Reading around the world, with a little help from my network

I read a lot; it goes with the job of course but even outside work I just keep reading. At the moment I'm busy with an extremely rewarding project to read at least one novel from every country I have visited, 56 in total. In view of the environmental impact of air travel, I can't hope for any more international travel unless overland, so I will now focus on travel in my own part of the world and appreciating my past travels. One way to do that is by reading.

The idea for my reading project came from Ann Morgan's inspirational book blog, A year of reading around the world, where she documents her quest to read a book from every country in the world in one year, all 195 of them - yes, even the Vatican City! I believe in setting achievable targets and decided to limit my total, but maybe once I've done them all I could just go on and see how far I get. To get the inside story of Ann's reading marathon you can watch the TED talk she gave a few years ago.

She reached out to her readers for tips on which books to choose and I decided to make use of my own network of educators around the world in the same way. I've written many times on the concept of personal learning networks and how my contacts have helped me in so many ways over the years, answering questions, recommending work literature and sharing practice. So this time I contacted them and asked for recommended reading from their countries. So most of my reading list has come from personal recommendations making the books even more special, reflecting both the country and the tastes of my friends.

I have also been a bit liberal with my definition of countries. Three of them are self-governing Nordic territories, Greenland, Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands, but they all have distinct histories and culture and deserve special status in my list. I have also included a country that no longer exists, East Germany (DDR), that I visited several times and also had its own literary culture far removed from that of  West Germany. Some countries like the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, France, Russia and Germany were well covered before I even started but I was surprised to discover that I had never actually read anything from countries like Spain, Portugal or Italy (apart from Roman authors from 2,000 years ago). I've now got 16 left before I reach my goal. The trickiest hurdle to clear will be Liechtenstein since as far as I can see has no novelists who have been translated into English. I have a basic knowledge of German but have never studied it and couldn't tackle a novel. Even Ann Morgan had trouble with this one and in the end read a travel book about Tibet by an author from Liechtenstein. I am restricted to reading books in English or the Scandinavian languages though maybe with a bit of patience I could manage one in French.

We tend to be very ethnocentric in our reading. Most people focus on authors from their own country or from the homes of the major publishers: the USA and the UK. Only when the Nobel prize is announced each year do authors from other countries get a chance to be in the spotlight. Just reading one book from a country doesn't give me much insight to its culture but at least I have opened the door. In many cases I have found other books that I will hopefully follow up in the future.

Another aspect of this activity is that I am affirming my love of printed books. I have a lot of packed bookshelves in the house and this project is filling them to the last centimetre. Of course I could save space and time by reading them as e-books or even audio books but then I couldn't really see my collection. My bookshelves are like a trophy cabinet in the same way my record collection used to be. My disenchantment with the digital tsunami has lead me to return to reading printed material, even the daily newspaper in the letterbox.

After the sadness of my previous post I have decided that I want to keep this blog going but widen its horizons outside the confines of educational technology. I don't intend to turn it into a book blog but I think I may include posts that reflect on my reading in the footsteps of my travels.