9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's often said that you can tell[br]a lot about a person 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by the looking at what's [br]on their bookshelves. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 What do my bookshelves[br]say about me? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Well, when I asked myself[br]this question a few years ago, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I made an alarming discovery. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I'd always thought of myself[br]as a fairly, cultured, cosmopolitan 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sort of person. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But my bookshelves told [br]a rather different story. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Pretty much all the titles on them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 were by British of North American authors, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and there was almost nothing[br]in translation. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Discovering this massive, [br]cultural blind spot[br] 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 came as quite a shock. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And when I thought about it,[br]it seemed like a real shame. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I knew there had to be[br]lots of amazing stories out there 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by writers working in languages[br]other than English. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it seemed really sad to think[br]that my reading habits 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 meant that I would probably[br]never encounter them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So, I decided to prescribe myself[br] 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 an intensive course in global reading. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 2012 was set to be a very [br]international year for the UK, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it was the year of the London Olympics. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so I decided to use it[br]as my timeframe 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to try to read a novel, [br]short story collection, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or memoir from every country[br]in the world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so I did, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it was very exciting[br] 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I learned some remarkable things 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and made some wonderful connections[br]that I want to share with you today. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But it started with some [br]practical problems. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 After I worked out which of the many[br]different lists of countries in the world 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to use for my project, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I ended up going with the list[br]of UN-recognized nations, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to which I added Taiwan, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which gave me a total of 196 countries. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And after I'd worked out[br]how to fit reading and blogging 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about, roughly, four books a week 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 around working five days a week, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I then had to face up to the fact[br]that I might not be able 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to get books in English [br]from every country. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Only around 4.5 percent[br]of the literary works 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 published each year in the UK[br]are translations, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and the figures are similar [br]for much of the English-speaking world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Although, the proportion[br]of translated books 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 published in other countries [br]is a lot higher. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 4.5 percent is tiny enough[br]to start with, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but what that figure doesn't tell you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is that many of those books 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 will come from countries[br]with strong publishing networks 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and lots of industry professionals[br]trying to go out and sell those titles 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to English-language publishers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So, for example, although[br]well over 100 books 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 are translated from French[br]and published in the UK each year, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 most of them will come from countries[br]like France or Switzerland. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 French-speaking Africa, on the other hand, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 will rarely ever get a look in. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The upshot is there are actually[br]quite a lot of nations 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that may have little or even no 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 commercially available literature[br]in English. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Their books remain invisible[br]to readers 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the world's most published language. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But when it came to reading the world, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the biggest challenge of all, for me, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was that fact that I didn't know[br]where to start. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Having spent my life reading[br]almost exclusively 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 British and North American books, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I had no idea how to go about[br]sourcing and finding stories 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and choosing them from much[br]of the rest of the world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I couldn't tell you how to[br]source a story from Swaziland, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I wouldn't know a good novel[br]from Namibia. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There was no hiding it, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was a clueless [br]literary xenophobe. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So how on earth was I[br]going to read the world? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was going to have to ask for help. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So in October 2011, [br]ayearofreadingtheworld.com, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and posted a short appeal online. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I explained who I was, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 how narrow my reading had been, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I asked anyone who cared to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to leave a message suggesting[br]what I might read 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from other parts of the planet. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now, I had no idea whether[br]anyone would be interested, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but within a few hours[br]of posting my appeal online, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people started to get in touch. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 At first, it was friends and colleagues. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Then it was friends of friends. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And pretty soon, it was strangers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Four days after I put that appeal online, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I got a message from a woman[br]called Rafidah in Kuala Lumpur. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 She said she loved the sound[br]of my project, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 could she go to her local[br]English-language bookshop 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and choose my Malaysian book[br]and post it to me. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I accepted enthusiastically