My year reading a book from every country in the world | Ann Morgan

[@lclkm]

Novels are a one of the best ways to open your mind about other cultures and understand how they differ from yours. I absolutely love this project! I cannot imagine a world were there is no Russian, Indian, South America, or Middle Eastern literature. Reading is so versatile and beautiful.

[@StopFear]

I disagree. Novels are written in the first place because the author wants to describe or exaggerate something which they have seen, so you could be reading about what someone imagines others would want to read, or someone writing about life they see in a romanticized way. To me it would be like travelling to another country and eating at a restaurant where all the tourists go to.

[@devonmunn5728]

@@StopFear That itself is kind of a whole conversation because since us as humans are different from one another we all have varying interpretations of things

[@adsmorriss]

This should be a University reading course. If there were one, especially if there were an online one, I'd take it. :)

[@oakenguitar3]

+adsmorriss I must say reading how to dig a hole or how to be a garbage man would literally be a better education. I majored in welding yet I give private music lessons, gave guitar lessons to my 9th grade band director when he taught a guitar workshop for middle schoolers... I never took a music theory class in my life. Its a miracle what reading useful books can do for your life. What did animal farm, the crucible or Macbeth or Othello do for me? absolutely nothing, I don't plan on being an English teacher. But if I wanted to, I'd get my TEFL and travel the world. No degree required...

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks 👍

[@devonmunn5728]

@@oakenguitar3 Art can be very educational in a variety of ways. Other lives, cultures, subjects, etc. It depends on what the book is about though. The books you mentioned probably didn't do anything for you personally but they mean something else to others

[@oakenguitar3]

@@devonmunn5728 you're replying to a comment from 6 years ago, I'm way more educated due to selfstudy than I ever was in hs or college. Education right now is just babysitting and busy work, like read a useless book and then circle every quotation mark and underline every noun... I had my own reading list that was way more educational than any books I had in school. for example, I had to teach myself financial knowledge like investing by reading books outside of school like learning what a 401k really is or choosing the right online broker. I had to teach myself music composition and music theory because my school wouldn't allow me to take those classes or even offer them. I taught myself spanish to fluency after hs and college by actually doing the necessary work they don't teach in school, memorizing a dictionary of spanish words, I've read 17 books in spanish, 3 of which were a science and technology encyclopedia and listened to 5 hr audiobooks at work almost daily; something impossible to do when you're in school. I hated spanish in highschool cuz it was nothing but grammar and it took credits and time away from other classes that I could of taken. In highschool, they wouldn't let me take precal or Calculus cuz I made a C in algebra 2 but that was because I bored and didn't want to do some much homework, I made an a A in calculus 1 and 2 and statistics in college later on BUT if I didn't have to take 4 years of useless english and spanish classes, maybe I could of done 4 years of more self study. Even my whole associate degree is useless because I never transfered and its bassically 2 years of more highschool with fridays off and WAY LESS homework.

[@devonmunn5728]

@@oakenguitar3 I do agree that the current education system (here in the US at least. I'm not sure if you're American or not) is flawed and doesn't prepare people for entering the world. Personally I do see the value I'm the woman's challenge in the video. Sure it might not be the most virtuous thing you can do but I still see value in what she did. Also I just found this video because another person I'm subbed to is also doing a challenge of reading books from around the world and she shouted this video out

[@ricardopickman]

I've owned a multilingual second-hand bookshop in Berlin, Germany (Pequod Books), for the last 3,5 years and at the first I was very surprised to realize how separated my 26 languages were. Books coming from very strong cultural industries like UK or USA were easily translated into other languages, but this didn't happen with other languages; as you say on this video, many of those books are not even translated at all. Sometimes countries sharing language and/or borders are completely isolated from each other. I felt very small, so I started learning Dutch and French (my 5th and 6th languages already). Your video really touched me, thank you very much.

[@hztwcvbwiitessqeddvvuztwvb2394]

Wow, that's really cool. :)

[@Shookieofminecraftia]

+Álvaro Sendra González k

[@justino.1292]

Álvaro Sendra González Cool story

[@Aritul]

Álvaro Sendra González Awesome post.

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks

[@AnnaMaledonPictureBookAuthor]

Fascinating project! When my sisters were in primary school they had a pen pal from Morocco. And we sent him a Polish-English dictionary. As it turned out 20 years later my sisters went to Morocco for a trip. This guy traveled a very long distance just to meet them and could speak some Polish with my sisters. Strange and magnificent things do happen in real life if you search for connections other than among your own people.

[@Nerding4Nature]

Fantastic idea! Is anyone else wondering how she had time to track down all these books AND read them all in one hear? I wish I read that quickly.

