Reading Globally II Challenge in 2023: Read Locally

The attempt in 2022 to get something going went nowhere so let's try again in 2023.

Here is a challenge for 12 books in the year:

Rules:
1. Read a book(fiction or non-fiction) from an author who was born or lived in the area and is considered local author for the area.
2. The book is set in the same area. The more local the book is, the better.
3. Take the areas in any order as long as you fill all 12 slots in the year.
4. Bonus 12 books: Read a poetry book or a very local history or a very local geography book by an author from the area for each area. Examples will be history of a small village or the biography of someone who was important locally or something along these lines or the autobiography of someone local. An issue of a local magazine or newspaper may also work. We are trying to go the opposite of global for this. I am going for poetry personally for the bonus but as not everyone reads poetry, there are the other options.

The areas:
1. The United Kingdom: England
2. The United Kingdom: Northern Ireland
3. The United Kingdom: Scotland
4. The United Kingdom: Wales
5. Ireland
6. The United States: The continental 48 states + DC
7. The United States: Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa
8. Canada: The Territories: Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut
9. Canada: The Provinces: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan
10. Australia: The continental part
11. Australia: Tasmania and the rest of the islands
12. New Zealand

Anyone interested in joining?

>1 AnnieMod: Most certainly! Off to search my vast TBR!

>2 Tess_W: Welcome to the Challenge. I was starting to wonder if I will be talking to myself here. :)

>3 AnnieMod: You might make an invitation post in the Category Challenge! I know that many of us prefer geo based reading.

>4 Tess_W: That's not a bad idea - I am going to post into the GeoChallenge in there (who does not like bonus points) :)

Sounds great! I love reading locally.

Good idea. As an Australian, I'd suggest that the population of Tasmania and the other islands (population microscopic. Are you thinking of Norfolk Island, Kangaroo Island, Rottnest Island, Philip Island and others so tiny they don't come to mind?) is so small compared to mainland Australia that the island category might be better eliminated. Also, Tasmanians themselves do not like to be considered to be separate from the rest of Australia.

Estimated population of Tasmania in 2021: 567,909
Estimated population of Australia, including Tasmania, 2022: 25,963,600

I'd suggest two categories: Eastern States and ACT (Qld, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania); the centre and west (NT, WA, SA). These are the geographical divisions we normally think of. The population of the Eastern states is still much larger though.

>7 pamelad: Neither are the Canadian territories considering themselves (too) different from the provinces. But I needed to split Australia and Canada to make up 12. I considered the usual splits but... the idea is to go locally and there are enough big centers in both parts for Australia that noone will even think of Tasmania or anything that is not the big continent. Thus the split - it does not imply that they are different, it does say that we want to read something from and about a place that is not so well known without more obvious choices coming in the way.

Born Into This is an example of the type of books I was thinking of when I split Tasmania and the islands from the continental Australia. The idea is to highlight, to force people to look for something different and unexpected and not to claim that it is somehow very different.

>9 pamelad: If people struggle with it, we can always shift it a bit later in the year. I am going to keep an eye on what comes into that slot (and I am going to go dig for books from there). :)

Just dropping this link here: Tasmanian Literary Awards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Literary_Awards

Just want to be sure I'm getting this correctly.......for example.....if I want to read local Welsh I could read something by Dylan Thomas if it was written about a specific town or area in Wales?

>11 Tess_W: Anything about Wales or set in Wales will be eligible and count but if it is about a small town in there, even better. Make it as local as you want (or can) - if you want, keep it into the area only (novels set in London are eligible for England if written by an English author but it will be a lot more fun to find something about a small village :) )

The main idea is to read about new places even inside of the places we always read about and maybe learn about new places.

If you mean about the poetry/local magazine/local history bonus: Yes, that will work to cover it.

PS: and imaginary places can also count: Annie Dunne would be a perfect fit for Ireland even if its setting does not exactly exist - it is based on real places and it is as Irish as you can go.

Years ago I participated in Reading Globally but then switched over to CAT challenges. I want to do them all (!!) but at the pace I read, I will likely dip in and out. Is that acceptable to other participants here?

>13 beebeereads: Of course - stop by when you have time/want to. :) That’s why it is a year long challenge - and if you chose only parts of it, that’s fine as well. Everyone is welcome - for a single book, for all 12, for all 12+12 or for as many as they want to. Or even for no book if they just want to listen in and talk about books people read.

Another q, Annie. Should we all just post our reads on this thread or make a personal thread?

>15 Tess_W: Considering that we have only a few people so far, I’d say to use this one for now and see how it goes. However - if you want to start your own thread, go ahead - just post back here with at least titles and links to where you post about them (or at least look in on the people here). :)

I will join this group. I may not read every area but will try.
Leona

I definitely know I will be doing a reread of Anne of Green Gables for number 9.

>17 mnleona: >18 JayneCM: The more, the merrier :) Welcome!

>18 JayneCM: I have Anne of Green Gables on my book shelf and it woud be a reread for me also.

This is a good idea. I never choose books specifically for challenges and the like, but I'll keep this one in mind as I read my way through the year and will pop over to contribute (and read others' contributions) whenever anything appropriate comes to the top of the old TBR. Cheers!

This reading locally thing is more difficult than it appears! It certainly will be a challenge!

Here's a first for me this year, which I read a few weeks back but just realized would be appropriate here:

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. Escoffery was not born in Miami, where his novel of a dysfunctional family of first and second generation Jamaican immigrants takes place, but he did grow up there, so I'll present this as my U.S. entry. If I'm able to read two or three more challenge-appropriate books, I'll start my own individual thread.

