global reading Europe: a random scandal book + a bestselling runaway novella (or: the joys of a telephone book box)

7 continents, 7 books, the next step: from the South Pole to ... Sweden and Germany

I started the 7 continents reading challenge well-planned in Antarctica, browsing books-from-Antarctica-lists and reading reviews. The book I picked was "Ice Bound" by Jerri Nielsen, I blogged about it here: global reading: Ice Bound (or: penguins, Antarctica, Endurance + how to count life)

For the next step, I tried a rather different, random approach: I went to our local telephone book box, and let myself be suprised by the books that were currently lined up there. I also brought some own reads in indirect exchange - and came home with thtree books.

The first is "Runaway Horse" by Martin Walser, who is a well-known author in Germany. But the real surprise was Carl Jonas Love Almqvist. I didn't know this author, and basically went with the cover, the note that it is a book about a journey, and the country of origin: Sweden. I haven't read a book from there so far, and with the Walser novella, this also neatly decided the next continent for the reading challenge: Europe.

So: the Almqvist book. Turns out, the book was originally published in 1839 in Sweden, and caused a scandal. The German edition I came across is a new edition, published in 2004. I guess Almqvist would have been thrilled to learn about the difference he made, and the still existing interest in his work - unfortunately, writing the book caused a downward spiral for himself, he lost his job,, even had to leave the country, and struggled ín exile. Here's more about him, and the book, from Wikipedia:

Carl Jonas Love Ludvig Almqvist (28 November 1793, Stockholm, Sweden – 26 September 1866, Bremen, Germany), was a romantic poet, early feminist, realist, composer, social critic, and traveller. "Sara Videbeck and the Chapel" is the English translation of Almqvist's most famous work, whose Swedish title is "Det går an" (lit. "It will do"). The novel is primarily an attack on lifelong marriage as an institution and the inability of women to become financially independent. The book's social tendency aroused lively debate and "det-går-an literature" became a concept. The controversy over the work, however, forced Almqvist out of his post as rector at the New Elementary School, Stockholm.

The book itself is a novella, and surprisingly vivid to read. It also is a reminder how much society and cultural norms changed in Europe in the last 150 years - and how books had an important role in that process. Almqvist himself was inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe.

But back to the back: as I browsed the links for it, I saw that it is actually available online in a place that is the very counterpart of the telephone book box: the internet library archive. Which host hundred thousands of files. Here is the link to it in the archive: Sara Videbeck and The chapel.

Now I just broswed the archive a bit, and was both amazed by its size, and overwhelmed by it. That's what's so nice about the phone box: it is simple, with maybe 200 books on its shelves. It's a good place to find books you never heard about, and read outside one's usual comfort zone, without being overwhelmed by choice. Here's a photo:


 

I discovered the book phone box 2 years ago, and wrote a longer note on it which also includes a book encounter of the sweet kind: "but there are no princess books"

Reading Almqvist also reminded me of the "Readwomen"-initiative, and my own resolution to read more books written by female authors. So that's another good global-reading match: the Antarctica book is written by a woman, and is a memoir. The European books so are written by male authors - the second book is Martin Walser's "Runaway Horse". Here's more about Walser and the book, from Wiki:

Martin Walser (born 24 March 1927) is a German writer. He became famous for describing the conflicts his anti-heroes have in his novels and stories. In 1998 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt. His most important work is "Ein fliehendes Pferd" (English: A Runaway Horse), published 1978, which was both a commercial and critical success.

The book has an own story to it: Malser wrote it during a summer-holiday stay in Sylt, as a playful small work as he paused with the longer book he worked on. And it probably is both this playful touch and the parallel to his own character and stay there that added to its success: reading it, you wonder how much is fiction and how much is observing himself and the people he meets. Altogether, the book is about pretending - both between the partners in a marriage, and between "old friends" who happen to meet again. How much of the stories we share are truth, and how much is make-believe? It's a thought-provoking read, but for me, at some point the ongoing and growing pretention started to feel tiring, as it's only in the end that the truth is revealed - I guess personally I would have been interested to read more about how the characters deal with the end-of-pretend, both on their own and in the relation to the others. But then, it's a novella from start and concept, and leaving you with the open end and question is a skilfull turn, too.

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The third book I picked brought a nice surprise, too: it's written by a German female author. And is set in Spain - which is where I am right now. I already started to read it, and will do a second half of the "Europe" reads in a seperate post..... which is now online here: island reads: The Humans, Life Lessons, Zerotime, The Hive 

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Reading Links 
Here are some additional links:

• The reading challenge - it's open to join: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books
• The readwomen-initiative, which started in 2014: #readwomen2014 - can a hashtah change reading habits?
• World books I read so far, listed by country: Book list by country
• The previous global reading book blog post: New places and where to start + global reading: Ice Bound (or: penguins, Antarctica, Endurance + how to count life)

reading while driving: Laos, Vietnam, Australia, Pacific Crest Trail, Armenia, Morocco....

