Describe your reading year

Seeing as the end of the year is approaching, I wondered if anyone wanted to share their thoughts on their reading in 2007. It could be what your have enjoyed, how you reading habits have changed, or even how your reading and real life fitted together. I will kick things off below.

I started this year living in London. I left my job in February and spent three months travelling, mostly in New Zealand, before returning to the UK to make a new life for myself in Bristol. 2007 has definitely been the year in which ‘world literature’ (as opposed to UK and US writers) has taken over my reading habits almost completely. I started the year finishing off my ‘to read’ pile before I went away. My intention when travelling had been to discover local writers, which I wasn’t particularly successful with. There are almost no bookshops on Tahiti (my first stop) and they didn’t have Polynesian writers. In New Zealand I found Albert Wendt (Samoa) and Epeli Hau’Ofa (Tonga), but not much else from the South Pacific. My attempts to find New Zealand writers was more successful, reading the complete works of Katherine Mansfield and discovering the Maori writer Patricia Grace, who has become a favourite. NZ has a fantastic array of second hand shops, which stock tons of stuff from around the world. For instance, there was, for reasons I couldn’t understand, far more African literature in NZ shops than you are likely to find in the UK (relatively speaking, anyway). Because of this I ended up reading lots of books for my Reading Globally Challenge, which I hadn’t expected to do.

On my return to the UK I discovered the Bristol public library system, which is very good. Due to encouragement from members of this group I started posting about my Reading Globally Challenge, which gave me the impetus to really go at it. I decided towards the end of summer to see what I could find from Africa, which was the continent with the most blank spaces on my reading globally map. It was nice that the ‘Africa’ thread was very active at the time, and a few other group members had decided to spend their literary time there as well. As part of my leaving present from my old job I was given £80 ($160) worth of book tokens, which I used to pick up literature from Southern Africa. I had expected my Africa visit to last for 5 or 6 books, but I kept finding new stuff and ended up there for almost 6 months. I just finished in November, and am reading a few books that have piled up in the meantime, mostly classics and contemporary classics such as Tolstoy, Turgenev, Kundera, Gide and Andric.

2007 literary high points:
- reading Patricia Grace and Katherine Mansfield during my exploration of New Zealand
- getting to know Chinua Achebe much better
- starting to get a handle on African literature, in the sense that I now have a clearer idea of what is available, what the classics are, and who is writing at the moment.
- non-UK/US writers now make up over 50% of my library. This has never been a target of mine, but I like the idea that I have begun to escape the bonds of traditional British reading habits.
- adding 40 new nations to my Reading Globally Challenge.
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton, The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, Herzog by Saul Bellow, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamonda Adichie, Cat and Mouse by Gunther Grass, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentelmen by Tadeusz Borowski, Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe, Chaka by Thomas Mofolo, A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi, Potiki and Baby No-Eyes by Patricia Grace, The Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield, Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier, In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming. God’s Angry Babies by Ian Strachan, Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic…and all the ones I have forgotten.

And for 2008…
At the moment I am planning a big year for my Reading Globally Challenge, which is also likely to be the last. I added 40 new countries in 2007. If I do about the same in 2008 I will be up towards 150 in total, at which point I expect things to start getting tricky. I have books lined up for the Americas and South East Asia, as well as vague plans for some of the bits of Africa that are left.

2007. It was a good year.

During the first half, I was mostly reading history, with a healthy focus, especially as summer approached, on Indian history and with a dose of Indian literature and poetry in there as well. Among others, I discovered or deepened my reading of Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, and Rabindranath Tagore, as well as spending some more time with the Bhagavad Gita. This reading complemented my work, where I've had many dealings with India over the last couple of years. I also visited some old friends, like Katherine Anne Porter, Thomas Mann, Charles Lamb and Heinrich Boll.

The highlight of reading to the kids was undoubtedly the Raffel translation of the Song of the Nibelungen. This was the year my 6 year old moved to chapter books and my 10 year old really began eating books on her own, each big events that opened new vistas.