[@drewg.4779]

The ones she held up seemed to be shorter than most books, and I imagine that since a lot of them where things like short story collections and also because shorter books are cheaper to print (and so publishers are more likely to take risks with them, like translating them) she probably read more shorter books. It's still quite a feat though.

[@desertrose0601]

The Last Grownup in the Woods Watch the video. She addresses that.

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks 👍

[@eleanorcampion4750]

​@@rjaminulislam1424

[@devonmunn5728]

I would recommend looking on Goodreads as well as on Wikipedia like for example "Category:Writers by country" and that will probably get results. As well as "Authors from *insert country hear*

[@booknerdnova3151]

I started this same challenge at the end of 2020 too, although I'm taking more time than just one year because I can't read 200 books in just one year. I've read from 12 countries so far, and have collected books from 12 other countries on my bookshelves to read in the coming months. I've already learned so much about the world from those books, I love it.

[@inarticulable]

Me too! I started Jan 2020 :)

[@peeterl.2016]

Sorry, but to read 12 books in a year or two and still claim that you learned a lot about the world while doing so is quite embarrassing.

[@atrujillo9]

I suggest that those of us watching this post the books we have enjoyed reading along with the author's name and nationality so as to give ideas to others who may not be sure where to start. Hopefully we can inspire one another. Master of Saint Petersburg- J.M. Coetzee- South Africa, Half of a Yellow Sun- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie- Nigeria, A Hero of Our Time- Mikhail Lermontov- Russia, The Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin- China, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone-James Baldwin- United States, The Reluctant Fundamentalist-Mohsin Hamid- Pakistan, The God of Small Things- Arundhati Roy- India, The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini- Afghanistan, The Year of the Elephant-Leila Abouzeid- Morocco, And Then There Were None-Agatha Christie- United Kingdom, Killing Commodore- Haruki Murakami- Japan, The Dubliners- James Joyce- Ireland, Mysteries-Knut Hamsun- Norway.

[@neaivanova3188]

People, what is all this criticism for? Of course you can't understand a culture after only reading one book. You can spend years in a country, and there'd still be something you've missed. But I feel like many of those criticising don't realize that a culture is expressed in more than the plot of a given literary work and that the overall attitude towards life, along with the actual story of a piece can broaden your perspective of the world in ways nothing else can. I'm not sure some of you realize how narrow your (and mine, too, actually) own perspective is.

[@StopFear]

What is wrong with criticizing someone? How are we supposed to come to any agreement or discover different truths of life if we do not voice our feeling or disagreement. I do get why some people criticize her. She presents her project as a virtue in itself but doesn't exactly elaborate why. Another angle of criticism is that she is making the other cultures as some sort of exotic sphere where ideas would necessarily be different from something she is used to. It is like literary tourism. Like people who love to travel to different countries of the world and then tell people at home what sort of allegedly profound things they learned from being there and interacting with people. These world travelers aren't doing anything wrong. They just represent the purpose of their travels as something else when it was done just for fun and to eat at a bunch of restaurants.

[@amazingsupergirl7125]

I learn A LOT when I read a book set in another country, no matter who the author is. I can’t travel so I read constantly. My mind has made friends and enemies all over the world and in imaginary worlds. Anyone who says you can’t travel, learn and grow this way has obviously never read a book before.

[@vagary4665]

An incredible story! One book from each country is a fabulous place to start!

[@thalia2580852]

this was amazing...realising your own weakness in the area of cultural knowledge and wanting to change that is quite a feat...props to you Ann

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks 👍

[@sarahwood991]

I should try this, maybe I should start with my own country first. We barely even read South African literature in school.

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks all

[@alittlelifeofmel5157]

If anyone is interested in watching someone do this in "real" time... there is a youtuber called Portal in the Pages that is going to be reading around the world this year and will be making videos about it all year and has already begun talking about the books she is planning to read, I highly suggest watching if you are interested in something similar.

[@SalsabillaAzzahra]

So interesting!!

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks for the update

[@dace9590]

this idea is actually so great! i love reading books from other countries cause the can show a very much different perspective. sadly a lot of good books are not being translated into English or other well-known languages and not a lot of good books are being translated at all due to them not being so popular. last year i started to read few books that have been non-officially translated from Chinese and Thai and i truly love those. some people online take their time to translate them and i respect that so much!

[@andreassabin117]

Great story and a wonderful experience. I experienced something similar, although not as global as Ann Morgan reported. There is a German edition from Süddeutsche Zeitung, they published novels from 20 global cities (like Lagos, LA, Beijing, Johannesburg, etc.) and I really enjoyed reading it. It opened my eyes to differnet cultures and different ways of writing and story-telling. I wished to go beyond these 20 global cities "travelling" to every country of the planet in form of a book. Great inspiration, although I might take a bit more time than just one year to do so.