Reading this week: reads to drive along to. Since this week, I have to drive about 1 to 1,5 hours on a route that often comes with traffic jams, and the destination isn't that great either: to the hospital and back, each day of the week, for 7 weeks. To make that drive less frustrating, I now revived my old e-book reader. Which comes with a really nice feature: it has an audio setting. So it can read stories and books to me while I drive. Works pretty well, and makes the drive easier. To add some spin to that, the idea is to read stories and books from different countries.

Here are the books and stories I read this week, and the places they took me to:

LAOS, VIETNAM, AUSTRALIA...

"Scared to Life: A Memoir Paperback" by Jillian Webster
This is a beautiful and reflective memoir of a long world trip, a trip that leads from Europe to Asia, and to Australia. What I enjoy is the mix of places, some I know and been to myself: Ireland, France, Switzerland, Italy...and also the South-Asian loop: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand. Reading those chapters brings back my own memories of travelling in South Asia, while the chapter about Australia takes me to a continent I've never been to myself.
Beyond the places, the book includes the time before and after the journey, which gives the book a larger horizon. Here's the summary: "After years of heartache, she walks away from the Jehovah's Witnesses, losing her family forever. Forging ahead with nothing but her backpack, Jillian sets out on a global journey across Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia in search of the life she risked all for."
Jillian Webster also has a website about her travels and the book: scaredtolife.net

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PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

"Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart" 
Another book I came across while browsing and searching for good "driving" reads is about a long-distance hike. Carrot Quinn is a long distance hiker, and like Cheryl Strayed with her memoir “Wild”, she wrote a book about her trail experience – and now is blogging from another trail. I started to read her current blog entries, and now bought the memoir "Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart", which starts near the border of Mexico and leads to Canada.

So far, I never hiked long-distance, but I once did long bike rides, including a marathon. And I have fond memories of going for short hikes in the French Alps, stunned by the way the scenery keeps changing every couple of minutes. Above is a photo from one of those hikes.

Just reading about being out there and reaching out to the horizon brings a freshness to the day. Plus, I hadn't thought about it when ordering, but some unexpected parallels between those long hikes, and long times of treatment come to mind: that you need to keep going, and get up each morning. That it's not comfortable, but that you do it anyway. That no one can take that walk for you, but that there is a solidarity growing between you and all other who are on that walk. And that there is, somewhere in the distance, the point that waits to be reached.

If you want to read a bit of the hike, Carrot Quinn's website is "Dispatches from the wild". She also  blogs there from her current hike.

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Next to the books, I read some short stories - and just looking for interenational  short stories was interesting.

ARMENIA
When looking for a story from Armenia, I arrived at a new online magazine: The Amenite, which is "an online media outlet of Armenian news, culture, politics, society, and history, with showcases of art and literature,"

Here are two links from it, the first is an essay on language and storytelling, and the second is a short story that reaches from Syria to Armenia and the US:

• Learning Armenian: The Art of Telling an Armenian Story by Kharmun Khoo
• “Saved From What?" by Elizabeth Mkhitarian

MOROCCO
The same happened when I looked for stories from Morocco: I arrived at an online magazine of Moroccan writing. “al-hakawati Arab Cultural Trust is an independent non-profit educational organization. Management and staff are located in Beirut, Lebanon, and New Jersey, USA. al-hakawati is the Arabic word for “the storyteller”. They feature an online anthology of Moroccan stories called "The Moroccan Dream". The first dream is a dream about writing and stortelling: The Interpretation of Dreams

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Global Reading Challenge 2015 + Currently Reading:

For 2015, I try to read books / authors from different countries, the idea is to visit all continents. Here's more about that plan: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books.

In a previous book post, I put together some reading statistics and book memories of 2014 - so if you are into geeky reading statistics, try this link: A year in reading in geek statistics +  book memories

For more reading notes, click here: life as a journey with books. A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

reading: stories from Japan + Basho poetry + the April Poetry issue (free) + Allen Ginsberg longread

Reading this week: Granta's "Japan" collection, and books + stories it leads to.

"Everyone knows this country and no one knows it. Here are twenty new Japans by its writers and artists, and by residents and visitors and neighbours. A special issue of Granta, published simultaneously in Japanese and English." - That's the introduction note of the issue, and like the other Granta collections I read, it offers a fascinating range of stories + essays + photos.