Sometime over the summer I think I caught the bug from this group, and among the great authors read in part because of LT were Halldor Laxness, Ivo Andric and NaguibMahfouz (funny that the Mahfouz touchstone only works without the space). Likewise, I'm in the middle of Omeros, a book recommended by many here that will go own as one of my all time favorties. Another author in translation I discovered just hanging out in bookstores was Cees Nooteboom (Lost Paradise). Of course, bugs are only caught when you're succeptable, and another source for some broader reading came from Milan Kundera's The Curtain: An essay in seven parts, a great essay on world literature and other things. While there were some clunkers in there, too (Okay, I'm not drawn to either Haruki Murakami or Alaa Al Aswany), but I'd say LT helped me really connect with some of the best reading I've done in a while, and cracked open a reading pattern that did keep going back to the old wells by default. There are a LOT of great books listed in this little summary. I also just finished the December read, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, an enjoyable and thought provoking little book.

I've also kept up a smattering of art and art history books through the year. There were some particularly good books on Indian art, including Domains of Wonder, which complemented a great traveling exhibition I saw this year and kept the Indian theme going.

I'm ending the year with some epics and more history again, and have absolutely no idea what next year will bring. Isn't that more a New Years question? I know I want to tackle the Mahabharata before long, but don't feel that I've successfully sized up the translation landscape yet. Also, a revisit of Doris Lessing is in order. And, let's face it, one can never read enough poetry.

As always, taking suggestions...

2007 has been a great reading year!

I left the bookstore at the end of 2006 which left me free to explore other literatures. While at the store, in an effort to be a great bookseller, I read a huge quantity of forthcoming books in a variety of genres but allowed some of my reading of translations, poetry, older titles, and classics to fall away somewhat. I joined LT a few months before I left the bookstore on the recommendation of an old friend who was a Random House sales rep.

In the five months before my classes would begin, I rediscovered some wonderful old reading habits. I went on an Angela Carter binge, began a Joyce Carol Oates binge (on hold, for the moment). I read some classics, some authors I had been meaning to try, and took up poetry in earnest again. My reading for the first five months of the year was mostly dominated by anglo-authors but some notable reads during that time were Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie, By the Sea by Gurnah, and Zoli by McCann (who is Irish but the book is a wonderfully, well-researched story about a Romani woman poet).

The Adichie and Gurnah novels sparked an interest in Africa and African fiction, so when my classes began I created independent study classes with my advisor with this in mind. The summer was filled with African history, related nonfiction and memoirs (also much reading on fractals, design in nature...etc.). The few weeks in August between semesters, I frantically read as many books as I could. I enjoyed Norwegian author Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, Al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building and many others. With fall came a crushing schedule of four classes, including one of African fiction. I have been working my way through about a dozen African novels. Many of these authors I will read more from in the future (i.e. Emecheta, Gurnah, Couto, Mahfouz). I'm glad I studied African history, in the general sense, before I took on the fiction. It has been invaluable in understanding some of the issues and themes presented. I have also been reading about American pop culture with an emphasis on literature, certain topics in New England history, and much reading and writing of poetry.

The year continues! I'm finishing Mia Couto's Sleepwalking Land (and I've just sent for the Mexican film based on Mahfouz's Midaq Alley). I now know more than I've ever wanted to know about indentured servitude in America, and in the meanwhile I been stockpiling books for 'after' the classes... My top books for 2007 are listed on my profile page (very hard to get the list down to ten or so!)

Thank you all for being a part of this group. It's a wonderful place to hang out in and a great resource.

I joined LT in February 2007 and it has shaped my reading in so many ways this year. I’ve always been a reader but never to this extent! By the end of the year, I will have read ~90 books, which is probably double what I’ve read in the past.

I’ve also changed the type of books I read. I wouldn’t say I’d been reading “popular” lit, but certainly not some of the more obscure things I’ve been introduced to this year (A Month in the Country, Astrid and Veronika, Amphigorey). People in a couple of the LT groups have inspired and encouraged me to read a lot of the classics I somehow managed to miss out on (even though I have an English degree). I read Jane Austen for the first time (Sense and Sensibility); The Grapes of Wrath; and will soon be tackling War and Peace and Middlemarch. I’ve also been reading a lot of British lit which I hadn’t much before.

