My year reading a book from every country in the world

It's often said that you can tell
a lot about a person

by the looking at what's
on their bookshelves.

What do my bookshelves
say about me?

Well, when I asked myself
this question a few years ago,

I made an alarming discovery.

I'd always thought of myself
as a fairly, cultured, cosmopolitan

sort of person.

But my bookshelves told
a rather different story.

Pretty much all the titles on them

were by British of North American authors,

and there was almost nothing
in translation.

Discovering this massive,
cultural blind spot

came as quite a shock.

And when I thought about it,
it seemed like a real shame.

I knew there had to be
lots of amazing stories out there

by writers working in languages
other than English.

And it seemed really sad to think
that my reading habits

meant that I would probably
never encounter them.

So, I decided to prescribe myself

an intensive course in global reading.

2012 was set to be a very
international year for the UK,

it was the year of the London Olympics.

And so I decided to use it
as my timeframe

to try to read a novel,
short story collection,

or memoir from every country
in the world.