****Planning for 2015: What Should Our Theme Reads Be?

There has been some discussion over on this thread about how we should organize theme reads for 2015, but I thought it might be more productive to start thinking about what our theme reads should be and then we can decide questions of structure at the same time (i.e., year-long themes vs. quarterly themes vs. half-year themes, and general themes vs. more specific ones).

I'll leave this thread up for 10 days to 2 weeks and then post a voting thread, as I've done in past years. So this is the time to suggest any ideas that intrigue you. Later on, we can find out which of your interests others share.

Here are the ideas that were suggested on the previous thread.

India/Pakistan (and maybe Bangladesh as well?) -- banjo123/Rhonda
Immigration (with a caveat that we may have already "done" that) -- banjo123/Rhonda
Diseases, plagues, and epidemics --southernbooklady/Nicki
Rediscovered writers, i.e. writers who have gone out of print or who were not much recognised in their day who have since been rediscovered -- anisoara/Anne Marie
Iberian peninsula (Spain/Portugal) -- kidzdoc/Darryl

And I can add to that an idea I had -- Caribbean writers

So put on your thinking caps and let your imaginations run wild!

I like the idea of the rediscovered writers and I'd like to suggest Scandinavian literature, excluding crime-fiction (so-called "Scandi-crime").

Well, also into Caribbean writers. Other ideas, what about a focus on Muslim writers? Maybe too big of a group?

ALso, I would like to focus on international writers who are women. Not sure how to accomplish that....

Oh! Scandinavian literature is the best, I would love that one!

On Scandinavian crime being excluded from the last one, a group read focusing on a genre fiction such as crime, fantasy, science fiction, romance, or something else would be interesting.

Unfortunately I can't think of many categories where there is a large body of works available. Scandinavian crime and Japanese manga are the only ones that come to mind, and I don't think there would be interest here.

There does seem to be a reasonable amount of science fiction from various places though.

I like the idea of Muslim writers - I've been thinking about the very same. Or if not specifically Muslim, then from the Muslim world.

Also like the idea of sci-fi from around the world. There are some interesting new angles developing, such as sci-fi with an environmental twist... A novel translated from Chinese that came out a year or two ago comes to mind, but I can't remember the name. Now I remember. It's The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi.

Most of the ideas above appeal to me (maybe not the science-fiction, but perhaps that's just another blind spot I've got to get past...). A couple of other things that occur to me:
- LGBT writing - or maybe we could broaden it to "minority groups outside the developed countries" or something like that?
- a "no novels" theme, to give us a push to look at other forms (poetry, plays, essays, ...)?

>6 thorold: LGBT writing - or maybe we could broaden it to "minority groups outside the developed countries" or something like that?

groups in peril? People who because of who they are are threatened with violence or genocide?

>7 southernbooklady: That sounds interesting.

>7 southernbooklady: Can you give some examples of what kind of groups you're thinking of?

>9 rebeccanyc: Christians under ISIS? Armenians and Kurds under Turkey? Jews under Germany? Blacks in America's Jim Crow South? Native Americans during the American occupation of their lands?

Mind you, it's not like I can give a list of applicable novels, but it does seem like maintaining an identity under the threat of imminent violence is an experience people would be compelled to write about.

Last year I read a good novel about the fate of a gay man in Zimbabwe: The Hairdresser of Harare.

Thanks, southernbooklady. I thought it would be helpful for the others to have a more concrete idea of what you were thinking about.

>7 southernbooklady:
I like that definition.

Put your thinking caps on! Let's have some more ideas for theme reads. I'll keep this thread up for another week or so, but then we need to start a voting thread and it would be great to have more to choose from.

Aging/old age?
Displacement/exile/displaced populations?
environment/landscape/conservation and/or decimation?
retold myths and folktales?

Has the eastern edge of Europe already been the topic of a theme? I was wondering if Ukraine would be a good topic, or if that is too specific, a theme of countries that were part of the Soviet Union? I really have read very little about places like Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, etc...

Or west Africa, the countries currently dealing with ebola. It would be interesting to have a fuller grasp of their culture and literature, instead of just picturing Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia as places of crisis and disease.

I like the idea of reading on aging/old age, but off the top of my head, can't think of books for that read. Do you have some ideas?

Another idea would be to read Nobel Prize winners (who don't write in English)

Old age might work - but it's such a broad subject that it could come into almost anything. The first two "global" books that come into my head are Old people and the things that pass by the great Dutch writer Louis Couperus, and Baba Yaga laid an egg by Dubravka Ugrešić (Croatia).

>16 banjo123: The Twilight Years by Sawako Ariyoshi which leads to the tag for aging:
http://www.librarything.com/tag/aging

More on old age,:
Momento Mori by Muriel Spark
The View in Winter by Ronald Blythe (nonfiction)
Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot
King Lear

Political prisoners as a theme could be a possibility: everything from Dumas to Foucault fits in here and it is certainly a global theme.