[@MissCrazygirlie]

Der Kommentar ist zwar acht Jahre alt, aber vielleicht kriege ich doch eine Antwort: kannst du mir vielleicht sagen wo es diese Liste der SZ gibt?

[@andreassabin117]

@@MissCrazygirlie SZ-Bibliothek Metropolen, einfach mal googeln. Super auch Büchergilde Gutenberg die Reihe Weltlese. Viel Freude beim Lesen.

[@dapawta]

this makes me so happy!!

[@johnbundu6247]

I envy her simplified accent

[@yunhuiyang2904]

We always have Hugh ambitions at first, but give up them for the reasons of lacking of time, money, etc. Admire her persistence and smart way to seek help, and connect to the world by kindness!

[@PotionsMaster007]

I wanna see the list of books she read

[@drewg.4779]

You can google it and find a list of books people recommended to her with the ones she read bolded on her blog.

[@Aritul]

Swanand Kulkarni Thanks!

[@effie5238]

What a brilliant idea! How wonderful that it also became an opportunity to bring so many people together & that thy were all so willing to go out of their way to make your 'dream' a reality!

[@katiekawaii]

Wonderful! The fact is, people just want to be heard, and understood.

[@monocat999]

She didn’t stutter even once! That’s incredible speaking

[@MrAykut23]

I can say that i've been fortunate enough to grow up in Australia, a country that strongly benefits from multiculturalism. But i still do believe that if we all did something similar to this, then the world would be a much more unified place than it already is :)

[@HarryPotterFreakLena]

I guess I'm lucky enough to be fluent in many languages, so if I ever were to recreate this, I could read books in english, spanish, french, german and dutch. Guess that makes it easier.

[@HarryPotterFreakLena]

+Angelina Gomez Well, firstly I'm lucky enough to have had the chance to pick up new languages all my life. The easiest ones (for me personally) were english and french, because I grew up with them. I guess I learned them mostly though the classes that were mandatory in high school. As for the others, I chose to follow classes in Uni. For learning these languages, I have quite a structured approach. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I have vocabulary lists for different topics and sometimes I put little sticky notes on corresponding things in my flat. I struggled a bit with spanish food items, so I basically put them all over my fridge. And lastly, as for Dutch (and Korean, which I will be starting in February) I learned by living in that country. I moved to the Netherlands around two years ago, and being confronted with the language in daily life obviously helps quite a lot. I guess we europeans are privileged in that point. We have several countries, i.e languages, just a few hours from where we live. Otherwise, try to speak to natives if you can. I especially did that for spanish. And maybe watch a movie that you already know quite well in a foreign language. Or if you enjoy reading, there are special books for language beginners that I always quite enjoyed reading. Good luck!

[@CielPhamtohivys]

I am brazilian and I never read a brazilian book before...isnt it crazy?! All Ive read in my life was american famous novels, I realized that I am living in a bubble...Wow I want to start this project right now!!

[@luticia]

This is so awesome! I want to do this project,too. And maybe it's good time in my life to start reading, a time where unhappiness, loneliness, anxieties, addiction and huges losses are dominating my life. Actually I'm standing there with nothing in my hands atm and maybe this project can lead me to something new.

[@StopFear]

Why does it have to be a project? Just pick up some book you like on a subject you find interesting and see how far you could get with one. It is not a new year's resolution to lose weight.

[@xenomann442]

I thought the video was going to be more about what she learned from reading all these different books. Not about the process she had to go through to read them.

[@drewg.4779]

Yeah, I thought that was interesting but I would have liked to know more about what she learned.

[@mpking-ey7ys]

+Magic Penguin I thought so too. Don't just tell us you have learned a lot of different things and interesting things. Tell us what they are. She seems to be still justifying her project.

[@Snappldel]

I thin kwjat she learned from all those could've been a too wide amount of information to cover on this speech. Maybe that is why she didn't do that. I also thought she was going say what she learned from all the books but I quite enjoyed this speech she gave. Her goal was quite unique and thoughtful. I'm thinking of trying it out too, reading more widely.

[@maiajintcharadze7485]

So you wanted to learn what around 200 books say by only watching 12 minute video?

[@mpking-ey7ys]

+Maia Jintcharadze Let me reply in this way. Say the parents ask a college graduate after the graduation ceremony what did he learn in the last 4 years, how do you think the graduate should answer?

[@sahersania854]

Thank you so much for giving me another resolution.