The issue is edited by Japanese author and editor Yuka Igarashi, For a peek into it, try: Granta 127: Japan, with 5 online stories. Or read the review in the JapanTimes: ‘Granta’ opens a window into Japanese literature

For me, the issue also brought some good cross-connection: it includes an essay by Ruth Ozeki, whose book “A tale for the time being” I read last year. It's one of my fav reads of that year, and itself conntected to previous reads, here are the reading notes: global reading: A Tale for the Time Being (or: Ozeki, Proust, Past, Present)

In the Granta issue, Ozeki has an essay that also is about connections. It's called: "Linked" and ends with a haiku dialogue between the past and the now:

Which fits perfeclty to the haiku-theme i blogged about last week, with the Folded Word haiku challenge: rain haiku effect

Following the theme, I visited lines from Matsuo Basho, the classic poet of haiku, and his lines:

“Every day is a journey, 
 and the journey itself
is home.” 
 ― Matsuo Bashō

More of his lines, here at goodreads: Matsuo_Basho

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Basho + April Poetry issue + Ginsberg longread

...and when I looked for his work in Poetry magazine, I arrived at Basho's biography ("The 17th-century Japanese haiku master Basho was born Matsuo Kinsaku near Kyoto...")... and then saw in the sidebar that they April issue of Poetry is up for free download, in celebration of National Poetry Month:

"National Poetry Month Special: Download Poetry Magazine (with Audio & Video) for Free! The April 2015 issue of Poetry is largely devoted to the work of the BreakBeat poets..."

The issue, it probably connects to the Longread i started to read this week: “The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg.” - the piece originally appeared in the Summer 1995 issue of the Paris Review.

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And some more links / cross-connections:

Talking about classics: one story of the Japan issue mentions The Tale of Genji, which I dipped into some summers ago. "The Tale of Genji" was written by Murasaki Shikibu win the eleventh century, and is one of the world's first novel. I just looked, the collective reading notes are still online: The Summer of Genji - a joined approach to tackle this classic read.

Haruki Murakami is inclued, too. Two years ago, I read his Tokyo story "After Dark" (reading note), and before that, his book on running and writing.

The Japan issue also features an essay by Tao Lin, who once contributed to BluePrintReview, so I went to re-read that one, too: Tao Lin: Something Happened

One of the most fascinating stories for me is "Arrival Gates" by Rebecca Solnit. It leads to a place I hadn't know of: The Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine: "There are multiple routes up the mountain, and the routes take you through thousands of rjther torii gates.."
The photo is from wiki, here's a whole page of photos. And a link: the story isn't inlcuded online, but there is a Granta Posdcast with the editor Yuka Igarahsi and the author Rebecca Solnit. 

So I will listen to that now while going for a visual trip along photos from Japan - such a variety of atmospheres, just like in the Granta collection. And then move from Japan to the BreakBeats...

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Global Reading Challenge 2015 + Currently Reading:

For 2015, I try to read books / authors from different countries, the idea is to visit all continents. If you want to, join the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - or just join the international facebook reading group.

In the previous book post, I put together some reading statistics and book memories of 2014 - so if you are into geeky reading statistics, try this link: A year in reading in geek statistics +  book memories

For more reading notes, click here: life as a journey with books. A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

reading notes: books from Sweden, France, Germany, Mauritania, Indonesia

Catching up with reading notes that wait since February... and while putting them together, I realized that they form a pretty international combination. Quick continent statistic: in 2015, with the 5 reads below included, I so far read 27 books. 12 from Europe, 8 from Asia, 3 from Africa, 2 from America, 2 from Australia (here's a list of the books).

from Sweden: "Collected Poems" by Tomas Tranströmer
A lucky find in the library: the collected poems of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, who was awared the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011. The Collection includes early and more recent works. One of my favourites so far is "Track", which is also online with 9 other of Tranströmer poems at the official website: Ten Poems by Tomas Tranströmer

from France: "Klatschmohnfrau" ("The Poppy Woman") by Noëlle Châtelet
Chatelet is a French author. In "Klatschmohnfrau" she writes about two retired people who meet and then fall I love, after thinking that this emotion isn't for them anymore. It is a brief but sweet novella. Maybe a bit one-sided: the woman feels that with her former husband, there wasn’t much space for romantic feeling and for joy. But then, it’s too easy to blame years of feeling not much joy just on the partner, I felt when reading. Still, a lovely book (but it seems there's no English translation yet)

from Germany: "Tarzan am Main" by Wilhelm Genazino
Genazino is a German journalist and author. He was born in 1943, and in his writing. His speciality is the precise  description of modern-life everyday moments in a still-life like view. "Tarzan am Main" is a collection that also is about his own life - the place he lives in (Frankfurt at the river Main, hence the title), urban encounters, memories.

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And two more recent reads:

from Mauritania: "In the country of round women"by Tine Wittler
This is another chance library find: a memoir of German journalist Tine Wittler, who is both popular but also dealing with criticism as her body isn't model-shape. In 2012, Wittler visited Mauretania, a country with a rather different idea of "model-size": in Mauretania, beautiful women are round. A thought-provoking read that explores another culture.

from Indonesia: "Evacuated" by Kate Benzin and Rudy Tanjung
After reading the Indonesian bestseller "The Rainbow Troops" (here's the reading note), I came across "Evacuated". It's the story of the eruption of Mt. Merapi in 2010 - Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia. Kate Benzin and Rudy Tanjung lived in a house 9 miles from it, in a supposedly "save area".


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Global Reading Challenge 2015 + Currently Reading:

For 2015, I try to read books / authors from different countries, the idea is to visit all continents. If you want to, join the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - or just join the international facebook reading group.

