I spoke with Simon from Stuck in the books on Twitter. He had mentioned he was thinking of doing another century of books. This is something he has done a couple of times over the time I have known of his blog. In fact last time he did it I did think about doing something similar but held off well. This time I am going to review books in trnalstion for each year between 1924 – 2023. The year will be the year the book was published in there original language. I had in mind to try for 100 countries, but I feel that it may be asking too much. But I will try to read as widely as possible so I can cover as many countries as I can. I am not putting a time frame on this at the moment. So far, I have looked at the first two years, 1924 and 1925. I have one book on my shelf for 1924 I read a number of years ago and failed to review and that is Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi it is an NYRB book and was widely reviewed when it appeared a few years ago I think that is why I didn’t review it. It is the tale of a spinster and her parents as she is sent away. I’m looking forward to reading this one again. Then, in 1925, one book jumped out at me on the list of books from that year. It was Chaka by Thomas Mofolo, one of the earliest African writers to be published. He wrote in the 20s, and this book came out in 1925. and he had spent some years working on this book, which follows the rise and fall of a Zulu warrior King. There is an online number of this book available, so I will make this my 1925 book. I think after that, I will move from decade to decade, doing a couple of years at a time rather than going year by year. I think 1960 may be the next stop and for that I have Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz which came out last year in a new translation I think I may have the old translation as well to compare. Anyway, that is part of the journey. This is going to be fun project I loved it when I saw how Simon did it for his taste in books. I’m hoping to find as many books around the world as I can to make this a journey of discovery. Here is a link to Simon’s 2018 Century of Books a few books I have read on his list.
What aa marvellous project, it will be fun seeing how you do it.
I’ve been working on an Australian century of books, and it’s more difficult than it looks because Australia didn’t really have its own publishing industry for the first few decades. There was some private publishing, mostly poetry, and some publishing in newspapers (mostly short stories and poetry) but almost everything else was published in the UK. The book I’ve just reviewed, Working Bullocks, for example, was first published in the UK, and that was in 1926.
Still, I’ve made some progress, and half the fun is in finding the books!
Over at 4-Mystery Addicts there’s a group challenge to read one book per decade of for the past 120 years – that’s 1 book per month going through the decades from 1900 to now. I didn’t do it last year but this year I might try, limiting my selections to “mysteries” not too tightly defined. I’ve got leads this year.
Well, that’s a great project, Stu, and good luck with it. I’ll be very interested to see what books you choose!
What a great idea – and Skylark is a wonderful book to start with!
I’m looking forward to seeing how the project goes! And I loved Skylark. Fittingly, I’m just finishing A World Between Covers by Ann Morgan, about reading a book from every country over a year.
This is an intriguing idea. I may try it with the added constraint that every choice has to come from the hundreds of unread books on my shelves, if at all possible. I need to rein in my impulsive requests for so-so current library books and get to the classics I’ve been collecting. Thanks for the inspiration. I’ll be looking forward to your excavations in the years farther back.
That sounds a fascinating project – not only are you going to visit many different countries but the span of a century will likely give you books that are very different in scope and style.
Exactly that’s what appealing to
Me about it the scope of books I can read