I’ve always been interested in reading lit from and about other countries/cultures and have done a fair amount of that this year as well; many of them are books I probably wouldn’t have discovered on my own though – such as The Lizard Cage (Burma) or Out Stealing Horses (Norway) or The Yacoubian Building (Egypt).

It’s been a great reading year and I’m really grateful for the ideas and inspiration I’ve found on LT, and for the friendships that I’ve made through books.

teelgee, I am also so grateful for LT and the way it has enriched my reading. The whole concept of "reading globally" was new to me. I'd read a lot of American and British authors, but authors from other countries only by accident. I've never been one to read from the bestseller lists, but I have leaned on the prize lists for reading ideas. While I still love reading Bookers, Pulitzer, Nobel authors, etc. etc., I am learning about so many other books and authors on LT: Half of a Yellow Sun, The Lizard Cage, The Yacoubian Building, and Virago Modern Classics are just some examples.

And yes, then there's the social side. I've met a few LTers in person, which has been wonderful. But even those I only know online -- which is the overwhelming majority -- are such a wonderful group of intelligent, articulate, and delightful people. I've never experienced anything like it!

Telgee - like you I joined LT in February 2007, quickly became immersed and am just so grateful for all the encouragement and inspiration that I have experienced. This year I too have travelled widely both geographically and in terms of genre and style! My journey has been via Prize winners to Nigeria, Half of a Yellow Sun, via the graphic novels Persepolis to Iran via a short listed The Reluctant Fundamentalist to Pakistan. I visited Kabul with The Bookseller of Kabul and even went to 12th century Korea with The Single Shard. And of course I visted la belle France in the company of Suite Francaise!

My visit of the year and one that I would strongly recommend was with Countess Karolina Lanckoroska in Those Who Trespass Aginst Us. At the beginning of the book she claims that her writing is simply a report of what she witnessed. To the contrary this book is a compelling story of a brave and courageous women. Her memoir tells of a short period of her life, from September 1939 to April 1945 during which she worked in the Polish resistance and was incarcerated in Ravensbruck. She writes with such objectivity and understatement that the reader is constantly questioning and reflecting upon the events, often harrowing, that she witnessed.

Finally, like you, Laura my journey has been all the more wonderful due to the delightful company of all my 'friends'. I too have never experienced anything like it!

I started my year by returning to fiction for after nearly 2 years of memoirs, travelogues and history books. In a way, it was a huge relief to get back to reading fiction. I had read fiction ever since I started reading, but as I began to travel, my desire to read was confined to learning factual information about the world. But, with Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, I remembered how much I love to get into a good character and decode the meaning of a well-written work of literature.

My fictional reading was fun but pretty aimless until I joined LT in spring. Groups like this one and the Asian literature group inspired me to expand my reading outside English-language writing. Since I was living in Japan, I started with Japanese literature. Favorites included classics like The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki and a lesser known modern work, The Stones Cry Out by Hikaru Okuizumi. From there, I set myself my own global reading challenge. Recent highlights include The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and my current read, Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie.

I'm really thankful to have found LibraryThing. The whole site and this group in particular have really opened to me to works of literature that I konw I'd never have found on my own.

I'll do something kind of chronologically--books that I particularly liked by the month I read them in.

January
Nobodaddy's children--Arno Schmidt
Restless--William Boyd
The Spanish cockpit--Franz Borkenau

February
Manhattan Transfer--John dos Passos
Heavy Sand--Anatoli Rybakov

March
The tango singer--Tomas Eloy Martinez
re-read Ulysses--James Joyce

April
Generations of Winter--Vassily Aksyonov
Suttree--Cormac McCarthy

May
The Savage Detectives--Roberto Bolano--favorite book of the year.

