Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

(A spin off from the discussion in Week 2's check-in)

Here's a place for us to geek out about how incredibly awesomely fun it is to make a map of your books. Maybe a map of all the books' settings, maybe a map of where all the authors are from, maybe something else ...

Use this to get started: World Map Chart

Then show us your map! Talk about maps!

Unfortunately, it is a pain to load images into Goodreads posts - you need to upload them somewhere else on the Internet, like flickr or photobucket or even Shutterfly or Facebook, and then link to that image. I don't have a good place to load photos, so I rarely do this.

This is my map of where the authors from the books I read are (were) born:

Orange is from 2017 and green from 2016 (not overlap)

I really love this idea. When I was reading through week 2 update. I was thinking to ask you guys if you track by authors nationality or where the book takes place?

Never checked this but would be fun to see. I think mine will be a few spots on the map and thats it... Maybe I should make it a goal to go around the world.

This is such a great idea! I'm really curious how mine will turn out. I'll share as soon as I get some colors on there. I'm also excited for yours.

Anabell wrote: "I really love this idea. When I was reading through week 2 update. I was thinking to ask you guys if you track by authors nationality or where the book takes place?

Never checked this but would b..."

I track the author's nationality. Some authors are difficult to pin down. For example: Mary Balogh, Wales or Canada? Neil Gaiman, UK or USA? Eli Wiesel, Hungary or Israel? (In those cases, I chose: Wales, UK, and Israel. So I'm not consistent. )

I had grand plans today to create my maps, but those punk kids of mine keep asking me to do things with them! So ... maybe tomorrow.

I think I was the one who started this conversation in the other thread but I will re-post my map here. Mine is based on the setting rather than the author's nationality because I feel that I am still learning about a different culture even if its from a less authentic source.

This is from all of my read books on Goodreads

Not sure if this will work for the image or not...

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1559372...

This is based on the setting of the book, including all my read books on Goodreads, and a couple others I noticed skimming over my shelves than had other settings. (I've only been updating goodreads for a couple of years, so it's not a complete record.)

The Historian helped me out a lot in western Europe. :-)

Well I just did a map of where the authors are from (I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi so I'm not sure how a map of settings would work out) and I was pleasantly surprised. For starters, I'd wager that a good 30-50% of the authors I read are from somewhere in the UK (I'm from the U.S.). Not diverse necessarily but I was surprised by how many were on there.

While I am definitely aiming to increase the list for next year: China, Australia, Portugal, India, Israel and Poland all made the list. There were a few British authors that were technically born in other countries (Phillipa Gregory was born in Kenya!) but I didn't count them as being from there. Felt like cheating. I'll upload the map later if I can. Photobucket is giving me issues and I'm not sure it's worth it. Definitely aiming for more next year.

awwww I did mine, but it won't play nice with Explorer, which is my only browser both at home and at work :-( So I can't save my image. My old computer is limping along and I'm afraid it will crash entirely if I load Chrome. (For some reason Firefox just ... stopped working last year. it won't open. Application error.) I will see if I can do it in Safari on my iPad.

I just did one with setting of the books instead of author nationality, but only for 2017. I will try to expand it to all my read list. I also read a lot of SF.

Nadine wrote: " I had grand plans today to create my maps, but those punk kids of mine keep asking me to do things with them! So ... maybe tomorrow. ..."

Well that is just plain rude of them wanting to spend time with you, don't they understand the importance of mapping ones books ;-) And don't even get me started on spreadsheets...

I love doing this - I've been participating in the Around the World in 80 Books challenge for a few years now, and each year I get a little more diverse (still not close to 80, but it's a work in progress). I also do it for the states (USA), and last year for the first time I read a book set in each of the 50 states plus DC.

What I learned by doing geography challenges is that a large number of popular books are set in US, Canada, UK, France, and Germany, and in New York, California, and DC. It was a big challenge (for me at least) to branch out to find some of the smaller countries, or even some of the less populated states (like the Dakotas, Wyoming, etc.). Definitely helps with reading diversity. Plus, there are a lot of books where determining a setting is not nearly as easy as you would think.

I use these maps because they have a link you can use to post your map without having to host an image:
Countries: https://bighugelabs.com/map.php
States: https://m.maploco.com/visited-states/

Anabell wrote: "I was thinking to ask you guys if you track by authors nationality or where the book takes place? "

I track by the nationality. Only with very difficult countries I will accept someone who is not from there but even then I hope that they have at least lived there or have some other connection. Too many times I have come across something that might even be the opposite of how the majority of locals think or act. There even might be some glaring mistakes that could have been avoided with simple research but the author haven't bothered to do even that.

Oh, and thanks, that is a better map site than I have previously seen.

Thanks, Tania, for the link!!

Does this work? Does it save the map?

This is my 2017 map of authors' nationalities (19 countries):



Reading tiny countries has little impact - you can hardly see Jamaica and the Dominican Republic and Malaysia on here!

And my 2016 map of authors (20 countries - I was surprised I did better the year I was NOT tracking it!):

Anabell wrote: "Well that is just plain rude of them wanting to spend time with you, don't they understand the importance of mapping ones books ;-) And don't even get me started on spreadsheets...."

