Orbis Terrarum Challenge

*sigh* thanks to http://raidergirl3-anadventureinreading.blogspot.com/
raidergirl3, I found this challenge on http://exlibrisbb.blogspot.com/2008/03/orbis-terrarum-challenge.html

exlibrisbb site. It is really interesting, and so, I joined. I commented to raidergirl3 that I must be really competitive! My automatic reaction is "hey, I can do this!". Since I've read 12 books so far this year (compared to many book bloggers reading 30+ already......more on this in a moment) I have to be careful. But, this is a really good challenge to expand where I read from. I was surprised that I had difficulty pulling 9 different country writers from my shelves. So, I am aware I do have a lack of wider reading, which is one of my goals - to read literature from other countries. So this ended up being an easy challenge to join. Here are the rules, as posted on exlibris' site:
- The Orbis Terrarum Challenge begins April 1 2008( you are welcome to join later) Through December 20th 2008.
- For the challenge each reader is to choose 9 books (for the 9 months).
-Each book must be by an author from a different nation in our world.
The bottom line: choose 9 different books, written by 9 different authors, from 9 different countries.
This is my list, subject to change, as if I can get a few more to fill some of my other challenges, I will add them to this one.
1. The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin (Russia, mystery)
2. The Iliad - Homer (Greece, classical literature)
3. Firewall - Henning Mankell (Sweden, mystery)
4. In the Time of the Butterflies - Julia Alvarez (Dominican Republic, fiction)
5. Dubliners - James Joyce - (Ireland, short stories)
6. The Shape of Water - Andrea Camilleri (Italy, mystery)
7. Morality for Beautiful Girls - Alexancer McCall Smith (Botswana, mystery)**** This should have been Tears of the Giraffe,which is Book 2 in the series and I want to read them in order. So Tears of the Giraffe is what I'm reading for the challenge. Added Aug 25, 2008*** Tears of the Giraffe read Aug 26 2008 - DONE
8. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky (France, fiction) - DONE
9. Exit Music - Ian Rankin (Scotland, mystery) - DONE

Alternates:
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende (Chile, fiction) - DONE
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (Nigeria, fiction)
Don't Look Back - Karin Fossum (Norway, mystery)
The Broken Shore - Peter Temple (Australia, mystery)
Tainted Blood - Arnaldur Indridason (Iceland, mystery) - DONE
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (India, fiction)
The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver - USA

So, you can see I love mysteries from other countries, which I've blogged about in a previous post. 5 are translated, 4 written originally in English. As there are other books I hope to pick up through the year, this might change slightly. Many of these are on my current reading challenges, so I'm not really adding too many more books to read!! Anyway, I love the idea of this challenge. I plan on joining next year's, and the year after's......I notice a distinct lack of Chinese, Japanese and Central and South American literature, and where is Australia? New Zealand? India? South Africa and the rest of the continent? More Europe? hmmmm, definitely I need to expand where I read from.

Thanks, exlibris, for holding this challenge! and raidergirl3 for picking it up. Both are really good book sites, by the way, that I read regularly (among about 20 that you can find at the bottom of my blog).