books by continents (global reading challenge)

in September, after registering with Goodreads, i arrived at a profile question on the kind of books that i like - which made me inspect my bookshelves from that angle, lay out a collage (photo above) and blog about it: what kind of books do you like to read?

now i arrived at another way to categorize books, through a blog-based reading challenge that focuses not on genre or topic, but on the continent the book is coming from: 

The Global Reading Challenge
"The Global Reading Challenge challenges you to expand your reading boundaries, go where you haven't been before, move a little outside your comfort zone."
- The Easy Challenge: Read one novel from each continent in the course of 2012
- The Medium Challenge: Read two novels from each continent in the course of 2012
- The Expert Challenge: Read three novels from each continent in the course of 2012

The continents:
- Africa
- Asia
- Australasia/Oceania
- Europe
- North America
- South America (please include Central America where it is most convenient for you)
- The Seventh Continent (here you can either choose Antarctica or your own ´seventh´ setting, eg the sea, the space, a supernatural/paranormal world, history, the future – you name it).
From your own continent: try to find a country, state or author that is new to you.

Here's the link to the challenge: 2012 Global Reading Challenge

There's also been a global reading challenge 2011 and a global reading challenge 2010, both with lists of books for each continent.

Continents
The whole thing made me look for a world map by continents. it's a topic many books were written about, and you could probably create an own reading challenge about it. here's a summary: wiki/Continent. below, an image with the various ways to distinguish continents:

My own continental bookshelf 2011
Of course, i got curious for my own reading seen from this continental aspect. So i revisited the books i read in 2011 - all read during a time i didn't know about the challenge. Here's the continents i covered in 2011, with a focus on books that are about place. The links lead to the relating book posts in this blog, or in the blueprint book blog:

• Africa: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (about Nigeria)
• Asia: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki (a Japanese zen priest) 
• Asia: When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant (about Israel)
• Asia: Walking the Tiger's Path by Paul M. Kendel (about Iraq)
• Europe: A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton (Heathrow diary)
• Europe: Kleine Freuden by Hermann Hesse (with journey notes, revisited)
• Europe: Netzkarte by Sten Nadolny (German train trip)
• Europe: Schwaben, Schwafler, Ehrenmänner by Joe Bauer (about Stuttgart/Germany)
• Europe. Dossier by Imre Kertész (about Hungary)
• Europe: Deutschland, eine Reise by Wolfgang Büscher (along-the-border trip)
• Europe: Atemschaukel ("Everything") by Herta Müller (about Romania)
• North America: Spiral Jetta by Erin Hogan  (about the USA)
• North America: and see what happens by Ursula Vaira (3 Canadian journeys)
• North America: turn left at the trojan horse by Brad Herzog (US road trip)
• North America: A Foal Poem by Rose Hunter (Mexico)
• North America: The Peppermint Bottle by Sherry O'Keefe (USA/Montana)
• North America: Curving the Line/Curvando la linea by Carmen Lenero (Mexico)
• Central America: Alle träumten von Cuba by Miguel Barnet (about Cuba)
• South America: Patagonian Road by Kate (journal of a journey)
  
  also, there were mixed continent reads:
• global: Common Boundary / Stories of Immigration (revisited)
• global: you are here - the journal of creative geography
• global: walking journey by Hamish Fulton (international art walking, revisited)