In the previous book post, I put together some reading statistics and book memories of 2014 - so if you are into geeky reading statistics, try this link: A year in reading in geek statistics +  book memories

For more reading notes, click here: life as a journey with books. A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

7 continents reading journey, part 1: China (+winter)

Reading this week: the first books for the "7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books Challenge", and the story of a winter journey on foot:

"A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" by Yiyun Li
My 7-continents reading journey around the world is starting in China, the country that ranks highest in the list of countries by population. About 1,37 billion people live in China, that's about 19% of the world population. (In comparison, the current population of Europe with all its countries is 742 million people, about 11% of the world population.)

But numbers don't really tell too much about the daily life in a country, and it was interesting already to go looking for books from China. In 2012, when Chinese author Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, I read one of his book "Red Sorghum", a book with multiple timelines that reach back to the time when Japan invaded China. The red in the title refers both to the Communist party, and to all the blood that was shed. (more here: book fair days),

For the 7 continents, I looked for a more contemporary read - and found it in "A Thousand Years of Good Prayer". Here's the book summary from the Guardian book list "Best books on China":

"Li's prizewinning debut collection of 10 stories delves into the lives of everyday Chinese – both at home and in the US – struggling to cope with a fast-changing, new China." (more: Guardian list book list: The best books on China)

It's not a thick book, but it is a moving read, with every story conveying a different angle. One thing that becomes clear when reading through it: there are countless layers to China and the steps the country has gone through in the recent past, with Mao and his communism campaigns, and then the opening to communist-capitalism, the one-child-laws, and the student protests.

The most touching part of the book is the afterword by Yiyun Li, with her reflections on growing up in China, from the days of kindergarden and school, the witnessing of executions, and the time after the Tiananmen Square drama. Yiyun Li was a student in Peking at that time, and like many others, had to spent time in a military camp afterwards:

"It was the winter of 1991, and I was one of the freshmen of Peking University in the middle of a one-year brainwashing in a military camp in central China. The Harvard of China, as the university advertised itself, Peking University had been the hotbed of every student movement in Chinese history, including the one in 1989 in Tiananmen Square that ended in bloodshed. For the next four years, to immunize the incoming students to the disease that was called freedom, all freshmen were sent to the military for a year of brainwashing, or political reeducation, as it was called..."

You can read the whole afterword/essay online: "What has that to do with me?"

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"Wor(l)ds Apart" by Smitha Murthy and Dorothee Lang

Yiyun Li's stories and notes on life in China made me start to re-read "Wor(l)ds Apart", the book I wrote together with Smitha Murthy. The book, it started when Smitha was in China as a teacher, and I just had returned from India - and we happened to get into mail contact. "How is China? How does it feel to live there?" I asked in one of the first mails. And was amazed when she wrote back with notes from her journey. I still am stunned by the coincidence that brought this contact, and by the exchange of travel moments and stories it inspired. Below, the start of Smitha's journey notes. For more about the book, try these two links: the book page + the goodreads page: Worlds Apart.

"Bound by some hopes and spurred by some dreams – that’s how I arrived here in China. The earliest memory of China is of Beijing. Landing in Beijing, the first thing that strikes… having never travelled outside India is that the land smells different! Strange but true. The air has a different feel to it and the people… you realize that you are surrounded by people who don’t seem to be like you at all. People whom you realize only later are just the same… just like you. 

And the second thing that strikes you is the language. I hear sounds of a language unlike anything I have ever heard. I assume immediately, considering how difficult it was to carry on a normal conversation with even an average English speaker, that I would hardly be able to make friends here. How wrong I would be!..." 

Reading those pages also made me think that the things that remain are the things that feel fleeting: Journeys. Encounters. Words.

Revisiting books, that's also something I want to do more often this year, together with reading more globally. Yes, there are so many new books - but then, it's also a joy to revisit books and stories, and to see how reading them again feels different, and also brings back memories of the first reading, and the place / circumstances of that.

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"Germany, a Winter Journey" by Willi Winkler

In contrast / combination to the world books, I read the hike memoir from Willi Winkler, a German journalist who walked from Hamburg in the North of Germany to a town in Bavaria, in the South of Germany.

The thing that made his walk special: he walked in winter time, and followed the suggestions of his navigation guide. So he didn't take the most scenic route, but walked along all kind of roads and trails. Which lead to seeing the everyday-Germany, not the touristic / fancy one, not the most interesting cities and their attractions, but the usual small towns, villages, common roads, industrial areas, and the small suprises and encounters they hold. All this is accompanied by short reflections on life in Germany in these days.

A thoughtful, humorous and reflective read, and a reminder that most people in a country live in the not-wellknown places, and that the scenic tourist images you arrive at when you google "Germany winter" don't really show the way this season looks like in this country.

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Global Reading Challenge 2015 + Currently Reading:

For 2015, I try to read books / authors from different countries, the idea is to visit all continents. If you want to, join the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - or just join the international facebook reading group.

