Sherry Chandler

Reading Around the World

Following Harry, whose experiences are intriguing, I’ve joined the “Around the World” group at goodreads. The group has the goal of reading one book from every country in the world. So far I’ve got:

• Chile — Gabriela Mistral’s Madwomen
• Ireland — Paul Muldoon’s Moy Sand and Gravel (I think I can count him; if not I’ll have to fall back on Yeats or Heaney)
• England — Reginald Hill’s A Cure for All Diseases (and more and more…)
• Scotland — Ian Rankin’s Set in Darkness
• Spain — Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind
• Zimbabwe — Doris Lessing’s Particularly Cats (Can I count her? and with such a minor book?)
• Germany — Erich Maria Remarque’s All’s Quiet on the Western Front
• Lithuania — Czeslaw Milosz’s The Witness of Poetry
• Libya — Can I count Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men???
• Russia — Mikhail Bulgalov’s The Master and Margarita
• France — Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal
• Greece — Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek

Hmmm, that’s ten eleven in my current goodreads list, all added since I joined Good Reads in April, 2007.

Considering that Harry says there are 192 member nations in the U.N, looks like I’ve got a way to go. My rate of reading comes out to about one every quarter, which means at that rate I”m not going to make it before I die.

I hope to revisit this subject.