s origin coloured in, as well as a lovely map marking my progress around the world. You can watch me colour in all 195 of the world’s freaking countries. And let me state for the record, if I am breathing down the neck of country 195 and some loony in charge decides to rearrange borders, rename the place, and generally piss me off by making this crazy challenge more difficult, I reserve the right to do whatever the heck I want in order to make things ‘right’ again. Cool?

We’re cool.

Am I missing anything?

Read Around the World

Tonight, I started Gabriel García Márquez’s book One Hundred Years of Solitude. As I was reading the first page, I flipped to the back cover to see where the book was written. (There is a discovery of ice on the first page and seeing as it is January in Canada… and I’m thinking of warm, sunny locations around the globe… well, you do the math.) The book was originally published in Columbia.

Why am I telling you this? As I sat there dreaming of sunshine beating down on my skin, I began to realize that in the past year I have read a fair number of books from various corners of the world. A couple of examples: The Girls of Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), The Alchemist (Portugal), Is There Anybody Out There? (Ireland), Divisadero (Canada), Unfeeling (Zimbabwe), and a slew of American literature.

And I ask you, is there a better way to travel the world? To delve so completely into the culture, sounds, smells, beliefs, attitudes or fears of people living across this big blue planet? Is there a better way to taste these differences all while probing around at that undefinable ‘thing’ that underlies life, that something we call humanity?

As I stared at the cover of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I found myself wondering if it would be possible to read my way across the world. Would it be possible to read a book that has been written by a citizen of each of the world’s countries? Could I read books that have made their way out of each and every country across the world and into my hands? A book that has been translated into English? (Because let’s face it, unless it’s a children’s book in Spanish or French, I’m an English-only reader.)

The challenge is on. With no time limit as this could take awhile. (Particularly with commitments to two book clubs, serving as a ThomasNelson book blogger, working on my banned book challenge, and of course, those wonderful books I’m given as gifts or seem to glom onto me as I pass through bookstores and libraries.)

Speaking of children’s books, I am not going to be an adult literature snob. I’m down with any book in published form. It also doesn’t have to be a classic, nor a classic in the making. Remember, I’m a book slut; I’ll read anything. Plus, I read about 300 kids books in a year, so why pass up the opportunity to help boost my stats? A book is a book, right?

Note: Books like Cellist in Sarajevo and Not Without My Daughter do not count as ‘foreign’ lit as they are written by a Canadian and an American, respectively, and not a citizen of the country where the books’ action takes place.

Coming tomorrow… a map (like above). I’m going to go visual on this. I’m going to colour in each country (around 195 of them! This’ll also improve my geography skills–woo!) as I read a book from there. However, I am going to ‘cheat’ a little and play retroactively. That means that books I’ve already read count. Yes, you heard me. The only thing stipulation about previously read books being counted in the challenge is that I have to be able to remember enough about the book in order to be able to give a decent plot summary. So there.

Want in? Misery Reading pleasure loves company.