The Olympic Challenge

There is a challenge - an Olympic Challenge - and it's an event in which you can take part without even leaving your armchair. No, you didn't misread that - this is no sporting event; no exercise for the body, but certainly a workout for the mind!

The Olympic Challenge originated at Book Crossing UK and is about trying new things, reading books by authors from all around the world, so that each country represented in the Olympic Games is represented on your reading list - we're aiming for the start of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

Sounds like a challenge you can get your teeth into, doesn't it? Well, never being ones to turn down a chance to read more books, some members of The Book Club Forum have already begun!

We'd like to invite all you bookworms and bibliophiles out there to join us in this quest to broaden our minds. Even if we don't make it by the deadline - don't think of it as that, but more as something for which we can aim - even if we can't find an author for each and every country, it's got to be fun trying!

Don't forget to come along to the forums and let us all know how you're getting on - we have an entire section dedicated to the Olympic Challenge complete with a list of the participating countries and some suggested authors to try - and we'd love to hear which author's you're discovering when you join us.

So, grab a book, sit back and put your feet up, and let yourself be spirited away by a foreign author - poetry, novellas, short stories and e-fiction count too, so there's no need to worry about reading lots of hefty tomes!

by Kell