Bucket List: How Many Countries Are Represented?

So I was thinking about the last post. In it I mentioned a possible change of genre after finishing the next few books, and that may well happen. But in the meantime, three more books were added to the Bucket List. These are

• Waves (Bei Dao)
• The Calcutta Syndrome (Amitav Ghosh)
• Cry the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)

As written in a previous post, I want to read books that encompass as many genres as possible; to make the bucket list “well-rounded”. That is what got me thinking. Most of the entries on the bucket list are books or authors I have read or heard about. There are only a few I haven’t heard about. So, I did some thinking and decided that to truly be “well rounded”, the bucket list should also include books authored by people from different countries. At last count, I believe there are around 220 named countries.

I did  a little research, and for the 198 books currently listed in the bucket list the following countries are represented (via author).  

• Afghanistan
• Asia/Middle East
• Australia
• Canada
• China
• Colombia
• England
• France
• Germany
• India
• Ireland
• Japan
• Netherlands
• Poland
• Russia
• Scotland
• South Africa
• Spain
• Sweden
• United States

That makes 20 countries. And it may be because the books I read are written predominantly in English, but the bulk of the authors are from England and United States.

The three most recent book selections were written by authors from the following countries: China, India and South Africa. They were selected not only because of the authors' countries, but also because the books' synopses sounded interesting. And I am looking forward to reading them. It will be interesting to compare the writing techniques, mannerisms, and general psychology of each book.

I am also breaking the books down by genre. I decided on using a high level list of genres, which is posted here: http://mybucketofbooks.blogspot.com/p/book-genres.html. It will be interesting to see what genres are not included in the bucket list; at least not yet.

If you are a fan of www.goodreads.com, I updated my "To read" list with all the books on the bucket list that I haven't yet read. These, in addition to the other books I already has listed as "To read", means there are about 150 books yet to read.

Update - I just finished reading The Lost Years, by Mary Higgins Clark. For anyone who enjoys Mary Higgins Clark, don't bother with this one. It was written like an afterthought and is painfully bad.

Until next time, Happy Reading!