My year reading a book from every country in the worldAnn Morgan
It's often said that you can tell
a lot about a person by looking at what's on their bookshelves. What do my bookshelves say about me? Well, when I asked myself
this question a few years ago, I made an alarming discovery. I'd always thought of myself
as a fairly cultured, cosmopolitan sort of person. But my bookshelves told
a rather different story.
Pretty much all the titles on them were by British or North American authors, and there was almost
nothing in translation. Discovering this massive,
cultural blind spot in my reading came as quite a shock. And when I thought about it,
it seemed like a real shame. I knew there had to be lots
of amazing stories out there by writers working in languages
other than English.
And it seemed really sad to think
that my reading habits meant I would probably never encounter them. So, I decided to prescribe myself an intensive course of global reading. 2012 Was set to be a very
international year for the UK; i