world reading challenge

7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books



The idea of this reading challenge is to explore the world by books from different continents and countries. To join the challenge, select and read seven books, one book from each continent:
- Africa
- Asia
- Australia/Ozeania
- Europe
- North America
- South America 
- Antarctica (or a book with a journey from one continent to another)


Why 7 Books? 
To keep it simple and playful, and leave space for extra reads that might be inspired by the challenge. Also, with 7 continents, and the world population reaching 7 billions, the 7 seems a good number for this kind of challenge.


Challenge Guidelines: 
  • This challenge will run from Jan 1, 2016 – Dec 31, 2016
  • Books can be any format (novel, non-fiction, poetry or story collection, anthology, as well as any phyisal format: print, ebook, audio)
  • You are welcome to count these books towards any other challenges as well
  • You can start wherever you want. 
  • When picking a country / continent, the idea is to also pick an author from that place. If that turns out to be difficult, try to find an expat author who lived in the country/continent for a while.

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How to find books by country
How to find books set in particular countries? And preferably books that are written by an author who is coming from the country, or who has lived in it for a while? Here are also some lists that focus on the country: 
Searching for a place in an e-reader
If you have an e-reader, it might be interesting to run a search there: e-book readers can look for a word in all e-books they have in their files, and create a neat sorted list with bookmarks.


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To join the reading challenge 

To join the challenge, just leave a comment with the link to your blog.
There also is a 7 continents / 7 books facebook group, to post review links, or just the cover or title of a book you enjoyed, or other related news and links - it's open to everyone who is interested in global reads. 

Looking forward to this different kind of journey around the world!

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Blog links
To make following and visiting easier, I will add clickable links for the blogs of the bloggers who join:



12 comments:

Dorothee said...

Of course, I'm joining! And have found a book from Antarctica to start. Looking forward to the world reading!

Sue said...

I'm joining. My sign-up post: http://www.careyfamily.org/2016-reading-challenge-post-4/

Heather said...

Count me in . . . my blog post is available at https://booksarelifevitalibri.wordpress.com/2016/01/01/2016-book-challenge-time-world-reading-challenge/

Dorothee said...

Hi Sue, hi Heather! Great to see you join the challenge. to make following and visiting easier, I just created clickable links to your blogs and included them in the post. Cheers!

Vicki said...

I'm in! Here's my link:
http://irbratb.com/2016/01/02/world-reading-2016/

Dorothee said...

Hi Vicki! I just added your link, too, and then browsed your blog + enjoyed the variety. pretty cool. looking forward to your picks.

Anonymous said...

Dorothee, I would love to join as soon as I write a post. You might like my quartet of challenges too! :)

I see that you raise the difficulty, which is reasonable since these are 7 books, by requesting authors from each continent. Other than Antarctica: I can do that! If I understand correctly: a book in which someone travels from one continent to another can replace Antarctica? We'll see what the year brings. Here is to your health, Dorothee and that of everyone else we love. Gruss Gott, Carolyn in central Canada https://cmriedel.wordpress.com/riedel-challenges-2016/

Dorothee said...

Hi Carolyn! Thanks for joining, and really interesting to read about your other challenges - I just added your link to the blog post, too.

About Antarctica: yes, if you have trouble finding a book from / about Antarctica, you can replace it with one that is about travels from any continent to another. Looking forward to your first book post!

Anonymous said...

Guten morgen, Dorothee! I have written a page for you. I was nearly reluctant to bring it, because you are advertising my reading groups so well! However you too, merit promotion for this wonderful community. Together, we will draw participants and visitors to both of our circles. I hope you like my enthusiastic write-up about you. :) Carolyn in snowy Manitoba. https://cmriedel.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/7-continents-africa/

Anonymous said...

Hi Dorothee! I have updated reading group themes, other than my own, for the first time today. Here is yours! I hope this is the right place. I will go right until the end of the year because I don't merely finish the minimum. Most of my continents give three selections of each! Since the scarce South African literature I have read has been depressing so far, it takes a push for me to read more than one oeuvre per year but perhaps I will. I need more Australian too but own plenty of it - all paper books. Yours sincerely, Carolyn Of RIEDEL Fascination. https://cmriedel.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/7-continents-africa/

Anonymous said...


I meant I seldom read South American literature but I have a lot of it to slowly go through. By the way, the "Blogger" captcha puts me through a lot of paces to get a comment accepted! I wish I could simply leave a comment without exerting extra technical effort. I had to verify three or four times, so the last thing I needed was to do this again and clarify a typo! I have slow internet. Look forward to your comments at my blog. That means a great deal and hosts don't always do it (my comment form is easy).

Sue said...

I finished up the challenge! Here's my wrap-up post. Thanks for hosting, it was a fun challenge. http://www.careyfamily.org/2016-world-reading-challenge-wrap-up/