#read around the world challenge
Text
Caribe's Top Reads
An Ordinary Wonder by Buki Papillon
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Adult Fiction
Setting: Nigeria
Description: An Ordinary Wonder is a powerful coming of age story of an intersex twin, Oto, who is forced to live as a boy and adhere to prohibitive Yoruba traditions despite his desire to live as a girl. His wealthy and powerful family are ashamed of him and we see Oto become more estranged from his twin sister and experience heart-breaking brutality at the hands of his mother…Read more on Goodreads/Storygraph
Content Warning information can be found via the above Storygraph link.
#an ordinary wonder#buki papillon#contemporary fiction#adult fiction#books set in nigeria#read around the world challenge#read around the world#diverse books#diverse reads#favourite reads#lgbtqia#queer
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
I'm hosting a Storygraph challenge this year about Poetry in Translation. Join me in reading at least 5 poetry collections in translation in 2024.
You can browse this blog for inspiration or check out the literature folder I linked on @salvadorbonaparte for poetry collections.
#poetry#poems from around the world#storygraph#Storygraph challenge#reading challenge#Booklr#Bookblr
27 notes
·
View notes
Text
Reading Around the World: Introduction
An exciting New Year for everyone!
Like for many other people, the New Year always inspires me to try out new things and challenge myself, and this year I've decided to do this by starting the Reading Around the World challenge - a reading challenge where you read books from all around the globe, attempting to read at least one book from every country.
I'm sure the idea has existed in some shape or form for a long time, but, as far as I know, the challenge really kicked off on the internet when, in 2012, Ann Morgan started a blog to document her year-long journey through a book from every country in the world. Since then, many other people have also taken part, and now there is even a website for the challenge.
I've wanted to try something similar ever since I first heard about the challenge a couple of years ago - I love reading, I've studied comparative literature, and from the year 2019 I've been conducting my own "reading through the ages" challenge, where I've read literature from the Antiquity all the way through to the present era. However, during that challenge, I noticed that my reading was very Anglo- and Eurocentric. I wanted to read more from all around the world, so I started looking for interesting books from around the globe and compiling a list of them. Now, I feel that the time is finally ripe, and so I've decided that 2024 is the year I will embark on my literary voyage!
If you want to follow my journey, I will document it here on tumblr, and I might also occasionally post about it on my language-learning instagram.
If you want to know more about how I will personally be doing the challenge, you can read more under the cut:
My "rules" for the challenge:
I have no time limit for the challenge. The challenge can take one year or ten years, or the rest of my life - I have no specific goal.
I will read as many books from each country as I feel like.
I pick books to "represent" a country on a case-by-case basis; I don't have absolute criteria for how I choose the books. That said, my main goal is to read books written by people from and living in different countries and places in the world, and I want to challenge myself to read literature in translation and in other languages besides English and Finnish. However, I will also consider books by authors who have a personal connection to the country/place of which they are writing about (e.g. diaspora and descendant authors or authors who have lived in/visited the country especially for lengthy periods).
My rating system:
5/5: Amazing. I loved it, it's a new favourite.
4/5: Very good. I really liked it.
3/5: Alright. I liked it.
2/5: Nah. It was okay, but not really my thing.
1/5: Ö-mappi*. I did not like it.
* Finnish, "a figurative binder into which any unwanted proposals are archived in order to be forgotten", literally "the binder Ö"
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
I think I'm gonna give up on Tender is the Flesh. It feels like too obvious a metaphor (factory farming but with people should make you realize it's barbaric to eat animals!!!!) and I hate everything about the world. I don't want to be reminded of the depths of human cruelty when I'm already seeing that everyday on social media.
