Where in the World? 

I’ve been watching a bit (actually a LOT) of BookTube recently and one of the things that keeps popping up is the idea, or challenge, of reading something from every country. Whilst I’m certainly not looking to complete or even try for that particular goal, I did start thinking about just how wide (or narrow!) my fiction reading was. I already had a pretty good idea that most of my fiction reading would be based in the UK and US but I knew that, from time to time, I did travel out of my usual safe places. Below is the list of countries my fiction reading has been located in over the last 10 years. There are caveats, however. I didn’t include any SF or Fantasy novels and I haven’t included any book that didn’t have a clear place of occupation. If a novel moved between countries too often, I ended up dismissing it as being too complicated. In all I managed just 26 countries out of 194 (193 members plus The Vatican) recognised by the UN. That’s pretty pitiful [lol]. Looking through various book piles here over the last few days I can’t see this number increasing by leaps and bounds going forward. I am going to try though – at least to the extent when I pick something new and interesting to read, I’ll try to take its location into account and add a few extra countries along the way. I’ll see where we get to in a year's time. But, if I’ve only managed 26 countries in 10 years I’ll be more than happy with adding just 2-3 new ones per year! Note: the countries listed here do not reflect the nationality of the author involved but simply reflects the geographical location where the novel was (at least primarily) set.   

Afghanistan – 2
Australia - 1
Canada - 1
China – 1
Crete - 1
Cuba - 1
England – 46
Estonia - 1
France – 10
Germany - 5
Greece - 1
Holland - 1
India – 2
Ireland – 1
Italy - 3
Jamaica - 1
Japan – 1
Norway – 1
Malaya - 1
Portugal – 2
Russia – 2
Spain – 2
Sweden - 3
Scotland – 2
Turkey - 2
USA - 37