My #ReadIntl2020 Stats

Myra here.

One of the things I love about December is that it gives me the space to reflect on my reading life over the past year, and whether I did passably well on some of the reading challenges I imposed on myself. Increasingly, I feel this urge to really broaden my “reading horizons” and to diversify my reading list. Over the past years, I have fallen deeply in love with international/translated literature, so much so that I devoted 2020 to featuring said titles here at GatheringBooks.

I have a #ReadIntl2020 page where I keep track of and document the books that I have been sharing here throughout our quarterly reading themes this year. Take note, though, that this does not include all the books I read this year – I will reserve that for My Year in Reading post. Here are the numbers for my Year of International Literature (2020):

And since I love tables, here is a further breakdown of the top five countries (based on author/illustrator’s country) I visited this year through books:

What the figures reveal to me is that despite my concerted attempts to read internationally, 60 out of the 109 books I featured this year still come from the United States and Canada. To be fair, though, the books are mostly written/illustrated by people of color, which still fits into my overall goal of reading diversely.

This actually makes me wonder: What would my reading life be like if I do not impose this kind of reading challenge for myself?

If I were to examine further across translated languages, here are the figures:

As can be seen in the table above, majority of the books featured this year are still in English (neither translated nor bilingual) – but as I pointed above, most are written/illustrated by people of color. I am glad to see that Arabic and Spanish languages are in the top 2 and 3 spot respectively. It is also interesting to see that I’ve featured quite a few translated European titles (French/German).

More than ever, I am committed to reading more international titles, more women authors/illustrators, more people of colour. Hopefully, our upcoming 2021 reading challenge would push me towards that direction more purposefully and strategically.

How about you? How many countries have you visited through books this year?