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
i finished my call down the hawk reread!! now im off to read mister impossible for the first time 🙈
#lil rundown on my reading history specifically with this series that absolutely no one cares about but#i read the first 3 books of trc in Jan 2015 waited for trk in 2016 and read it right when it came out#around 2017/18 i kinda just stopped reading all together i was focused on school#when cdth came out in 2019 I hadn’t read any books for quite some time but i read this and i really enjoyed it#more than i thought I would at the time#flash forward to 2023 I hadn’t read a book since cdth in 2019 😭 god it’s bad I know#so I made it a challenge for myself in 2023 alli you will read ONE book ONE you can do it#well december rolls around I have yet to read a book LIKE GIRL#so I was like you are not gonna fail this badly that’s so embarrassing so i decided to read the foxhole court#enjoyed it so much#it reminded me of how bad i loved trc and how much i missed it#so now i have reread the entire trc series and as you can see just finished rereading cdth#now im going into the unknown WEEEE#i will get back to aftg series after i finished the dreamer trilogy i swear!!#i just can’t leave this world for another again until I’ve seen it through to the end finally#ANYWAY MY GOD#alli.txt
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Now that I finished flying through all six books in Michael McDowell's Blackwater Saga, I'm going to spend the next couple of months really prioritising that challenge I asked for recs for ages ago - the one that's supposed to be 12 months to read 12 books recommended by 12 friends, except u guys really delivered so I have 18 books 💀
True to form I cannot remember for the life of me who recommended what in 99% of cases, but I'll keep u guys updated on which one I'm on!
#i'm also doing 2 other reading challenges this year but i have barely touched them so far in 2024#one is reading around the world (a book from every country)#and another is just one of those '100 greatest books of all time'#which is mostly classics
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
thinking about leon again tonight
#cosmo rambles#i need to get back to playing around with the Hazel and Leon get Eeby Deebied to Hisui thing#because i think still the dynamic of leon being very athletic and strategic while hazel is more on the artsy side and is like#more ideal in a support role is really fun#leon willing to go out there and wrestle a garchomp while gushing about how fantastic it is at physical attacking#while hazel sits by and sketches it for the pokedex and makes little notes about what they found in the environment#leon building himself a new team around types he's never tried before and picking the weaker starter to hazel's to give himself a challenge#hazel somehow letting leon goad her into actually taking a rival role against her despite never really having rivals before#unless you count blue making her so so so so mad but that's unrelated. she'll fight him without a pokemon#leon's understanding of battle mechanics and what each pokemon needs to thrive and what it's capable of beyond just its typing delights me#while hazel tends to be like me- less strategic and more about getting those type advantages in LOL#also having two trainers taking on nobles and filling the dex with their own roles to make things smoother is fun#but also because im imagining leon and hazel sitting together as hazel draws and talking as they peacefully watch pokemon from afar#or running for their lives together or riding on wyrdeer's back together#on top of that just. the two of them going to paldea together for a temporary teaching gig and getting swept into things#keeping an eye worriedly on students and Oh God No What Do You Mean the World is Ending. Again#theyll go on a vacation to kalos after this. and because XY has already happened theres no stress there#they just get to get into some mega evolution training. the most stress is red blue and green show up like hiiii#red and leon get into the most heated rivalry imaginable and hazel is being pulled away from her pokepuffs#god this is getting so long. im just thinking so hard im sorry IF YOU READ THIS FAR THANK YOU IM SORRY
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
good morning everyone, have a great weekend <3
#i’m going to catch up on fics later after my errands#and try to swoop around inboxes#and then proceed to resume my genshin hole#my main goals for genshin are ascending my world and unlocking a character in spiral abyss#also this one world quest is annoying bc of this challenge#but i’m gonna do my best to get past it#thank u 2 those for the feedback on my little kuroo fic#made me feel better ❤️🩹#if you read all this thank you#i humbly offer your favorite type of cookie
6 notes
·
View notes
Note
Im enjoying these dynamic asks :) how about grizel and Ro dynamic? I think they would be an awesome duo if they had more page time. On page 369 of legacy, we see one of the only interactions between them, which is them making jokes about the elves. They seem to get along pretty well, which I think is super interesting since the two species don’t typically get along
Challenge. That's the word that comes to mind for the two of them. They both have a sort of defiance and existence that challenges the world around them, that pushes themselves and the people they're surrounded by; they rise to the occasion and don't take no for an answer, and i think all that would multiply between the two of them.