June
The Zero train--Yuri Buida
The Stalin front--Gert Ledig
Go down Moses--William Faulkner
Complete poems--Zbigniew Herbert

July
Imperial Hubris--Michael Scheuer

August
Ravel--Jean Echenoz
The Human stain--Philip Roth
re-read How late it was how late--James Kelman

September
The ministry of special cases--Nathan Englander
Sitt Marie Rose--Etel Adnan
The 13th valley--John Del Vecchio

October
Jesus' son--Denis Johnson
1919--John dos Passos
Last evenings on earth--Roberto Bolano
re-read Chapel Road--Louis Paul Boon

November
The bad girl--Mario Vargas Llosa
The last novel--David Markson
The counterlife--Philip Roth

December

Tree of Smoke--Denis Johnson

It has been a great reading year for me. I found LT via the New York Times article in March and it rekindled my love of reading. Thanks to all the great conversation here I've been reading more and have a growing and exciting TBR list, far more expansive than the few dozen titles I'd compile on my own.

I always enjoyed reading literature about and from other cultures but was slow to find new authors and titles. The Reading Globally group has taken care of that! Books I've enjoyed this year include Half of a Yellow Sun, The Book Thief, The Harmony Silk Factory, and The Yacoubian Building.

LT gave me a push to read, at last, some Ian McEwan. I loved Saturday and On Chesil Beach. Atonement is next, and no, I won't see the movie.

Two personal things also moved my literary year forward. First, I finally got a group of friends together for a book group. It seems the group has a bent toward non-fiction and that has been a pleasant surprise. I seldom sought out non-fiction but am enjoying it now. Nine Parts of Desire and Three Cups of Tea were two noteworthy reads this year, although they pre-date the group. Second, I turned that spare room into a library...yippee!

Here's to a great reading year for us all in 2008! And thank you, LT.

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This has been a very interesting thread. I hope more people contribute. Why I'm interested in other people's reading, I don't know, but I really am.

Anyway, for me 2007 turned out very differently than what I had expected. The last few years I've been in "so many books, so little time" mode, and tried to read as many books as possible. I have been somewhat avoiding long books for that reason, but also because I often get bored with long books. I had set my goal at 100 books this year, but I think my final total will be 86. Two things prevented me from reaching my goal: from January to April I was busy with school, and did a lot of reading, but didn't read many books. Then in summer I read The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Anna Karenina, both very long books that took a month each for me to read (while I was caring for my terminally ill mother). Oh well.

What I learned about my reading this year:

-How to read closely: one of the books I studied in March was Mansfield Park, and my instructor was excellent. He taught me to slow down my reading speed, and turn over Jane Austen's phrases and sentences and really think about them. I'm so glad that I have developed this skill, although I need to continue to work at it. My regular impulse is to read quickly, and with some books that's really a waste of time. Sure, you get the general idea of the story, but you miss the beauty.

-My other big discovery was Sri Lanka. I'd read a few books set there in the past, but after reading Anil's Ghost, I realized that the island and its people absolutely fascinated me. It's a place that I will probably never see in real life (unless their civil war ever ends) so I will travel there through literature. I read several books set in Sri Lanka, but Anil's Ghost and Mosquito, by Roma Tearne are my favourites.

This coming year I am lowering my goal because I want to read some longer books, and I also want to slow down my reading speed. I also want to journal and reflect on my reading more.

Great reflections, Nickelini. I've read a lot this year but I've noticed I'm rushing through some books for those magic numbers (will I reach 100 by the 31st??). I also want to be a more careful reader - lately I've been allowing myself to re-read paragraphs if it's not clear the first time or if I just liked the turn of words. I think I want to do more of that than I do racing through books just to reach an arbitrary goal.

So sorry about your mom. I'm amazed you got any reading done.

Nickelini, I'm also enjoying this thread and particularly your reflections.

I don't bother much with formal goals or numbers; however, I can see the uses of a challenge or two;-). I did note that this year, because of LT, I documented my reading better than I ever have in the past.

teelgee, #13, If you are interested in learning to read more carefully, you might enjoy Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. Although I read and loved it, I regret to say I have failed (so far) to slow down.

Thanks rebeccanyc -- I have that book but haven't slowed down long enough to read it! LOL! It's fairly high on my TBR pile.