Been busy for a while, or I would have chimed in earlier. First, an idea that started on another thread, so let me recap:

Samantha_kathy:

For those who are interested, The University of Western Australia is offering a free course through Coursera.org in March 2015 on Australian Literature.

This course is a short introduction to the rich and distinctive world of Australian literature, a world of ancient and modern forms of writing about a vast and varied continent. Explore the work of writers who have responded imaginatively to the unique landscapes of Australia and to its remarkable human history.

Read more about it here.

RidgewayGirl:

Samantha_kathy, that would tie in well if we were to have Australian literature as a quarterly theme in the the spring.

Samantha_kathy:

It would. The course starts March 2nd and ends April 10th. So the second quarter might be good, because then you'd have the whole quarter with the information, instead of getting the info at the end of the quarter, if you'd do Australian lit in the first quarter.

rebeccanyc:

>6 thorold: RidgewayGirl: >7 southernbooklady: Samantha_kathy: Technically, Australia, as an English-speaking country, is in Reading Globally II, for readers who want to explore English-language literature from a country other than their own, and RG is for literature originally written in languages other than English. But if enough people wanted to explore Australian literature, I don't see why we couldn't have it as a theme. So go ahead and suggest it on the suggestion thread, http://www.librarything.com/topic/182691.

So, I hereby suggest Australian literature.

As for other suggestions, here's my list of suggestions. They're just general ideas, interpretation open to discussion. (Also, some of them have already been mentioned, but I'm too tired to read through everything, so excuse any duplicates).

People with Disabilities (possible ways to interpret this: authors with a disability, how different cultures deal with disabilities, disabled main characters (especially in non-Western countries)).

Myths/Legends/Fairy Tales

Parent-Child relationships (I'm thinking here how different those relationships are between, say, the USA/England and countries like Japan, Kenya, etc. Different cultures, different ideas about raising children and how children should treat their parents)

Marriage (again, marriage is thought of quite differently in other cultures. Think polygamy in cultures where this is normal/acceptable, arranged marriages, superstition about marriages, ghost weddings like in China (I think it was China where a living person could be married off to a dead one), or even marriages to get a green card/mail order brides and how that works out),

As for geographical regions, I'd like to suggest a few as well for consideration:

Southern Europe (Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal, Spain, Italy, San Marino, Vatican City)

Southeast Asia (Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Vietnam)

Islands of Africa (Comoros, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar, Mayotte and Réunion (beloning to France), Zanzibar and Lamu (f Tanzania and Kenya, respectively), Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Malabo and other smaller islands of Equatorial Guinea, Canary Islands and other island territories of Spain, Saint Helena, Ascension Island, and Tristan da Cunha (Great Britain)) -- This could be downsized to just the Indian Ocean Committee Islands (Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles, and the French Réunion and Mayotte)

Australia (as I mentioned above)

Instead of countries or regions, we could consider making a city the focal point:

For example:
Prague

or

Amsterdam

or any other city that works as a magnet on people and people's imagination.

I would support Southeast Asia, but preferably have it scaled down to "French Indochina"

I did a tagmash on literature, aging here: http://www.librarything.com/tag/aging,+literature

Looks like there are lots of choices as many well known authors have tackled it: several by Coetzee, Marquez, Simone de Beauvoir, Honore de Balzac. I'm never sure if books from authors like Kazuo Ishiguro such as Remains of the Day or Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters fit this group. Not to mention Old Filth by UK author Jane Gardam but set in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Others I've read recently: The Property a graphic novel by Israeli author Rutu Modan
The Little Red Guard autobiography/memoir by Wenguang Huang - one of the threads is about his aging grandmother.

Thanks for all the great ideas, and keep them coming!

As far as what fits this group, we do try to read works in translation, although we don't always succeed, and I think globally speaking this would include works written in English but by writers from other largely non-English-speaking countries. However, I did encourage >20 Samantha_kathy: to suggest Australian literature (possibly we could focus on aboriginal writing, or possibly expand it to include New Zealand and maybe some other countries of the south Pacific).

The more ideas we have, the more we have to choose from.

>21 edwinbcn: I love that idea! Shanghai, Petersburg...

ALERT

On Saturday morning, I'll be posting the voting thread. So this is your last chance to suggest ideas for next year's theme reads!

Some more ideas:

Nobel Prize winning authors (could be expanded to nominees). There are plenty non-English authors that won. You can go as far from home or stay as close to home as you want with this theme.

Disasters (natural or man-made disasters, apocalyptic )

Pioneers (multiple interpretations possible. Pioneer authors in a certain genre, main characters who are pioneers, either traditionally or simply in their field)

Memoirs/Biographical/Autobiographical novels

Armed Conflict

I like the idea of Nobel Prize winning authors / Memoirs/Biographical/Autobiographical novels

Comma Press has a whole series of city reads - Reading the City - although sometimes it focuses on cities of a certain type rather than individual cities. You can see more about a quarter of a way down this page:

http://commapress.co.uk/books/

Isn't there an option on LT to search for places that are mentioned in the Common Knowledge section? That'd be a great feature to use if the cities idea wins.

The voting thread is OPEN.