The goal is to read one or more novels from each of these continents in the course of 2014:
Africa
Asia
Australasia
Europe
North America
South America (please include Central America where it is most convenient for you)
and
The Seventh Continent (here you can either choose Antarctica or your own ´seventh´ setting, eg the sea, the space, a supernatural/paranormal world, history, the future – you name it).
You could tick off the first five on the list just by reading last year's Booker shortlist, if you're so inclined. For a South American novel, I'd recommend Heliopolis by James Scudamore - English-born author but he lives in Sao Paulo and the novel is set there (hence the name). It's very good.
I'm on
Goodreads, which I think I've mentioned before, and I'm now in my third year of doing the reading challenge there. In 2012, I set myself the target of reading 52 books and managed 53. In 2013, I set myself the target of 60 but only managed 55. However, I did read some Very Long Books last year
1, so my average page count
2 was up by 50 pages per book - a crude measure but a good rough indication. I've set myself the same target this year and intend to read some shorter books in order to make up the numbers. Missing the point a bit, maybe, but I don't care.
Anyway, it's not like I'm doing it to be competitive against anyone else - it's just to motivate myself to read more, in the same way that I've previously used mycyclinglogs to motivate myself to get out on the bike more.
1. eg Parade's End (which is technically three books but I counted it as one) and Our Mutual Friend.
2. virtual pages, since most of my reading is on Kindle these days. Tend to go by the page count of the paperback.