Grizel with her games, Ro with her pranks. I think it would become a competition between the two of them, but not necessarily a malicious one. But more of a determined, friendly one, as they're basically the same character in different species. They'd feed off of each other, both occupying that role of warrior from a different species stuck in this kinda annoying world (though Grizel's nicer about it) protecting these kids and wrapped up in everything. We can see how that provides a starting point of familiarity between them on page 369. Even though their species don't have a great history!
They are, I think, the best candidates of the characters we know who could start to bridge that gap; both very high ranking, trusted soldiers for their species, and each with the adaptability to learn and form unlikely alliances. Being put in a situation where they're required to maintain decorum could allow them to see that they're not very different at the core of it all.
I agree! I think they'd be an awesome duo defined by their playful natures, confidence, and how they carry themselves. They'd be equal in their dynamic, and it would be very entertaining to see more between them on page. Hopefully we can snag a few more moments of them :)
#kotlc#kotlc character analysis#kotlc ro#kotlc grizel#quil's queries#imsoeebydeeby#also I'm glad you're enjoying them!#i like it when people like the things I do#but yeah I read this and went hmm what /would/ their dynamic be and the word 'challenge' popped into my head and I couldn't get rid of it#it just fit so well to me#they challenge the world and people around them#they'd challenge each other#they'd also /literally/ partake in challenges like games and such and give it their all#so had to put that first because it was so stuck in my head
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
re: the thing i just reblogged: i think i know who the narrator is :)
#it was the 'to the absolute' for me#and the realization that a 'human' made as part of a dark world would still count as a darkner#good to know they're still around :)#i mean. darkner existence is suffering. but still.#weekly reminder to go follow tvlandofficial (and to read dessofficial)#side note: anons remember that none of the regular darkners can hear dess's name challenge
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Caribe's Read Around The World TBR - Part 3
Books set in Asian countries <3
#read around the world challenge#read around the world#book tumblr#booklr#bookblr#books#tbr jar#tbr list#if you could see the sun#ann liang#skull water#heinz insu fenkl#crazy rich asians#kevin kwan#the housekeeper and the professor#yoko ogawa#in the shadow of the banyan#vaddey ratner#the coroners lunch#colin cotteril#books set in asia#asian books#reading challenge#diverse reads#diverse books
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
Books about 🇦🇩 Andorra
YA World Challenge master book list for: 🇦🇩 Andorra
YA / Middle Grade
The White Puppy from Andorra, Luisa Guzmán
Coming-of-Age
Crewe Train, Rose Macaulay 🏖️⌛
Children
The Land of Right Up and Down, Eva-Lis Wuorio ⌛
Adult books to consider
Death Has a Thousand Doors, Patricia W. Grey
The Road to Andorra by Shirley Deane 🏖️
Albert Salvadó 💚
💚 Native Author
🛩️ Immigrant or diaspora
🏖️ non-native characters in or about the country (ex. vacation/adventure)
⌛ Historical
🦋 Fantasy
🌈 LGBT
#book list#andorra#ya world challenge#world tour#world reading#europe#reading challenge#around the world
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Reading Around the World: Italy
Viola Ardone: Oliva Denaro (2021; The Unbreakable Heart of Oliva Denaro)
Original language: Italian
Translation read: Finnish translation Nimeni on Oliva Denaro (2023) by Laura Lahdensuu
Genre: Historical fiction
Summary: In a Sicilian small-town in the 1960s, a 16-year-old Oliva refuses the advances of a man, who consequently kidnaps and rapes her in order to force her to marry him out of shame (i.e. trying to bully her into a "rehabilitating marriage"). The novel is loosely based on the kidnapping and rape or Franca Viola.
Review: 4/5. Small towns and women-centric storylines with feminist themes? Say no more, I'm in! This was a powerful novel about girlhood and growing up as a woman, and of standing up against unjust traditions. The aftermath of the real-life Franca Viola's trial ruled that rapists were no longer able to avoid punishment through marriage to their victims, eventually leading to the law about "rehabilitating marriage" finally being repealed in 1981.