I have also been slightly concerned with my reading speed. I have read a little over 100 books in 2007, and I can't help feeling that there are some that I didn't give enough care and attention to at the time. In general, I don't try too hard with books, I sort of challenge them to grab me, rather than challenging myself to enjoy all my reads (does this make sense to anyone?), so if a book completely fails I tend to blame the author rather than my attention span. However, I am worried about reading to quickly and, as Avaland notes above, having a goal or doing a challenge doesn't help. I think a New Years resolution to only read when I am capable of paying attention, and to re-read where my attention wanders, is in order.

Also, as an irrelevant observation on my bookshelf psychology, I tend to find that new arrivals on my bookshelf look very interesting,but that when they have been there unread for a couple of months I then assume that they are boring. I have owned one poor book for over two years now, and am struggling to start it because I am so utterly fed up with looking at it. Is this normal?

Depressaholic,

It is true that more often I have looked a book and decided not to read it this time, the less and less interesting it appears. Every now and then I take a bunch of these long unread, apparently uninteresting books, say 5 -10, and tell myself I have to read them before I tackle anything else. If I start one and don't like it I can get rid of it. Usually I find most of them turn out to be very good.

Poetry is apt to slow one's reading down. I've never been able to read poetry quickly.

2007 brought a lot of variety to my reading. I found many great suggestions in reading these threads and began to venture into reading more from other cultures. Notable reads in that vein were The Reluctant Fundamentalist and A Long Way Gone. Also delved into some science fiction (Red Mars, Ender's Game) and YA fiction with the Harry Potter series among others. Highlights for this year include moving into our own home; our bedroom has a separate sitting area which is being transformed into the "book nook" :-) One of my 2008 goals is to really organize all my books now that I have the space to do it, and get them tagged.

Also for 2008 I am aiming to really delve into international fiction. I have begun my journey through Africa; I may start a thread to chronicle this as avaland kindly suggested. I have a nice stack of books built up thanks to recommendations from here and am looking forward to immersing myself in the continent. I'm also fascinated by the Middle East and hope to expand my travels into that region later this year.

I had a Reading Across Borders Challenge that I participated in this year. The links are reviews to my blog at 1morechapter.com. Sorry, I just couldn't go back and change everything to touchstones. Hope that's okay. I also apologize for all the bold FINISHED titles. I was too lazy to take them all out.

It was a good year!

Reading Across Borders Challenge
My original goal was to have at least 10 books in translation in 10 different original languages, which I did meet. I then expanded it to include works published in English with a foreign setting and author. For additional reference, but not really included in this challenge, I listed books with foreign settings by American authors. I'm kind of unsure about Neil Gaiman and Geraldine Brooks. Do they have dual citizenship or just live in the U.S.? I think Brooks may have US citizenship because she won the Pulitzer for March. I didn't include that book on this list, but I did include Year of Wonders. I may get to add Queen of the Tambourine to this list, we'll see if I can finish it today.

So the total comes to:

• 14 works in translation


• 32 works by foreign authors with foreign settings (in addition to those above)
  


• 8 works with foreign settings by American authors

As I see those statistics, I'm very pleased. I'm sure I may have made some mistakes somewhere, but no one's perfect. It was a good year for reading, and I'm looking forward to even more 'reading across borders' in 2008.

10 Different Original Languages (14 titles):

The Birds by Arisophanes (Greek) FINISHED
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (German) FINISHED
The Little Prince by Exupery (French) FINISHED
Mad Shadows by Marie-Claire Blais (French; Canadian setting) FINISHED
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (French) FINISHED
Veronika Decides to Die by Paolo Coelho (Portuguese; setting in Slovenia) FINISHED
The Wreath by Ingrid Undset (Norwegian) FINISHED
The Bookseller of Kabul by Seierstad (Norwegian; setting in Afghanistan) FINISHED
The Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano (Spanish) FINISHED
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Russian) FINISHED
Complete Tales of Nikolai Gogol, Vol. 1 (Russian) FINISHED
Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather by Gao Xingjian (Chinese) FINISHED
Travels of Marco Polo (Old French/Italian debate) FINISHED
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (Swedish) FINISHED

Published in English by non-American authors (32 titles):

