I managed to achieve the Extreme level of this year’s global reading challenge which involved reading 21 books set in different parts of the world. I added a personal twist that all the books had to be by new-to-me authors. I really enjoyed the way this challenge expanded my reading.
So I have decided to tackle the 2011 version of the challenge, though I’m only aiming for the medium level this time around which requires the reading of a total of 14 books, 2 each from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America (incl Central America), South America and ‘The Seventh Continent’ (the past, the future, space or the much dreaded Antarctica). The reason for this reduced ambition is that my personal reading challenges for next year are to get my various TBR piles (physical books, audio books and eBooks) to a more manageable level and also to read second books by many of the 165 new-to-me authors I have tried since the start of 2009.
The bright side of having a ridiculously large TBR pile (it’s hovering around 200 if you include pre-ordered titles that will trickle in over the next 12 months) is that it should allow me to participate in several challenges without troubling any retail establishment. Some of the titles I will set aside for next year’s global challenge include
- Leighton Gage’s Blood of the Wicked set in Brazil
- Ernesto Mallo’s Needle in a Haystack set in Argentina
- Xavier-Marie Bonnot’s The First Fingerprint set in France
- Michael Stanley’s The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu set in Botswana
- Zygmunt Miloszewski’s Entanglement set in Poland
- Qiu Xiaolong’s A Case of Two Cities set in China
- Timothy Hallinan’s A Nail Through the Heart set in Thailand
What about you?
Are you going to join the 2011 Global Reading Challenge?
Does your TBR pile offer a good start to one of the three levels to try for?
You can read whatever kind of fiction you want and this year you don’t have to read anything set in Antarctica unless you really want to so I recommend the challenge as a great way to extend your reading out of whatever comfort zone you find yourself in.
