steven03tx reads around the world in 80 books

Reading a book from every country on the globe is an impractical goal for me, so as of January 1, 2012, I am starting a new challenge, which is to read books representing at least 80 different countries. This will probably take me about three years to complete.

A book can represent a country based either on the book's setting or the author's nationality. I am not counting the United States, but books by American authors do count if they are set elsewhere. My definition of "country" includes autonomous regions with their own cultural identity such as Scotland and Tibet, as well as overseas departments and dependencies such as French Guiana and Puerto Rico.

Summary

Africa
 

Americas
               

Asia and Oceania
                 

Europe
                                   

1. Japan   
Population: 127m (10th)
Capital and largest city: Tokyo (13m pop)



1. The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo
Finished 4 January 2012, my review

2. 1Q84 by Haruku Murakami
Finished 13 January 2012, my review

3. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Finished 30 January 2012, my review

4. Some Prefer Nettles by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Finished 9 February 2012, my review

5. Two Novels: J and Seventeen by Kenzaburō Ōe
Finished 13 February 2012, my review

6. The Box Man by Kōbō Abe
Finished 30 April 2012, my review

7. Silence by Shusaku Endo
Finished 30 May 2012, my review

8. Secret Rendezvous by Kobo Abe
Finished 7 June 2012, my review

9. Kangaroo Notebook by Kobo Abe
Finished 13 June 2012, my review

10. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
Finished 16 June 2012, my review

11. Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami
Finished 8 July 2012, my review

12. Sixty-Nine by Ryu Murakami
Finished 23 July 2012, my review

13. Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami
Finished 11 August 2012, my review

2. Mexico
Population 112m (11th)
Capital and largest city: Mexico City (metro pop. 21m)



1. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
Finished 6 January 2012, my review
(author is Chilean but principal setting of this autobiographical novel is Mexico where Bolaño spent his early adult years)

2. The Empty Book by Josefina Vicens
Finished 22 September 2012, my review

3. Canada
Population 34m (35th)
Capital: Ottawa
Largest city: Toronto (metro pop. 5m)



1. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Finished 7 January 2012, my review

4. Egypt
Population 81m (16th)
Capital and largest city: Cairo (metro pop. 19m)



1. Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories by Alifa Rifaat
Finished 14 January 2012, my review

2. Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
Finished 25 August 2012, my review

5. France
Population 65m (20th)
Capital and largest city: Paris (metro pop. 12m)



1. The Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs
Finished 15 January 2012, my review

2. The Young Girl's Handbook of Good Manners by Pierre Louÿs
Finished 21 January 2012, my review

3. Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
Finished 28 January 2012, my review

4. The Adventures of Telemachus by Louis Aragon
Finished 3 February 2012, my review

5. The Investigation: A Novel by Philippe Claudel
Finished 9 June 2012, my review

6. England
Population: 51m (part of the United Kingdom)
Capital and largest city: London (metro pop. 13m)



1. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Finished 16 January 2012, my review

2. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
Finished 3 February 2012, my review

3. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Finished 5 February 2012

4. The Living and the Dead by Patrick White
Finished 11 February 2012, my review

5. Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love-Life by Anthony Burgess
Finished 3 April 2012, my review

6. A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess
Finished 25 April 2012, my review

7. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Finished 5 June 2012, my review

8. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Finished 18 June 2012, my review

9. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Finished 23 June 2012, my review

10. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Finished 18 July 2012

11. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
Finished 6 August 2012, my review

7. Norway
Population: 5m (116th)
Capital and largest city: Oslo (metro pop. 1.5m)



1. Four Major Plays by Henrik Ibsen
Finished 17 January 2012

8. China
Population: 1.3b (1st)
Capital: Beijing (pop. 19m)
Largest city: Shanghai (pop. 23m)



1. Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
Finished 22 January 2012, my review

2. Selected Stories of Lu Hsun
Finished 25 February 2012, my review

3. Heavy Wings by Zhang Jie
Finished 26 February 2012, my review

4. Outlaws of the Marsh by Shi Nai'an
Finished 11 March 2012, my review

5. Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en
Finished 3 August 2012, my review

6. Half of Man Is Woman by Zhang Xianliang
Finished 17 August 2012, my review

9. Scotland
Population: 5m (part of the United Kingdom)
Capital: Edinburgh (pop. 486,000)
Largest City: Glasgow (metro pop. 2.5m)



1. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
Finished 28 January 2012, my review

2. The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
Finished 15 June 2012, my review

10. Croatia
Population: 4.3m
Capital and largest city: Zagreb (metro pop. 1.1m)



1. The Return of Philip Latinowicz by Miroslav Krleža
Finished 29 January 2012, my review

11. Botswana
Population: 2m
Capital and largest city: Gaborone (pop. 192,000)



1. A Question of Power by Bessie Head
Finished 8 February 2012, my review

12. Spain
Population: 46m (27th)
Capital and largest city: Madrid (metro pop. 6.5m)



1. Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós
Finished 5 March 2012, my review

2. Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin
Finished 17 May 2012, my review

13. Thailand
Population: 66.7m (rank 19th)
Capital and largest city: Bangkok (metro pop. 14.5m)



1. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Finished 8 March 2012, my review