LOL I knew you guys would understand my struggle! :-)

I love this idea. I did one for my 2017 reads, by setting. A fair few UK and US ones, but a good range of others.

Not shown on map - Pacific ocean, Wonderland, a time loop, and Gilead.

Here is my 2017 map by book setting:



Reading big countries always makes the map look fuller - in my case that is the US, Canada, and Russia. I finished 23 countries last year.

Tania wrote: "I use these maps because they have a link you can use to post your map without having to host an image:
Countries: https://bighugelabs.com/map.php
States: https://m.maploco.com/visited-states/ "

Another perk to this site is that you can just check off the country from an alphabetical list, instead of having to know obscure geography. :-)

Here's my lifetime (ish) reading by setting on the new map site:

By author nationality, everything on my goodreads "read" list. 18 countries.

2017 Settings



15 actual countries, plus space, Themyscira, at sea, Treasure Island, Nollop, The Interdependency, The Moon, North Pole, Dinosaur Island

2016 Settings



16 countries I can remember, plus Duat, Moletown, space

I love this! I'm a nerd for data and stats, and especially if it's visualized!!

I'm reading authors from 12 countries:

This is such a great idea! I've mapped my 2017 reading list by authors' nationalities and - well, I guess I should read more by authors from the Southern hemisphere...

I really think this is cool....how the heck did you do it though. I have been trying to figure it out and even watched to tutorial but it won't work for me. :(

Thank you Mellanie for showing up in my notifications with this post.
These maps look awesome and now I want to do it too :)
I'm trying to read around the world since last year and track it all on a list with all the countries. But this looks so much more fun!

Btw I count both setting and authors nationality for a country but try to include books with both from the same country if possible.

I'm setting up my spreadsheet and will map from there. Now I'm wondering how to find good books for the more difficult countries... Is there a discussion somewhere else on Goodreads where people post recommendations for the books their reading that cover different countries? Should we start a new thread here?

Lauren wrote: "I'm setting up my spreadsheet and will map from there. Now I'm wondering how to find good books for the more difficult countries... Is there a discussion somewhere else on Goodreads where people po..."

The Around the World in 80 Books Goodreads group is a great source of potential titles, though a lot of the discussions don't include much information on each book. There was also a woman who tried to read a book from every country in the world over the course of a year, and she published her list. I can't remember the name of her project, but she should be pretty easy to find through google.
Up to this point I've had so many countries to choose from I've been able to be pretty haphazard about finding books, but those days are numbered. :-) I would love to hear how other people are finding their books.

Lauren wrote: "I'm setting up my spreadsheet and will map from there. Now I'm wondering how to find good books for the more difficult countries... Is there a discussion somewhere else on Goodreads where people po..."

It may seem like an odd source, but Pinterest has a ton of book lists by country. And once you open/click on/save on of those lists you get a million others! They have some pretty obscure/smaller places as well.

Thanks for the suggestions! I found this discussion in the "Around the World..." group: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

So I plan on reading a book from each of the 50 states. Im'm wondering, should I also break Canada down and read one book per provence?

This should be an interesting challenge. I think I will start with the North America and then tackle each of the continents.

A basic idea of where my reading has been set so far this year..

Well, I finished putting my list of countries together, including some territories. I'm horrible at geography so just doing this was helpful. How I need to decide which maos I'm going to use to color and then I'm going to take it to Office Max to have it bound. I expect this will be a multi year project. Is anyone part of a groip that discusses books in different coj tries? I'm amazed at how I've srarted noticing settings already.

Karen wrote: "Well, I finished putting my list of countries together, including some territories. I'm horrible at geography so just doing this was helpful. How I need to decide which maos I'm going to use to col..."

I'm technically in the https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/... group, but I don't really participate. Love the idea, but the specific books or discussion format or something just haven't clicked with me.

Hmm, well maybe a new broup. I have about 190 countries on my list and I've divided the us and Canada i to their states and provences. Yep, definitely a multi year project.

This is my map for book setting for 2019 thus far:

so fun! I'm gonna do it, too!

Sooo fun to look through my goodreads books I couldn't stop, so I mapped all of my books on gr from 2017 to present. I was nerdy good fun to try to remember the setting and even used Wikipedia to help charge my memory on some. The Patrick O'Brian books gave me lots of placed to add. Thanks for the great idea.

I'm going old school. I have all my continent maps ready to color.

So I want to do some fun geography prompts to get me started on my Reading Around the World challenge. Some ideas,
Spell a coungry
Germany
Equador
Romania
Maldives
Armenia
Nairobi
Yugoslavia

Scavenger hunt
A country with tourism as a main industry
A country with hig rainfall...

Spell your name cojntey list

What are some other ideas?

I plan on doing a Reading Around the World multi year challenge. I've got a list of 198 countries as well as the United States broken down by state and Canada broken down by provence. I'm thinking of starting a new group with challenges related to reading the cou tries. I'm looking for so eone(s) who'd be i teresred in running the geoup with me. If you're interested please send me a message. I don't have timeline for starting.

EDIT

Here's a link to the challenge sheets and maps I'm using.
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%2...

It was really fun and I realized I need to read from way more other countries but so far it is my list.