[#LitWorld2018GB] My 2018 Reading Goals As A Literary Vagabond (41+ Countries and Counting)

Myra here.

We have just launched our Literary Voyage Around The World 2018 reading challenge. As such, I felt that it is important for me to plan my 2018 Reading List and to also fit my reading across our quarterly reading themes in 2018. All of these novels have been hand-picked by me from my book shelves. One of my intentions is to read more of the books that I already have rather than purchase more titles (hah! as if!). We can always dream, can’t we?

Rather than shoot for Literary Globetrotter, I think it would be more realistic for me to shoot for Literary Vagabond in 2018.

While it was not difficult to look for books coming from different countries in my shelves, there is the added complication of trying to fit the titles within our quarterly reading themes (see below). I also would like to think that I have diversified my shelves considerably, with a lot of non-English titles from my travels. Yet despite this, I also realized that it was tough to reach around 80 countries or more. Perhaps if I really comb through each and every title (which is a near impossibility), especially those that I bought from my many travels, I would find a few more books set in countries that I have not included here. At any rate, I think a more conservative estimate would do me well, plus, I have a feeling this would change considerably during the course of the year as we get exposed to more books published in 2018, and taking into account as well the books that simply find us by accident, serendipity, chance. This would only serve as a rough-and-loose guideline, then, rather than a stringent, inflexible reading plan.

January – March 2018: Contours Of Love, Silhouettes of Infidelities, Shades of Romance

(1) Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan – Singapore

(2) Strange Weather In Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami – Japan

(3) Amsterdam by Ian McEwan – Netherlands (based on setting of book)

(4) The Green Road by Anne Enright – Ireland

(5) And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini – Afghanistan

(6) The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy – India

(7) The Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanagan – Australia

(8) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Nigeria

(9) The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood – Canada

(10) Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky – France

April – June 2018: Memoirs, Biographies, Self-Constructed Narratives

(11) Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey by Elena Ferrante – Italy

(12) The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa – Peru

(13) The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine – Lebanon

(14) Arabian Nights & Days by Naguib Mahfouz – Egypt

(15) The Whispering Muse by Sjon – Iceland

(16) When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi – United States of America

(17) A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova – Russia

(18) The Distant Marvels by Chantel Acevedo – Cuba

(19) The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret – Israel

(20) This Is Not A Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival Of Literature edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton – Palestine

July – September 2018: Crime and Thriller, Mysteries and Puzzles in Literature

(21) The Woman On The Stairs by Bernhard Schlink – Germany (based on author’s ethnicity)

(22) The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco – Czech Republic

(23) The Book Of Dust Volume One: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman – United Kingdom

(24) The Spy by Paulo Coelho – Brazil (based on author’s ethnicity)

(25) The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye by David Lagercrantz – Sweden

(26) The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu) – China

(27) Amulet by Roberto Bolaño – Mexico (based on main character)

(28) The Infinite Library And Other Stories by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo – Philippines

(29) DragonFish by Vu Tran – Vietnam

(30) Iban Journey by Golda Mowe – Malaysia

(31) Alamut by Vladimir Bartol – Slovenia (based on author’s ethnicity)/ Persia (setting of book)

October – December 2018: Breathing Beauty, Tasting Art, Feeling Music

(32) Yellow City: Illustrated Stories from Helsinki by Various Authors – Finland

(33) Three Daughters Of Eve by Elif Shafak – Turkey

(34) The Cellist Of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway – Bosnia and Herzegovina

(35) Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad translated by Sholeh Wolpé – Iran

(36) In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin – Pakistan

(37) The Green Bicycle by Haifaa Al Mansour – Saudi Arabia

(38) The Gift Of The Wondrous Fig Tree by Magda Szabó and illustrated by Szegedi Katalin – Hungary

(39) Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset – Norway

(40) The Blue Stone: A Journey Through Life by Jimmy Liao – Taiwan

(41) Wolkenbrot by Baek Hee Na and Kim Hyang Soo – Korea

(42) Huevos De Pascua by Kestutis Kasparavicius – Lithuania

(43) Destino by Andre Letria – Portugal

(44) Compostela by David Pintor – Spain

I just know I have other books from Greece, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries that I may not have tapped as of the moment. But, for starters, this shall be a rough-and-tumble kind of literary journey at least in the beginning, as I feel through our reading challenge.

How about you? Will you be taking a literary journey with us? What other books would you recommend from other countries that I have not included here?