Weekly Geeks World Tour

This week's Weekly Geeks asks you to tell us about your globe trotting via books. Are you a global reader? How many countries have you "visited" in your reading? What are your favorite places or cultures to read about? Can you recommend particularly good books about certain regions, countries or continents? How do you find out about books from other countries? What countries would you like to read that you haven't yet?

I do enjoy reading about places 'elsewhere'. Fiction provides an excellent opportunity to really get into somebody's mind and see the world from their point of view. One of my favourite Proustian quotes which encapsulates this idea for me says that "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

Some of the places I seem to read about most, besides my own North American surroundings, are England, France, Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine), Japan and China, and a smattering of various other countries here and there. I particularly enjoy reading about Ukraine, because of my family background, and since my trip to Kyiv I've only become more fascinated by Ukrainian culture. I also really enjoy reading Scandinavian fiction, for no real reason except that I somehow connect with it. Nevertheless, when I was looking at my reading habits for this post, I realized I haven't read as widely as I had thought; I am aware of many books in translation, which are on my TBR, but I haven't actually read as many as I anticipated. One of the areas that is lacking which was pointed out by this exercise was South America. Except for Garcia Marquez, I haven't made great inroads into the writing of South America, although there are so many authors to choose from!

One of the ways I find suggestions for great international fiction is through all of you: other bloggers' reading habits inspire my own, very often. There are also a few sites that result in growing lists of things I really want to buy! One is World Literature Today; they have limited content up at their website but it is fascinating stuff. Here are a few works in translation I've read recently and really enjoyed --

• The Book of Chameleons / José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola)
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog / Muriel Barbary (France)
• Miss Chopsticks / Xinran (China)
• The Post Office Girl / Stefan Zweig (Austria)
• Doctor Glas / Hjalmar Soderberg (Sweden) *I read this classic years ago but it remains one of my favourite books; I've reread it a couple of times and recommend it

Over at One Swede Read, there's a list of all the countries of the world with the relevant books she's read slotted in. (And she reviews a wide variety of world fiction). It's a handy way of keeping track, and seeing where your titles tend to pile up. And of course there's always a map -- Weekly Geeks has provided a link so we can all create our reading maps this week. I like what Christina over at Jackets & Covers has done with her map; she's created one map to show where she has physically travelled, then a second to show her bookish rambles. I haven't gone many places in real life, but my reading rambles are quite extravagant, so I'm stealing her idea! To see what other people are reading and what their suggestions for international fiction are, be sure to visit other Weekly Geeks -- I've already discovered both new bloggers and numerous new titles.


First, where I have actually gone...



create your own visited country map


Then, where my reading has taken me...



create your own reading map