Stefano Benni: Baol: Una tranquilla notte di regime (1990; "Baol: A Quiet Night Under the Regime")
Original language: Italian
Translation read: Finnish translation Baol: eräänä rauhallisena yönä valtakunnassa (1998) by Laura Lahdensuu
Genre: Satirical dystopia
Summary: In 1991, the citizens of City T. live under a totalitarian regime in a society that is ruled by cruel hierarchs who monitor their subjects and where reality is being shaped by government officials in secret underground studios. In this brutal world, the last baol wizard is trying to understand a secret about his life, and in the process gets drawn into a plot to save the reputation of a past-his-prime comedian.
Review: 3/5. Funny, exciting, weird. A fabulous satire of the modern world that also slightly scares me with its focus on control through distorted media presentations of reality. This would make an absolutely thrilling movie! Minus points for some casual sexism.
Umberto Eco: Il fascismo eterno (1995; Ur-Fascism)
Original language: Italian
Translation read: English translation Ur-Fascism (1995)
Genre: Essay
Summary: A short and intelligent essay on the fascist movement and ideology, written by a man who grew up in Italy under Mussolini's fascist rule. The essay gives a definition of fascism and lists its fourteen typical features.
Review: 3/5. A very important and necessary read now as neo-fascist movements and parties are on the rise again. Unfortunately, there's a lot I recognise from modern politics.
Lorenza Mazzetti: Il cielo cade (1961; The Sky Is Falling)
Original language: Italian
Translation read: Finnish translation Taivas sortuu (1965) by Pirkko Wass-Colussi
Genre: Autobiographical psychological fiction
Summary: 10-year-old Penny has been orphaned together with her little sister Baby. They now live with their rich, Jewish uncle and his family in a large manor in the Italian countryside. It is 1943, and there is a war raging somewhere in the distance, but the children play and go to school in the village, learning to sing fascist songs and write essays about Il Duce. Then, the war creeps closer and eventually brings along chaos, blood, and destruction.
Review: 3/5. I saw a reviewer describe this novel as "perversely naive", and I couldn't put it any better. The novel cleverly describes the world of children and the world as experienced by children, particularly war as seen through the eyes of a child. Penny idolises Mussolini and is proudly a little fascist, having very little understanding of what is actually going on in the world of adults, until it all tragically blows up in her face. The events portrayed in the novel parallel those that happened to the author's real-life uncle, the cousin of Albert Einstein. This novel seems to have some sequels, so I'm planning to pick those up in the future.
Goliarda Sapienza: L'arte della gioia (1976/1994/1998; The Art of Joy)
Original language: Italian
Translation read: Finnish translation Elämän ilo (2014) by Laura Lahdensuu
Genre: Historical fiction
Summary: Written between 1967-1976, this novel was published in full only in 1998, after the author's death, because the novel was initially rejected due to its length and its portrayal of a woman unrestrained by conventional morality and traditional feminine roles. The novel follows a woman, Modesta, who is born on 1 January 1900, through her life in twentieth century Sicily as she pursues cultural, financial and sexual independence.
Review: 3/5. This door-stopper of a novel was a gripping, thought-provoking, sightly disturbing reading experience. With around 700 pages, this novel of growth and development packs in free-love and queerness, social climbing, strong-willed women, murder, and (sort-of) incestual relationships. At the centre is a woman's pursuit of independence. I was left wanting a bit more of the political and historical stuff regarding Mussolini, fascism, socialism, and the world wars, since the novel was quite indrawn. As a sidenote: I heard that there's an Italian TV adaptation coming out this year, which I'm very much looking forward to!
#reading around the world#read around the world#italian literature#litblr#bookblr#reading challenge#world literature#book reviews
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
BEST BOOK: Hard month… did I enjoy any of these books? Did I take anything from these books? A few what not to do but… Yeah I don’t think I liked any of them, a bunch of meh. Is this me? Is this what untreated depression does? If I had to pick one… “Hunt for the Shadow Wolf” but yeah, it was also so of meh.
