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June's Around the World Book Challenge


Talisman

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2014 is off to a flying start with the completion of my first new country of the year - this time Croatia. The book in question is The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna.

 

Quite a few books that have been on my wish list for a while were reduced during the Christmas and New Year Kindle sale, so having a large amount of Amazon vouchers to spend, I took advantage of this and downloaded most of them. That should keep me in books then for a while.  :readingtwo: 

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June

I am so impressed by the number of countries you have already ticked off your list ! Great job .

 

Have there been any countries that have been really hard to find books for ?  I'm wondering if there are any that won't have a book ?

 

I'm just thinking of the Olympics when they have some tiny little countries with maybe only one athlete representing them, if there might be a country like that too ,that might only have one author or book from it ? Do you already have a list for possibilities for every country you have left ?

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I am nowhere near that organised Julie, but I do have a fairly lengthy wish list on Amazon with quite few countries on it. The most difficult ones I suspect will be the tiny Pacific island states, and a few of the African nations too - there have been many books from some of these places that I would loved to have read, but a lot of them alas are not available on Kindle, so I have to then look for other ones. The most unusual country though that I have managed to do so far would probably be Tristan de Cunha, which is a small island in the middle of the Atlantic. I managed to do that one towards the end of last year.

 

I suspect though that the reasons I am getting through the challenge relatively quickly are twofold - firstly I am specifically looking for these types of books and secondly, I am doing it by country in which the book is set rather than where the author was born. For a lot of the smaller nations it would downright impossible to find any books written by someone born there, especially in Kindle, which is still after all relatively new technology. I have always felt from working with people from all over the world, that because you were born in a particular country that does not make you any more of an expert on that place than someone who has spent time there for other reasons - marrying a native say, or working there. I have worked with people who were born in say Africa or the Caribbean and came here as children, and so feel more British than African or West Indian - I also have a friend who was British born but has lived in Spain for most of her adult life, so is she more Spanish or more British ? She speaks fluent Spanish as do her children, who were all born there. For me then country where the book is set works just as well. if not better.    

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Yes, I think since it's your  challenge ,then you can set it however you want . You're doing great and learning a lot about other places so I'm sure it's interesting . You can travel without leaving your chair !

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finished another country this afternoon - this time The Dove Flyer by Eli Amir for Iraq.

 

Continuing the Jewish theme, prior to this I managed another book set in both England and Israel - The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris. 

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I finished yet another country yesterday - Where the Hell is Tuvalu by Philip Ells for the tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu. Part biography, part travelogue this is about the two years that the author spent working as a lawyer for VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) in this part of the world.

 

I have just done a quick count and am somewhat astonished to find that I have only have another 3 countries to read before I hit the halfway mark. 

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I finished yet another country yesterday - Where the Hell is Tuvalu by Philip Ells for the tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu. Part biography, part travelogue this is about the two years that the author spent working as a lawyer for VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) in this part of the world.

 

I have just done a quick count and am somewhat astonished to find that I have only have another 3 countries to read before I hit the halfway mark. 

 

That's great, June !

 When did you start, do you remember ?

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After a bit of a slow start to the year, I have managed to complete three more countries.

 

On the Trail of Genghis Khan by Tim Cope for Mongolia and Kazakstan (the book also features Russia and Ukraine, countries I have already covered, as well as the Crimean peninsula)

 

and 

 

Hotel K by Kathryn Bonella for Indonesia

 

That brings the total to 8 countries for this year so far.  

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I finished another anthology yesterday - Because I am a Girl compiled and partly written by (amongst others) travel writer Tim Butcher. It comprised of stories about the lives of girls and women from 7 different countries - Togo, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Cambodia, Brazil, Uganda and Dominican Republic. I have already covered all bar one of these countries - Ghana, but it was interesting reading nonetheless. Proceeds from the book go to Plan, a charity aimed at improving the lives of women and girls in 66 different countries around the world. There were some very moving stories in there - the one that affected me the most was probably the one from Brazil.   

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I finished another one of those travel books at lunchtime today that covered most of the old Yugoslav Republics - Jason Smart's The Balkan Odyssey. Smart has written a whole series of these type books which are great for me as they are relatively short and are a great way of getting through all the different countries quickly. This one covered Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania. The next one of his I shall read will probably re the Russian one, which covers all the former Soviet Republics.   

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I finished my 18th country of the year at lunchtime today - a really different and fascinating book set in the small African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe - Sao Tome - A Novel by Paul D Cohn.

 

I thought from the name, it was a French speaking island and therefore a former French colony, but it seems that it was actually Portuguese (the name is Portuguese for St Thomas). The book is a fictionalised account of what could easily have been a true story, based on the islands past. It seems that in the late 15th Century the Portuguese, who were in the grip of the Inquisition (say no more), started to ship Jewish children to their African colony, separating them from their families under the guise of turning them into "good" Catholics. This was really though a ruse to use them as unpaid labour (slavery by any other name) to work the sugar plantations.

 

The character in this book, despite these circumstances, made the island his home and actually became quite prosperous in his own way. His downfall was his objection to black slavery and his support of the black Bishop who as an African himself was also against this practise. I will say no more, as it will only spoil it for those who may wish to read this remarkable book, which for me is easily the best I have read this year so far.

 

It was not the cheapest book I have read this year, at a little under £8, but I get a lot of my books free anyway, courtesy of doing online surveys, so I didn't have to pay for this one with my own money. It would have well worth it though if I had.

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Finished my 2nd Jason Smart book - Panama City to Rio de Janeiro about an hour ago (I read one of his other books on the Balkans earlier this month). They really are great little books for getting through a multitude of countries quickly, many of which are difficult to find books for. This one covered no less than 6 different countries Panama, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. I have already done Brazil, so that's 5 more countries done in less than 200 pages and about 3 hours reading, which isn't too bad.      

 

That brings the total to 126 out of 231 countries now done, which is even better.   :readingtwo:

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I finished my 3rd Jason Smart book at lunchtime today - he has written a series of short travel books based on his whistle stop tours to various parts of the world. This one - Temples, Tuk Luks and Fried Fish Lips featured his tour of the Far East. These are great very cheap books which are a brilliant way of getting through loads of countries very quickly - in this case, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, Indonesia and Brunei.   

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I'm not really interested in how long the challenge takes me, it was more about expanding my reading horizons, so I am trying to read a novel for each country - although I will possibly have to revise that for some of the more obscure nations I suspect :D

 

The São Tomé one sounds well worth a go, have added it to my wish list.

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To be honest, once I have completed the challenge I think I will still read and look for books from different countries, so I don't really see it ever ending. At the moment it is in a way just ticking boxes. That Sao Tome book was good though - probably the best I have read this year (so far). :smile:   

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Just finished my fourth Jason Smart book - this time The Red Quest. This one features his hair brained scheme to visit all 15 of the former Soviet Republics (I have done 8 of them already anyway) and another 7 of the former Eastern Block countries (I have done 5 of these already too). I will no doubt continue to look for other books from the more obscure places anyway - but the countries covered in this book are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan plus Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and (East) Germany.  

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