Monday, April 26, 2010

Reading Globally



I saw this post over at Weekly Geeks and am pleased to put in my two cents worth here. 

Weekly Geeks asks the following questions (in bold); my answers are in regular typeface.
  • Do you deliberately read globally, and if so, do you track your reading in this area?  -- Yes, actually, I do read globally, but haven't specifically tracked my reading. I will now.
  • Have you joined any reading challenges which encourage reading from around the world? If so, what are they? Currently I'm involved in the Scandinavian Reading Challenge hosted by Amy at The Black Sheep Dances, the Typically British Reading Challenge hosted over at Book Chick City, and the Aussie Author Challenge hosted by Book Lover Book Reviews. Sadly, I haven't yet posted my one Aussie book of the year so far, but I'll get there.
  • Do you visit bloggers who blog outside of your country? If so, what have you learned from reading their blogs? Consider sharing a couple of links to book bloggers who motivate you to read around the world.  I read a few. There's Maxine's lovely blog over at Petrona, as well as The Asylum from the UK; I am always reading Eurocrime, and the list goes on.
  • Where do your reading around the globe book suggestions come from? Magazines? Web sites which feature books in translation? Publishers? Other bloggers? If you have a particularly great site for recommendations, give us a link!  One of my favorite places for books in translation is La Bloga, where you can find Spanish-language books in translation, and there's Words Without Borders.  To find new books I just kind of buzz the internet. 
  • Do you read books in translation as part of your global reading experiences? Share some of your favorite books in translation. Constantly. In fact, I think a huge part of my library consists of books in translation.  Some of the favorites: anything by Jo Nesbo, Arnaldur Indridason, and other Scandinavian crime writers, and I love Arturo Perez-Reverte's early stuff (The Flanders Panel, The Fencing Master, etc.). I have books in translation from China, Japan, India, and several other places. Too many good ones to mention, but I love books by Akimitsu Takagi (e.g. The Tattoo Murder Case), Yukio Mishima, Mo Yan (Red Sorghum), Su Tong (Raise the Red Lantern and Rice), again...way too many to list. Lots of books from Germany and Latin America. Wow. I should start tracking it, shouldn't I?

2 comments:

  1. I thought I read more globally than I actually do when I started tracking. I'm sure some of that is the paucity of translated literature but I hope to work on it anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think you just have to find it first, but there's a lot out there. It also depends on what you like. Thanks for the comment!

    ReplyDelete

Say what you will, but at least try to be nice about it.