This is a very fine first novel about the Jamaican immigrant experience in Miami, but also about the overall experience of a relatively light-skinned Black person trying to forge a personal/ethnic identity. "What are we," young Trelawny, the American born child of Jamaican immigrants, asks his mother early on. Are we Black, he wants to know? Do we just say we're Jamaican? And what if the person asking us doesn't know what that means? This question resurfaces throughout Trelawny's childhood. In the meantime, his family is disfunctional. And when his parents split, Trelawny and his older brother, Delano, get split up, one to each parent.

There is a lot going on in this novel, a lot of good writing, a lot of good delving into the questions of race, ethnicity and class, and about what it's like to be among the working poor in the midst of a recession. So the book is well worth reading. Although, I also feel, it's disjointed, Escoffery not entirely in control of his narrative. At first the book more or less skims over the surface of Trelawny's childhood, the years flowing by over just a few short pages. Eventually the book evolves into a family drama, mostly revolving around the competition between the two brothers as they enter adulthood. But also there are chapters about Trelawny's attempt to get ahead as a highly educated, underemployed teacher. Other points of view are entered, other stories are told. Each is engaging and well done, but it didn't always seem to me that there was a coherent whole. I can conjecture that Escoffery was going for a textured tapestry approach with each part overlaid with the others to create a multi-faceted whole. That style can certainly work well. Here, though, I thought the book was just off the mark. Nevertheless, as I said at the beginning, I do think this novel well worth reading. The characters and situations are memorable, and the prose well done, though I must say I did eventually tire of Escoffery's use of the second person style of narration. I could easily see how a person could love this book more than I did. I am very much looking forward to more work from this writer.

Here's a second novel for me that's fits this challenge:

I've just finished Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. This is a beautiful reverie of a novel about life in the small, rural Kentucky river town of Port William, the people who live and, especially, farm there and the changes that gradually drain the life out of the town's way of life over the years, from the 1910s through the 1980s. The story is told via a sort of fictional talking memoir by the title character. Born near the town in the 1914, Jonah Crow is orphaned not once, but twice. His parents are killed by the Spanish flu when he is a small boy, and Jonah is taken in by an aunt and uncle. But when they die, too, Jonah lands in an orphanage at age 10, finally returning to Port William as a young man and quickly becoming the town barber. Jonah, whose name gradually evolves until he is known by one and all as Jayber, is an outsider many times over. As an orphan, he is separated from the general flow of life of Port William, which flows via family life from generation to generation. As the proprietor of a business that will barely support one person, he has sentenced himself, knowingly, to a life of bachelorhood in a community that, again, values family. All this is an effective strategy by Berry to create in his character the ultimate observer of and commentator about the life of the town and the gradual death of its way of life.

The wonderful strengths of this book are Berry's powers of observation and description, his obvious love of his fictional town, its people and rhythms and its natural setting. Berry is also a poet, and as one of the blurbs on the back of my edition of this book points out, that poetic facility is readily evident in the ebb and flow of Berry's sentences and paragraphs. There is love and sadness in this book, but also much gladness and humor. And to the point of the challenge, Wendell Berry is a lifelong Kentuckian.

ENGLAND

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West. This is the story of a soldier during WWI who returns home shell-shocked. He can't remember the last 15 years of his life, including the marriage to his wife. He does remember a summer "love" and the two meet frequently in the garden, the wife begrudgingly agreeing that it might bring back Chris' memory. It doesn't and the wife grows more bitter. Not only is this about the horror of the Great War, it is the story of brutal class warfare. The author writes very lyrically. It was a very slow moving book. Favorite quote, "She isn't beautiful any longer. She's drearily married. She's seamed and scored and ravaged by squalid circumstances. You can't love her when you see her." 140 pages Ms. West was a British author born in London and the setting for the story is an estate outside of London. This book is on the 1001 book list.

U.S.--the 48

I read Fever, by Mary Beth Keane, the story of Mary Mallon (typhoid Mary). Very interesting as to the attitudes and science of the day. I listened to this on audio and the reader had just the right Irish lilt and told Mary's story in first person. A delightful book! The author is from Pearl River, New York, just 33 miles from NYC, which is the historical setting of the book.

IRELAND

I read a short story, The Sniper by Liam O'Flaherty. his takes place during the Irish Civil War and it is intense; although I surmised the outcome when the protagonist hatched his plan.

Difficult to track...so hence I copy & paste!

The United Kingdom: England The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
2. The United Kingdom: Northern Ireland
3. The United Kingdom: Scotland The Mask of Duplicity, The Mask Revealed (Jacobite Chronicles)
4. The United Kingdom: Wales
5. Ireland The Sniper by Liam O'Flaherty
6. The United States: The continental 48 states + DC Fever (NYC) by Mary Beth Keane
7. The United States: Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa HALEOLA’S TEARS A TALE OF OLD MOLOKA‘ by Alan Brennert.
8. Canada: The Territories: Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut
9. Canada: The Provinces: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan
10. Australia: The continental part The Nowhere Child
11. Australia: Tasmania and the rest of the islands
12. New Zealand

>27 Tess_W: I can start a wiki page if that will help? :)

>28 AnnieMod: Nope, I'm ok; but thanks!

I completed The Nowhere Child by Christian White. White is an Australian author. The story is about an "abduction" of a 2 year old from Manson, Kentucky, who was raised in Melbourne, Australia. Really, more action took place in Manson than in Melbourne.

I read the prequel to Molakai by Alan Bennett, HALEOLA’S TEARS A TALE OF OLD MOLOKA‘. (No touchstone).

>1 AnnieMod:

I’m seven months late to this, but I’m certainly going to try!

Completed two novels from Scottish author Julia Brannan, The Mask of Duplicity and The Mask Revealed. They are books one and two in the Jacobite Chronicles. Not as heavy on the history as I had hoped, but good enough to read. Reminds me of The Scarlet Pimpernel.