Project Read the World

For the past few years, I've been thinking about the idea of trying to read a book from every country. This idea isn't original at all. I stumbled across Ann Morgan's blog, A Year of Reading the World, which is what brought up the idea for me. In 2012, Ann Morgan set out to read a book from 196 countries. With a lot of time, effort, and help from others, she was successful in reading a book from every country in the world within one year's time.

I thought about trying to do something similar several years ago after watching Morgan's TED talk. I got a few e-books to read, and then proceeded to stop shortly after I started because I got busy with other things.

Now, however, feels like a good time to try again.

1. There's more unstructured time in life than normal, and I anticipate that this will be the case for a while.

2. According to Goodreads, I'm already 6 books ahead in my 100 books challenge. Since I feel fairly confident that I'm going to reach that goal for the first time ever this year, why not add something else?

3. Traveling to other countries is probably going to be on hold for a while. Reading books from different countries is going to be the closest that I can get to international travel at the moment.

Here's the plan.

In what I'm calling Project Read the World (Project RW), I'm going to attempt to read one book by an author from each country in the world. Ann Morgan chose to read a book from all 193 countries recognized by the United Nations plus Palestine and Taiwan. She also chose to read one book from an extra territory that her blog readers voted on which gave her a total of 196 countries. I'm going to stick to 195 countries (UN-recognized plus Palestine and Taiwan.)

As I was typing up the list, I realized that there are a lot of countries that I have zero knowledge about. I feel embarrassed that there are some names that I didn't even recognize. For a moment, I considered also trying to read a book about each country in addition to a book from each country just so I'd have some background knowledge, but I feel like that is too much to take on. I am all for ambitious goals, but planning to read nearly 400 books would make this less fun for me.

This might take a while.

The original project took one year to complete. I could potentially read 195 books in a year, but for me, that doesn't fit in with the way that I read. I want to enjoy the project, not feel pressured to rush through books.

Plus, I don't plan on just reading for Project RW the entire time. There are entirely too many other books that I am interested in reading right now. I've just started a new fantasy series that has 14 books, and I do not plan on reading 195 other books before I get to read the next book in the series. I cannot wait that long.

And, I have other books on my list that I need to read. I made the mistake of skimming through Nashville Public Library's Blog one day when I was bored, and my reading list is now longer than ever. I need to read books like The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: the Amazing Story of How America Lost Its Mind Over a Plush Toy--and the Eccentric Genius Behind It. I feel like that subtitle explains why this kind of reading is clearly a priority.

My minimum goal is going to be to read at least 2 books a month for Project RW. If that's all I read, it will take me a little over 8 years to read one book from each country. However, I anticipate that I will be reading more for the project each month. I'll still be reading other books in between, but I have a feeling that I'll get excited and read significantly more. There may be some months when things get busy and I'm only able to manage 2 books, but I hope that doesn't happen too often.

I'm not going to set a deadline for finishing this project. It will happen when it happens.

Buying all the books.

Actually, I plan on using the library as much as possible. Budget-wise and space-wise, I do not need to be buying quite that many books. I'm going to begin with books that I can get from the library first. I've looked and several that I'm interested in seem to be available. When I run into countries that are harder to find books for. I'll try my local bookstores, Thriftbooks, or Amazon depending on availability and my budget that month. I'm also not opposed to borrowing books from friends if that becomes a possibility.

Deciding what to read.

I don't have a well-developed plan for what I'm going to read for each country. I am going to look at the list from A Year of Reading the World for suggestions to get started. Besides this list, I bookmarked this one, this one, this one, and this one. I have a small list of books that I think I might like to try as my first few reads. I'd love to have every single book planned out ahead of time because I like to plan things. But, if I waited until I found all 195 books, then I'd keep putting off reading and give up before even getting started.

I'm creating a basic spreadsheet where I can keep track of books that sound interesting so that I'll be able to keep track of the options that I find. I started with index cards, but I managed to misplace those already. So, I'm going digital.

As far as the type of book, I'm going to try to read books that appeal to me whenever possible. This sounds like a weird requirement, but I'll explain. First of all, I know that there are certain genres that I absolutely am not going to read. For example, I never read horror, so I'm not going to try reading horror for this project.

Second, I do realize that there are many different literary styles that are popular around the world. I'm used to books that are paced for an American audience, and while there is some variation in that style and pacing, it's fairly consistent among booked that get published.

I do want to try books that aren't written to appeal just to that audience. This means that I will be out of my reading comfort zone sometimes. I'm excited to get to learn about literature and literary traditions from other places. I don't want all of the books that I read to be just like the books that I'm already reading. That would completely defeat the purpose of this project. Hopefully, that makes sense.

That being said, if I see something I'm interested in, I'm not going to skip reading it just because it isn't "literary" enough. I don't expect the books that I read to completely reveal all the aspects of culture in that country. That's asking too much of a book. I'm totally up for reading random fantasy novels from some countries if I see some that look good to me.

Sometimes, I may not have too much choice on what to read. If I'm on a country that doesn't have many works translated into English, I may just have to read whatever I can get. I am aware that will happen.

Getting Started.

I kind of already started Project RW. Before diving in, I decided to dip a toe into the water. I started with looking at this list of classic books read by students in different countries around the world. One of my favorite things as a teacher is reading books in the classroom, so I felt like this was a good way for me to start.

I picked the book Tomorrow, When the War Began to read for Australia. I thought that picking a book that didn't have to be translated was probably a good way to ease myself into this project. I also thought that picking a dystopia for teens would feel familiar. I know that the Hunger Games came out a long time ago, but I'm still into YA dystopia over here.

What I didn't realize is that, according to Goodreads, the book that I picked is "the most popular book series for young adults ever written in Australia." I cannot believe that I have never heard of this book before. Because it was amazing. It was such a good beginning to this project.

I'll go more in-depth with my thoughts about this book in my monthly wrap-up (in which, I'll obviously wrap-up my reading for the project each month). I will just say that I'm so glad that I started out with this particular book.

I've gone ahead and checked out four more books from the library to read next.

Mexico - Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Egypt - Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
Turkey - The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (and Three Daughters of Eve by the same author because I was indecisive and both were available)

After checking my library what my library has available, I do have several more books that I might check out next.

What could go wrong?

My biggest fear is that I'm going to end up reading a lot of books that I don't enjoy. I know that sounds silly, but I'm nervous that despite my best intentions, I just won't like the books that I pick.

First, I'm afraid that I won't understand them. A few weeks ago before I had decided that I wanted to try this project, I read One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is a classic. People love it. And, I am not one of those people. It was not for me at all, and I am still highly confused as to what I read.

Or I'm afraid that I'll end up reading books that are depressing. Like when we read Of Mice and Men in high school (actually like quite a lot of the books we read in high school). I realize that those stories reveal truths about humanity, but I don't necessarily want to repeatedly be reminded of depressing truths about humanity.

Another concern is that I might not be able to get a book from every country. I'm trying not to let that worry me too much and just take it book by book.

The last worry is that I will just lose motivation and stop before I've made my way through the entire list of countries. I've decided that I'm not going to let that bother me. Even if I only manage to read a few books, that's still better than not trying this at all. If nothing else, I'm already glad that I read Tomorrow, When the World Began. Right now seems like a good time to focus on positives. Here's to trying something new and seeing what happens next.

If you have any suggestions for what I should read, please let me know! I'm both excited and nervous!

Feel free to follow along on Instagram or on Goodreads for more frequent updates. If I start to get overwhelmed with updating here, I'm more likely to still keep updating on those two sites.