Atonement Ian McEwan (UK) FINISHED
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana) FINISHED
Silas Marner by George Eliot FINISHED (British author)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Congo) FINISHED
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED (Scottish author)
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins FINISHED (British author)
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (Scottish author) FINISHED
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (India) FINISHED
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Germany; Australian author) FINISHED
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Canada/USA) FINISHED
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Canadian author) FINISHED
The Translator by Leila Aboulela (Sudan/Scotland) FINISHED
The Bone People by Keri Hulme (New Zealand) FINISHED
Wild Swans by Jung Chang (China) FINISHED
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (England) FINISHED
Phantastes by George MacDonald (Scottish author) FINISHED
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (British author) FINISHED
The Sea by John Banville (Ireland) FINISHED
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Canada) FINISHED
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India) FINISHED
Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie (Nigeria) FINISHED
Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana) FINISHED
Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro (British author) FINISHED
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (England) FINISHED
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (British author) FINISHED
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (British author) FINISHED
This Year It Will Be Different by Maeve Binchy (Irish author) FINISHED
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan) FINISHED
The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens (British author) FINISHED
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (British location/Australian author) FINISHED
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (British author) FINISHED
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (British author) FINISHED

Published in English with foreign settings by American authors (8 titles):

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (China) FINISHED
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Italy, Indonesia, India) FINISHED
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (Denmark) FINISHED
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Jamaica) FINISHED
The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (Britain) FINISHED
The White Stag by Kate Seredy (Hungary) FINISHED
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (Peru) FINISHED
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Canada) FINISHED

Wow, 3M3m, that's really interesting. Lots to think about here. I wonder what my year would look like if I stacked it up as you did. Definitely not as impressive, but an interesting exercise all the same.

booksloth, perhaps you have misunderstood this thread? which is to assess the previous year's (not current) reading?

If you are reading with intention of exploring the world through the literature of other countries; challenging oneself to become less ethnocentric, if you will, through reading; then you may wish to start your own thread here as others have done so that others may follow your excursions across the globe! Otherwise, just posting the list of what you're reading might be more effective on another type of thread/group - say, the 75 Book Challenge group - which is where I post all my reading, even though it will most likely end up to be more than 75 books! (also, I post there because not all my reading would necessarily fall in with the intent of this group; I post my relevant titles here).

Once you read some of the other threads here, you will see what we all about. We welcome your addition to our little group of global explorers:-)

Here's the link to the 75 book challenge group:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/75bookschallengefor2

Oops, got it wrong again. Bye!

I have my reading journal at hand, but only my list since July 2007.

My travels took me to:

Japan/Hard boiled Wonderland and The End of The Worldby Haruki Murakami
France/Abundance by Sara Jeter Naslund
Italy/In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant
Alaska/The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
Korea/China/War Trash by Ha Jin
England/Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Africa/A Far Country by Daniel Mason
Iraq/The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Burma/The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
Around Europe/Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
EnglandYear of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

That was without thinking too much about it, because I joined LT in January 2008, so now I am even more motivated to broaden my global horizons. Lt is just great!

This is not a complete list by any means, but I would like to mention some writers that were new to me, or whose work became more important to me as I read more of it. The latter is true especially of Leo Perutz.

My method, such as it is, is to try to discover important writers from other cultures, and then read as many of their books as possible.

In the last year, some of the writers for whom I did this are Ivo Andric,
sandor Marai,
Ingeborg Bachmann,
Arno Schmidt,
A. L. Kennedy,
Nathan Englander,
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
Tzitzi dangarembga,
amy Levy,
monica Ali,
zakes Mda,
Buchi Emecheta,
Zbigniew Herbert,
Czeslaw Milosz,
Adam Zagajewski
Wyslawa symborska
Kenneth Rexroth,
Irene nemirovsky.
Philip Larkin

The Larkin, Rexroth, Milosz, Zagajewski, Symborska and Herbert were listed because for most of them I finally acquired the complete poems, where before i had only read small amounts.

I have surprised myself by liking the Polish poets best of all the post world war ii poets. It was the awarding of the Nobel prizes to milosz and symborska that brought them to my attention. And discovering the Mr Cogito poems of Herbert.

Until then, my favorites had been Auden, Eliot, Pound, Celan, Neruda, Vallejo, and Akhmatova.