In the previous book post, I put together some reading statistics and book memories of 2014 - so if you are into geeky reading statistics, try this link: A year in reading in geek statistics +  book memories

For more reading notes, click here: life as a journey with books. A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

a year of reading in geek statistics + book memories

At the start of the year, I spent some time sorting my books and bookshelves... and later came across some reading statistics in book blogs with geeky diagrams which made me curious for my own reading. So I put some statistics together, starting with the number of printed books compared with e-books, the  ratio of male and female authors. From there, I moved on to other angles, for example:  the continents the books are from / or are set in. It is interesting, to revisit the year from that angle.

This blog post includes the diagrams, and also some my favorite reads. It also includes some quotes and notes, so that it isn’t all about numbers. The diagrams are all organized in the same way, comparing my reading year 2014 with 2013 - the red columns are the 2014 numbers, and the blue columns are for 2013.

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Reading: e-books and printed books

The first diagram shows the shift to e-books in my reading. I started to read the first books on an e-reader in the summer of 2012. In 2013, about a fifth of the books I read were e-books – which grew to more than 50% in 2014:

 

There are several reasons for me to read e-books: you can easily take several books along wherever you go. And it's often much easier to get the e-book version of a book, especially with foreign books. Plus, with the option to read excerpts, I regularly try books out of curiosity, which I probably wouldn't have read otherwise. Here's a quote from my reading notes, from the island time in May:

"That's one of the special joys for me, starting long before leaving already: to pick the books to take to the island. With the e-reader, that is easier: you can take a library with you in a pocket. Still, you need to know which books you want to read."

The "book pile" I brought to the island looked like this: "On Looking", a paperback & another of my fav reads of the year, and several e-books (here's the reading note: island reads): 

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Reading: Female / Male Authors

Another interesting diagram: the effect of the #readwomen initiative, which gave the impulse to look for a balance of female and male authors in my reading - something I had done before, but then my focus shifted to world reads. Here’s how that looks in numbers:


 

Turned out, in 2013 more than the half of books I read were from male authors. In 2014, this shifted to a balance of 40% female and 36% male authors. The “missing” 24% are short story collections or story/poetry collections, which feature both male and female authors (more about that, below).



The "readwomen" impulse made me go and look for world reads by women, and arrive at some compelling reads - like the "In Her Place" online collection, and "Reading Lolita in Teheran", a memoir about a (forbidden) reading group of former students and her teacher in Iran, one of the most difficult reads for me this year, but also one of the best. Here's my reading note, and here's a quote from the book:

“The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection. Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.” - Azar Nafisi

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Reading: Collections

As mentioned above already, I read more collections in 2014: almost a third of the books I read belonged to that format (this includes online collections, too.) Most of the collections had a global or regional theme, and I found them while looking for world reads. A book that is typical for these reads is the “One World” short story collection:

"One World" is an attempt to redefine the borders of the world we live in through short stories, (and).. recognizes the many conflicting issues of race, language, economy, gender and ethnicity, which separate and limit us...."

Other collections that were remarkable reads: “Pepperpot” - Carribean stort stories: a collection that takes you to the reality of islands like Jamaica, Trinidad or Antigua, beyond the touristic beach photos. "The Places We’ve Been: Snapshots Across the Globe": this is a collection of 48 vivid and transportive, personal and original nonfiction pieces that portray contemporary snapshots across the globe.

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Reading: Type of books

Looking at the different formats of books shows my interests and preferences are rather mixed: I like to read memoirs, novels, collections, and non-fiction books. Plus, I read graphic novels regularly (which is connected to one of my freelance works).

Altogether, these preferences remained pretty constant in 2014 and 2013. The only larger difference between the years is a shift from novels to story collections.



So this is how a rather typical mix of my "currently reading" books looks like: two memoirs, a novel, and a story collection (here's more about the books: reading from Chile to Paris):

This photo also shows the mix of where my books are coming from: Canetti's "Marrakesh" memoir is a book from my bookshelf that I revisited (and originally bought in a shop), the Kundera novel and the Marquez memoir are chance finds from the "book box" (more about that, below), and the fiction collection from Romania is a gift from the book fair. Which leads to the next diagram:

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Source of books: book box & library 

Many of the books I read are books that I buy online or in a bookshop or second hand. And there are books that I have read already, but read again, or keep revisiting. Altogether, that's about 10%, and the books I revisit regularly are mostly reflective: "The Wisdom of no escape","Pilgrim at Tinker Creek",   "The Happiness Project", What book? Buddha poems...

But there also are two other, more random sources for my reading: the library, and the "book box". The book box is a telephone box that some people turned into an open free book exchange by installing shelves. It’s open, and without any guard or security: you can just go in, look at the books that are there, bring some books from your own shelves to share, and take some books in exchange. Surprisingly, it works really well, and stopping there always feels a bit like a game of chance: will there be an interesting book waiting? So far, the answer almost always has been yes.