WORST BOOK: Maybe “The Murder of Mr. Ma” because I wanted it to be good, but I wanted “The Poisons we Drink” too be good too, and “Scorched Grace”, and “The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder”. But I think “The Murder of Mr. Ma” failed me the most.
THOUGHTS: How do I find better books? Looking through the books I’ve read so far this year and books that was more than just a meh, might be 4 books out of 32 so roughly 10%. That’s not great. Out of those 4 books, 3 were non fiction. I can tick off India on my Read Around the World challenge.
So maybe I should read more non fiction? I like to listen to non fiction when I work.
Not sure April will be that much better, I already have a few books in the pip line… some Netgalley reads, fingers crossed. Maybe books will get better as spring and the sun shows up?
0 notes
Text
I figured I should do a small update with my reading journey this year. I have read a number of other books between the ones for my challenge. I like to change it up some when I can to help with continued surprised reading. Once stuck in a genre, it seems to get old with clichés and such, (at least for me).
Updating you all on my wonderful reading challenge journey:
A dystopian
Involves a STEM topic
Philosophy book - The Cat Who Taught Zen by James Norbury
One From TBR - Sherlock Holmes and the Red Tower by Mark A. Latham
Themed Holiday
Read Before - A Shameful Life (No Longer Human) by Osamu Dazai
African-American Author
From the Library - Kill Joy by Holly Jackson
A New Favorite Author - As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson
A Novella
Romance
Dark Acadamia
Made Into a Show or Movie
That’s Won a Prize
About Nature
For the main challenge that is, hope to have those reviews up soon!
As for my World Reading challenge, that one hasn't came quite as far:
Latin America
Australia
Scotland
Japan
Egypt - Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
Iraq
Russia
Malaysia
Brazil
Iceland
Morocco
Zimbabwe
It doesn't seem like all that much for these first 3 months, maybe to others it's a lot so far, but I have read some graphic novels between all of these that I don't typically do reviews on as I read the latest, wait for the next volume, re-read the whole series, etc. The cycle never stops on those, but, maybe, once those series finish, I'll do one big review on it for the overarching plot and to help with spoilers.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Book 1
Title: Song of Solomon
Author: Toni Morison
Country: United States
Whenever I think of Toni Morrison, I always think of my senior year English class where I read The Bluest Eye for the first time. That book opened my eyes and shattered my heart to what I, a white woman in America, had never seen through another’s eyes. The fact that systemic racism pervades and poisons so much of US culture was something I understood conceptually, but reading through the eyes of a young black girl desperately wishing to earn the love her mother so easily bestows on the little white girl she works for is nothing short of soul rending.
I think it’s vital to read from the perspectives of other walks of life from your own. This belief was only strengthened when, during the course of that aforementioned class, one of my classmates, a white boy from a middle class family, complained that this book was entirely “unrelatable” to him, and he felt he shouldn’t have to read it. I will never forget the look on the face of my teacher, a black woman, as she tried to explain the concept of empathy to him. She may as well have been talking to a brick wall.
Thinking back on that story, I thought that another Toni Morrison book would be the perfect way to kick off this challenge, as her work now represents to me that spirit of empathy that inspired the challenge in the first place.
Song of Solomon is a tragic story about a man desperately trying to trace down his roots and where he came from through oral histories of families and communities. For much of Black America, these oral histories are the only documentation they will ever have. Unfortunately, as Milkman (our protagonist) discovers, some histories are too painful to be shared by the primary source, your own family. You have to find these things out from others in the community. And what information you do receive can be entirely contradictory, or show malicious bias.
Like all of Toni Morrison’s work, the goal isn’t to have a happy ending and walk away feeling good. The goal, in my view, is to take a good hard look at the truths around you and face them head on. To find understanding for deeply flawed human beings and to learn what made them that way.
If you can’t tell, I love Toni Morrison. This was a great book to kick off my challenge and I’m so excited to share the next one!
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
julsanddarrel
This is me!
didemozberkartprints
Didem Ozberk Art&Prints
justdazzleim5
JustDazzleIM5
vintagerolexmania
vintagerolexmania
emotionalsupportsoccerball
emotionalsupportsoccerball