Around the World in 80 Books discussion

Looking ahead to the upcoming year, here what is planned so far:

World Tour: We will "visit" the following countries:

January: Jordan
February: Afghanistan
March: Tajikistan
April: Marshall Islands
May: Belize
June: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
July/August: Liechtenstein
September: Malta
October: Moldova
November: Madagascar
December: Namibia


I need nominations for monthly themes, for both the books of the month and the monthly challenges. I prefer that all least one of the themes focuses on some variation of translated literature.

What themes would you like to see for 2020?

I love the list of countries. Many are ones I've still not been to.

How about translated works written prior to 1900?

Murder mysteries?

Thank you for the 2020 country list. Looks great! Look forward to Madagascar.

I really enjoyed our world memoir theme this year.

Other theme ideas: Non fiction? Cookbooks of different cuisines?

Great list! Murders and mysteries, I'd love that.

Thank you for the 2020 list Diane!

I'd love to continue the Women in translation theme.

I'd also be interested in history as a theme. History could be interpreted quite broadly to include, for example, memoirs and graphic novels addressing historical events, as well as more traditional history books.

Maybe books relating to famous rivers like the Nile, the Mississippi, etc.

Since 2020 is the standard of good distance vision, what about a theme using vision: titles each month contain forms of "vision", "visualize", "see", "watch", etc.?

These countries look great. A couple of tough ones, but the search should be fun. I did tire of the memoir theme. Perhaps we could use four themes 3 months each or rotate) for monthly book discussions so we don’t burn out on any one of them.

So .. translated

1. historical fiction or mystery/detective
2. Travel
3. Coming of age/Bildungsroman
4. Myths, folktales, legends

for Belize, books relating to the Mayan culture would be great.

Carla wrote: "Since 2020 is the standard of good distance vision, what about a theme using vision: titles each month contain forms of "vision", "visualize", "see", "watch", etc.?"

Brilliant

My entire ATW 80 is made up of Thrillers, horror, fantasy and science fiction. I refuse to believe that authors in other countries only do historical fiction or non-fiction; which is what I see posted most of the time.

ssoooo

Themes!??

Horror
Science Fiction
Fantasy

For themes, seems like migration could be timely. I love nature writing, and sports writing is another one that doesn't come into my life unless I seek it out, but is a really interesting window into another culture. Families is a good broad theme. I second the food/cooking theme. Teaching/school/education could be a fun theme. I'm currently living in Portland, OR, and October is Portland Textiles Month -- that might have some fun theme possibilities and tie in to a new audience, too, if that's of any interest ... Oh man, I love themes so much. I'd better quit now before I derail my whole day by just thinking about themes all the time.

So many good ideas, Rachel! And I wanted to participate in fewer challenges next year.... I feel like I'm going to be too tempted again! ;-)

Rachel wrote: "For themes, seems like migration could be timely. I love nature writing, and sports writing is another one that doesn't come into my life unless I seek it out, but is a really interesting window in..."

I like the idea of a migration theme!

Rachel wrote: "For themes, seems like migration could be timely. I love nature writing, and sports writing is another one that doesn't come into my life unless I seek it out, but is a really interesting window in..."

Cheryl wrote: "Rachel wrote: "For themes, seems like migration could be timely. I love nature writing, and sports writing is another one that doesn't come into my life unless I seek it out, but is a really intere..."

I agree. Migration seems interesting. It might be hard to categorize the country a book takes place in; could be the start, the end or sometimes places in between.

I'm also interested in a migration theme.

I'm happy to be back for 2020. After an extremely busy couple of years where serious reading got pushed to the background a bit, I'm really happy to be back and participating in 2020!

I'm looking forward to taking part in the TBR Takedown in 2020 - this wasn't running when last I was taking part, and this challenge excites me a lot.

I like the idea of migration, but I also like the idea of adoption, as in author's who have adopted another country as their own, or who have been drawn into a country other than their own in some wonderful way (a la Paul Powles and Morocco).

I love the idea's mentioned so far of 2020 and connections with vision, visualise etc, as well as migration.

Any ideas on how to structure the migration/adoption theme for each month?

Diane wrote: "Any ideas on how to structure the migration/adoption theme for each month?"

How about using one of the top "host" or "birth" countries as a broad theme each month?

According to the the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (https://www.un.org/development/desa/e...) the countries that host the largest number of migrants are: the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, France, Canada, Australia and Italy. The countries in which the largest number of migrants were born are: India, Mexico, China, the Russian Federation, and the Syrian Arab Republic.

We could alternate between "host" and "birth" countries from month to month. So, for example, the January theme might be migration to the United States, the February theme might be migration from India, and so on. Group members could nominate any books that somehow related to the month's theme. So, in the January example, books could be: written by an author who had migrated to the United States; discuss the policy/politics of immigration in the United States; recount the experiences of a particular community of immigrants in the United States, etc. We could potentially include a couple of "free for all" months at the end of the year where we could nominate any books related to migration.

The above arrangement would give us some structure while still allowing participants to nominate a variety of books. It would also allow us to count many of the books for particular countries in our other ATW80 challenges.

This is just one possibility. I'm sure there are lots of others!

Cheryl wrote: "Diane wrote: "Any ideas on how to structure the migration/adoption theme for each month?"

How about using one of the top "host" or "birth" countries as a broad theme each month?

According to the..."

Thanks!

Theme-
1.Debut book of an author
2. Book about books.

Cheryl wrote: "Diane wrote: "Any ideas on how to structure the migration/adoption theme for each month?"

How about using one of the top "host" or "birth" countries as a broad theme each month?

According to the..."

Cheryl wrote: "Diane wrote: "Any ideas on how to structure the migration/adoption theme for each month?"

How about using one of the top "host" or "birth" countries as a broad theme each month?

According to the..."

Cheryl wrote: "Diane wrote: "Any ideas on how to structure the migration/adoption theme for each month?"

How about using one of the top "host" or "birth" countries as a broad theme each month?

According to the..."

I like this idea as you will get the opportunity to focus on specifc factors/scenarios in areas of the world either driving people to locate or being seen as ideal destination.

Diane wrote: "Any ideas on how to structure the migration/adoption theme for each month?"
The top host or birth countries are for recent migration. How about a month or two focused on historical migrations? Ideas: emigration of Irish during the potato famine, settlement of Palestine post-WWII, mass swap of Greeks and Turks in 1922, European colonization of Africa and the Americas, unwilling migrants such as the slave trade and Australian penal colonies.

As a migrant I love the migration theme but I also agree with Alondra about genre variety and heavy subjects. People migrate for all kinds of reasons, not just sad ones, like famine or war. Obviously economic reasons are the main ones, but some people do it for adventure, to be with other family, for weather or, as in my case for love.
So maybe we could intersperse adventure and love in between mass migration and economic depression.

Hi all, I am new to the group, so I will introduce myself briefly - I am Yoli, based in Switzerland. In past years I concentrated on reading as many books as I could find from Zimbabwe and Colombia, and would like to continue the discovery journey. I read mainly in English, Spanish and German. Being a migrant myself I also find migrant literature to be a very interesting theme.

Diane wrote: "Looking ahead to the upcoming year, here what is planned so far:

World Tour: We will "visit" the following countries:

January: Jordan
February: Afghanistan
March: Tajikistan
April: Marshall Islan..."

I love the list of countries and most I have not read literature from in the past.