 

I noticed that since I started to visit the bookbox, I went to the library less often - the book box was the "new library" in some ways, with this different, slightly wild concept. Counting books, it was interesting to see that the book box and the library swapped places, Combined, 20% of the books I read came from the two places.

Below is a photo of the book box, and here's a neat little story from there: "No princess books")



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Reading: by continents

And finally, a look at my reading from a global angle, sorted by the continents the books belong to (mainly that means: nationality of author, or when that makes more sense, by the country they belong to). I first sorted the list by continents, and then realized it would make sense to add a column for my own homecountry, Germany, and on the other end of the range, a "world" column for books and short story collections with a global focus.
Turns out, about 10% of my reads focus on German authors and their writing, and about 50% on the   "Western hemisphere": Europe and North America.

The other 40% of my reading focuses on the other parts of the world: Asia, South America, Africa. On first glance it looks as if those numbers decreased a bit in 2014, but that's balanced by the additional "World" column.

Reading more globally kept adding different views to the world, and different cultures to my year. It's something I really enjoyed, and often reading a book from a certain country then made me notice news or docus or films from that country afterwards.

For 2015, I want to continue to read books / authors from different countries. The plan is to visit all continents this year. The thing about those books is that they usually aren't on top of the usual bestseller lists, but looking for them so far brought interesting surprises - in a way, the internet itself is like a "book box" once you go looking with a different angle. That's also why I started the reading challenge again, with links to world book resources. More about the challenge, and some other book and reading links, below.

If you put together some book statistics, too, or a reflection on your reading, I would love to have a look - would be great if you leave a link in the comments. Here's to a splendid reading year 2015!

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Reading links + Global reading challenge

Reading Challenge: The idea of the 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books Reading Challenge is to explore the world by books from different continents and countries, and by visiting various world lists while planning the reads, to encounter the one or other unknown angle and fact about our world.

For more reading notes in this blog, click here: life as a journey with books - and a reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

Here's the geeky reading blog with statistics that inspired this post: Doing Dewey 2014 Reading Wrap-Up. It links to yet another blog which even includes a reading-spreadsheet to download.

And here's the reflection of author Ayelet Tsabari, who focused on reading authors of color for a year, and the insights and reactions this focus evoked: My year of reading only writers of colour.

7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - Reading Challenge 2015

    

The idea of this reading challenge is to explore the world by books from different continents and countries, and by visiting various world lists while planning the reads, to encounter the one or other unknown angle and fact about our world.

7 Continents Reading Challenge 2015
To join the challenge, select and read seven books, each belonging to one of the following categories - or, if this works better for you, simply pick one book from each continent:

A book from....
- the 7 countries with the most population

- the 7 highest countries in the world

- the 7 oldest countries of the world

- one of the 7 megacities of the world

- the 7 countries with the most immigrants

- a continent not visited yet

- and a book with a journey from one continent to another

There's more information about the categories included below, with links to country lists.

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

Challenge Guidelines: 

• This challenge will run from Jan 1, 2015 – Dec 31, 2015
• Books can be any format (novel, non-fiction, poetry or story collection, anthology, as well as any phyisal format: print, ebook, audio)
• The idea of the challenge is to read books from different cultures and continents - so if ithis works better for you, you can alternatively simply pick one book from each continent
• You are welcome to count these books towards any other challenges as well
• You can start wherever you want. 
• When picking a country, the idea is to also pick an author from that country. If that turns out to be difficult, try to find an expat author who lived in the country for a while.

Resources, lists, links: 
Here is more about the 7 country categories, with links to the global lists, and with the top 7 countries listed already. The lists mostly are wiki-lists, as those often offer addditional search options.

1) The starting point: 
A book from one of the 7 countries with the most population

• Link: List of countries by population
• Top 7: China, India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria 

2) From most populated to the mountains:
A book from one of the 7 highest countries in the world

• Link: List of countries by highest point
• Top 7: Nepal, China, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan

3) From high to old:
A book from one of the 7 oldest countries of the world

• It's an own challenge to create a definite ranking of the oldest countries of the world, some references: About/Geography and here: Wiki-answers.
• Some of the oldest countries: Japan, China, San Marino, Egypt + Iraq, Iran, Greece

4) From old to new:
 A book from one of the megacities of the world 

• Link: About Megacities + List of megacities 
• Top 7: Tokyo (Japan), Delhi (India), Seoul (South Korea), Shanghai (China), Mumbai (India), Mexico City, Sao Paulo (Brazil)

5) From megacity to migration:
 A book from one of the 7 countries with the most immigrants 

• Link: List of countries by foreign-born population
• Top 7: USA, Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, UK, France

6) From migration to continents
 A book from a continent you havn't visited yet in this challenge  

• The 7 continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Australia/Ozeania, North Pole 
• The listing is sorted by population, more about the 7 continents: Wiki/Continent

7) From continents to journey

• A book that includes a journey from one continent to another.  