14. Colombia
Population: 46m (27th)
Capital and largest city: Bogota (metro pop. 7.8m)



1. No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories by Gabriel García Márquez
Finished 13 March 2012, my review

15. Albania
Population: 2.8m
Capital and largest city: Tirana (metro pop. 763,000)



1. Broken April by Ismail Kadare
Finished 14 March 2012, my review

16. Russia
Population: 143m (8th)
Capital and largest city: Moscow (pop. 11.5m)



1. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
Finished 22 March 2012, my review

17. Ireland
Population: 4.6m
Capital and largest city: Dublin (metro pop. 1.8m)



1. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
Finished 28 March 2012, my review

18. Australia
Population: 22.8m
Capital: Canberra
Largest city: Sydney (pop. 4.6m)



1. The Tree of Man by Patrick White
Finished 18 April 2012, my review

2. Voss by Patrick White
Finished 18 August 2012, my review

19. Romania
Population: 19m (52nd)
Capital and largest city: Bucharest (metro pop. 2.2m)



1. The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller
Finished 9 May 2012, my review

20. Italy
Population: 60m (23rd)
Capital and largest city: Rome (metro pop. 3.7m)



1. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Finished 26 May 2012, my review

21. Argentina
Population: 41m
Capital and largest city: Buenos Aires (metro pop. 12m)



1. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Finished reading 28 May 2012

2. The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato
Finished reading 3 December 2012, my review

22. Austria
Population: 8.4m
Capital and largest city: Vienna (metro pop. 2.4m)



1. Amok and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
Finished reading 22 June 2012, my review

23. Ecuador
Population: 15m
Capital: Quito (pop. 2.2m)
Largest City: Guayaquil (pop. 2.5m)



1. Queer by William S. Burroughs (set half in Mexico, half in Ecuador)
Finished reading 2 July 2012, my review

24. Israel
Population: 7.9m
Capital and largest city: Jerusalem (pop. 1m)



1. In the Heart of the Seas by Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Finished 7 July 2012, my review

25. Brazil
Population: 192m (5th)
Capital: Brasilia (metro pop. 3.7m)
Largest City: São Paulo (metro pop. 19.9m)



1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Finished reading 19 July 2012, my review

26. Syria
Population: 225m
Capital: Damascus (pop. 1.7m)
Largest city: Aleppo (pop. 2.1m)



1. The Proof of the Honey by Salwa Al Neimi
Finished reading 21 July 2012, my review

27. Vietnam
Population: 91.5m
Capital: Hanoi (pop. 6.5m)
Largest City: Ho Chi Minh City (pop. 7.3m)



1 The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Finished 4 August 2012, my review

28. Turkey
Population: 74.7m
Capital: Ankara (pop. 4.5m)
Largest city: Istanbul (pop. 13.5m)



1. A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Finished 5 August 2012, my review

29. India
Population: 1.2b (2nd)
Capital: New Delhi (metro pop. 13.8m)
Largest city: Mumbai (metro pop. 18.4m)



1. Deep River by Shusaku Endo
Finished 9 August 2012, my review

30. Poland
Population: 38.5m
Capital and largest city: Warsaw (metro pop. 2.7m)



1. Doctor Copernicus by John Banville
Finished 29 October 2012, my review

31. Haiti
Population: 9.7m
Capital and largest city: Port-au-Prince (metro pop. 2.5m)



1. They're Cows, We're Pigs by Carmen Boullosa
Finished 17 November 2012, my review

32. Taiwan
Population: 23m
Capital: Taipei
Largest City: New Taipei City (combined metro pop. with Taipei: 9m)



1. The Butcher's Wife and Other Stories by Li Ang
Finished 26 November 2012, my review

33. Hungary
Population: 9.9m
Capital and largest city: Budapest (metro pop. 3.3m)



1. Opium and Other Stories by Géza Csáth
Finished 3 January 2013, my review

2. Out of Oneself by András Pályi
Finished 9 January 2013, my review

34. Moldova
Population: 3.6m
Capital and largest city: Chișinău (pop. 795,000)



1. Mierla Domesticita: Blackbird Once Wild, Now Tame by Nicolae Dabija
Finished 4 January 2013, my review

35. Cuba
Population: 11m
Capital and largest city: Havana (pop. 2.9m)



1. Firefly by Severo Sarduy
Finished 13 January 2013, my review

36. Czech Republic
Population: 10.5m
Capital and largest city: Prague (metro pop. 2.3m)



1. The Road to Darkness by Paul Leppin
Finished 4 February 2013, my review

37. Iceland
Population: 320,000
Capital and largest city: Reykjavik (pop. 202,000)



1. Njál's Saga
Finished reading 10 February 2013, my review

38. Slovenia
Population: 2m
Capital and largest city: Ljubljana (pop. 273k)



1. A Day in Spring by Ciril Kosmac
Finished reading March 25, 2013, my review

39. Wales
Population: 3m
Capital and largest city: Cardiff (metro pop. 861k)



1. Monica by Saunders Lewis
Finished reading 25 March 2013, my review

40. Peru
Population: 30m
Capital and largest city: Lima (metro pop. 8.4m)



1. Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories by Santiago Roncagliolo
Finished reading 6 April 2013, my review