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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: 

• Wikipedia: literature by country (overview)
• Goodreads: Cultural Books (with many subpages + lists)
• Guardian "best books from".. series
• Goodreads/Places (based on book description)
• Nobel Prize in Literature
• Three Percent: a resource for international literature 
• Around the world in 80 books (Goodreads group with lists) 
• And a blog post with more links and information:
  Finding books by country: helpful links + resources 

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! And don't worry that some already started – it's never to late to start!

Frankfurt International Bookfair: Printed, Digital, We are Here - Snaphots & Links

Book Fair 2014 "We are Here"

This week, I visited the Frankfurt International Bookfair.

The slogan of the fair in 2014 is "Wir sind hier" - "We are here"

This is Frankfurt city centre and the fair area, seen from the Autobahn. 

And this right inside the fair, the first hall i visited, with a focus on Comics

Suprise: one of the largest booths in the hall belonged to Samsung. They were official partner of the book fair.

From Comics to the North: The guest of honor this year was Finland, and in the midst of all the buzz, they managed to create this special hall of space and calm, and of words spoken in Finnish – there was an author interview on, and just listening to the tune of Finnish was fascinating. It’s not an roman-based language, like most european languages, but runs on a different concept.

From the North, I moved to ... the digital future. The Fair had a special hot spot for digital themes and trends: Forum Zukunft. It was a bit hidden, though.... and turned out to be on the analog side of things. Well. This is "Forum Future" (no kidding.):

And next to the future, a panel for self-publishers. Which is a new thing for the fair:

The star of the day wasn't a book, or an established or upcoming author, but “Cro” – a german rap musician who is panda-masked, and who now wrote a book and gave a miniconcert on the open stage in the middle of the bookfair plaza. Spot the panda in the middle of the scene? That's him. 

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Of course, there was much more - German books, international books, authors, interviews, and all the sights of walking through a place where so many different readers and books and authors meet. 

Here's a snapshot with a double-meaning quote I liked: "Die Welt gehört denen, die auch im Netz gegen den Strom schwimmen" - "The world belongs to those who swim against the tide in the net, too." 

And a different kind of collage: the things I picked up along the way:

Some Links to Articles: 

• Frankfurt Book Fair 2014: Betting Big on Publishing’s Future
• Frankfurt: The next “big thing” is digital maturity
• At Frankfurt Book Fair: Between creativity and commerce
• E-books on the up in Germany - E-books are a major trend at the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair.
• FutureBook Innovation Awards shortlists unveiled
• taz.de: Digitales auf der Buchmesse - Das Buchregal als Touchscreen
• Wiso: E-Books: Flatrate Angebote im Vergleich 

reading notes: Alice Munro (Nobel Prize 2013) & In Her Place (web stories)

(snapshot from Frankfurt International Bookfair in October 2013,
this was an hour after the Nobel Prize for Literature was announced)

"So i guess i will join #readwomen, too, and will read more books from women this year, starting with a book i had picked up in November, after the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Alice Munro: "Dear Life"...that's what I wrote two weeks ago, and reading Munro now brought back several memories of reading her stories:

Alice Munro, "Dear Life" and other stories
The first Munro-story I read was recommended to me by a friend: "The Bear Came Over The Mountain", included in the New Yorker. I still remember how after reading it,with all the turns and layers it included,  I was amazed by it, and felt like having read a novel. (I just looked, the New Yorker put it online again, it's up here). After reading more of her work, I got curious for the person behind the stories. When her new story collection was released, "Dear Life", I was surprised when I read about her age:

"Munro is now in her 80s. The timelines in her stories have become longer, and the sense of fatedness has stretched to match. Some of the stories in her new collection, Dear Life, begin with the cultural and economic shift that happened after the second world war and end anytime around now. It is as though the events of that time loosened peoples lives up just enough to make them their own.... Munro is interested in how we get things wrong. Age she says, changes your perceptions "of what has happened – not just what can happen but what really has happened". 

The passage above is from a  Guardian review written by Anne Enright, here's the whole article: Dear Life by Alice Munro. Now I finally read the collection myself, and again, Munro impresses with both the stories, and her writing talent. Her short stories are brimming with layers and depth, and reflect the large themes of the world in a small town-perspective. At the end of the collection, she has included 4 stories based of her own life, which for me turned to my favs of the collection, with the hints they gave into the personal world Munro wrote from. 

In one of those unexpected parallels in theme, I was reading Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" just a bit later, and learned that she was inspired by Munro. In an interview, Strayed mentioned how she actually wrote to Munro after having her first story published, to thank her - and then later received a letter from her. And she wrote an essay: Munro County. For me, those cross-connections are often as interesting as the stories themselves: the way words on a page turn into an own story.

On the day the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded last year, I was at the Frankfurt international book fair. I still remember the vibe that went through the fair: short story writer + female author gets the award! When I later walked past the booth of the publisher that features her books in Germany, camera crews were there, and a woman sat right next to the copies of Alice Munro’s book, eyes on the books and the people walking past them. “You are bodyguarding them?” I said. “Yes!” she said, smiling.

In Her Place, or: Getting Around
From Nobel-Prize story collections to online reads: in January, i read an anthology of travel stories called "Be There Now". Unfortunately, the anthology doesn't include biographies of the authors or links to their websites, but with the help of Google&co, i found some of the author blogs and links to other stories of the authors. That's how I arrived at "In Her Place" - Stories about Women Who Get Around": an online anthology. Here's their concept: "We recently had a call for submissions and received a huge response by some very talented authors. We read them all and selected a handful of the stories that we felt answered the call: “In what ways does being female affect one’s sense of place, placement, and/or (dis)location?”

So glad I followed links, got around, and arrived there, at this beautiful and thoughtful place. The author that brought me there is "Once in a Lifetime" by Terri Elders, starting with those words: "In l990 when I first moved to Antigua, Guatemala, my birder knowledge was…for the birds."  The plan now is to follow some more links, see where I arrive at. 

And here are some direct links to stories from "In Her Place":

Guatemala
"Once in a Lifetime" by Terri Elders
"In l990 when I first moved to Antigua, Guatemala, my birder knowledge was…for the birds. Or at least my housemate, Kelly, saw it that way.."

Iraq / Mexico
"¿Cómo Se Dice Gravy?" by Huda Al-Marashi
"You are twenty-one years old. You have a college degree, and you were friends with your husband before you married him. Pull yourself together. Make a good memory for today, and then you can be sad again tomorrow..."

India
"Ebony has many shades", by Mira Desai
"Aruna’s skin burned, scorching seven layers, as she shaded her eyes and watched the black flecks circle overhead, wingspan spread, almost motionless as they rode invisible air currents. Death birds. Birds of prey..."

Romania 
"A Popular Passport" by Avra Kouffman
"Try to get comfortable. It’s your first month in eastern Europe and you’re about to take a 14-hour train trip from Moldova to Bucharest, Romania. This overnight journey will be mired in the deepest humidity and where you actually want to go is Ukraine..."

Puerto Rico / Spain
"Spanish Flies" by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro
"In Spain, the flies do not leave, even if you try to scare them, whipping up your hands. They are different from the ones in Puerto Rico, where, at the slightest provocation, the insect flutters its wings and flies away..."

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Currently Reading + More Reads:

I am currently joining the “readwomen2014” initiative. Here’s more about that: 2014 - year of reading women

For more reading notes in this blog, click here: life as a journey with books

A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

& Other book blog and their current reads: It's Monday! What are you reading?

reading: David Foster Wallace + A Million Little Pieces

...from David Foster Wallace (in a kind of domino-reading) to a so-called memoir to #readwomen

David Foster Wallace
September 2013 marked the fifth fifth anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s passing. The Found Poetry Review remembered his life and writing with a special online edition of their journal, and asked for submissions - one of my found poem made it into this issue  (here's the link: "Removed")

Creating the found poem made me browse some of Wallace's essays that are up online (here's both more about the Found issue, and an online essay list), it also made me order his collection of essays "Consider The Lobster". Reading it is like taking a philosophical walk through Western culture, and looking at things with a fresh und unafraid approach, from eating habits to pornography. A list of its contents is online at wiki: essay list - DFW / Consider..., and the title essay is still available online at Gourmet magazine: Consider the Lobster.

After "Consider the Lobster", i was curious for more about Wallace's life, for the things and events that shaped his life and intellect. That's how i came to read his biography, “Every Love Story is a Ghost Story”. It's touching to learn about the real story behind his stories and essays. The biography also gives an idea of writing as a subject at US universities, and about the literary scene at that time. I didn’t realize Wallace was going through addiction and rehab several times, and that he always had to think twice about how to include details from real life without exposing other group members. Reading the bio added both to the understanding of his stories, and in return, it showed how his stories and essays are connected to his life.

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A Million Little Pieces by James Fry
This is a book i came across by chance. It’s a memoir of going through rehab after long years of abuse. After reading the first chapter, i read some reviews, and learned that there was a scandal around it: Fry said it’s memoir, when it’s partly fiction. It’s not really clear how much of it is truth and how much is dramatized, but it’s addictive to read, with its pull and the way he tries to describes his emotions and thoughts, in a way that pulls the reader into this pain. After some chapters, it started to feel more and more weird, though - especially in contrast to the descriptions of the AA-groups in the Wallace bio, it felt like reading about two different worlds.

An irony along the lines: Fry claimed that the book didn’t get accepted by agents at first as it was labelled fiction, so he tried the memoir-approach, obviously without adjusting the fictional character. On the other hand, Wallace ran into law cases as he used real life events in his fiction without fictionalizing them thoroughly enough.

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Currently Reading + More Reads:

For my next reads, i will join the “readwomen2014” initiative and read women - i usually try to read a mix, but somehow my january now turned almost all male, so that was a good reminder.   Here’s more about that: 2014 - year of reading women

For more reading notes in this blog, click here: life as a journey with books

A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

& Other book blog and their current reads: It's Monday! What Are You Reading? link list