[@JLisleWrites]

Reading is freedom

[@willlexie]

Watching this video cause I’m also currently doing Reading the World 💙

[@obsideonyx7604]

Did she just say Swaziland at 3:40? Hey, I'm from Swaziland.

[@Bakerseed]

Actually, there is a country called Swaziland. It's located in southern Africa :)

[@468jayz]

+Bakerseed I think he's saying that he's from Swaziland

[@Bakerseed]

SPILLane LAD yeah, I misunderstood his comment. I thought that he were from switzerland and this womand pronounced switzerland just like swaziland.... after hearing this, he could've made a joke out of it :D My Bad.

[@obsideonyx7604]

Bakerseed Oh is that all it was? That's OK then, people do it all the time when I tell them where I'm from, sometimes I have to repeat "No SWA-ZILAND" like 3 times, really frustrating.

[@talktomesandile2312]

This is such an exciting and insightful talk. Luminous.

[@carolchen2320]

This is such an inspiration! A very awesome idea!

[@masyanya82]

The speaker is amazing, like a sunlight in this world)))

[@Aritul]

So impressive. I love this idea.

[@AnnaMaledonPictureBookAuthor]

What struck me is the fact in my own country where we only speak Polish and there is only one Polish-speaking country in the world I was able to read memoirs or biographies from very different countries like Saudi Arabia,China,Russia etc and I was just a primary school girl at the time. Sure books from some countries will be more difficult to get your hands on than others as she mentioned, but really if you try you can surely find quite a few foreign books which are translated to English and available in the UK or America. She must have not been paying attention to other books for most of her life then. Quite sad really. It is probably a case with many people though. Great TED talk never the less.

[@fazalurrahmankhan2151]

Really motivation for the bibliophiles like me... I love reading book so much but in my area there's a scarce of library... We have no library in our home town.....Waziristan FATA Pakistan

[@samuelesierra]

Una de las mejores ideas que he escuchado en TED.

[@udaybharadwaj9387]

Thank you

[@adamdifilippe8066]

I'm doing this too :)

[@yusurkassem4174]

That's a brilliant idea! I actually think I might do that some year in my life

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks

[@petervaribrus3387]

A very enlightening speech indeed, dear Ann! Top marks!:)) Forgive my curiosity, but which Russian authors' books have you read so far? Thank you!

[@maximusdizon7267]

Read one book from every country..Now that's devotion!!! lel

[@princesadepresa5396]

Or a big fat lie..

[@jaquelinepetrosky2038]

Thank you!

[@amazingsupergirl7125]

Cool! I want to read all of those books!

[@Youtubelongvideos]

Do you have the books? I could like access them all to start the reading.

[@siddhi9903]

Amazing!!!

[@CNicoleM]

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA

[@sainumerlyjohn9202]

Good luck for ur future endeavor

[@TheFavorate]

brilliant idea

[@svkhereiam]

well done, deeply inspired

[@lauramoreira4439]

this is extraordinary

[@ramicky16]

what a nice adventure!

[@theryancomedy]

Here in my garage

[@jagoandlitefoot]

+Bjartur Mortensen She had only 47 untranslated works in her untranslated works account

[@kaidouchekaidoucha7723]

Nice job and nice idea

[@Pakanahymni]

There are dozens of peoples inside Russia alone that have no sovereign nation, so using nations is not really a great way to go about this, but a laudable effort still.

[@shizu2345]

She just did it with books... It's surprising to see that's people who are like "Hey, I'm reading books and I'm so smart and open on the world" but they didn't at least one time tried to read something from a different culture (wow, such open mind...). But I'm going to stop trash talking about them and discuss about what's really mattering me. It's about video games. Yeah, you may think: "it's just violent and rude stupids game for adolescent" but this is not true ( but not exactly wrong in some(/many) cases =/) because many video games are trying to show you something interesting, beatiful, sad or/and New.... So what if we could make it with them (play one game from each countries)? Video games have big fanbases who want to traduce it free in many lanuages and what's typically with video game is the possibility to take time to learn and appreciate what's you'r doing and it also works with music and beautiful visuals to immerse you in the culture of some countires. So, for people who are thinking I'm just talking about things that didn't exist. Just try to look at the game "never alone" (kisima ingitchuna for it's original title). Or make some research about what are visual novels. And for people who are still thinking I'm just a child who can't even write a text without mistakes just imagine Ive never talked english in my family, I've never talked english with my friends and don't think that theoricals cursus learned me to speak a language. I've just learned it all with video games (and other internet's "cultural" stuff) without any basis. (and some translation websites). And for people who readed this all and are excusing me for this last point. Just: thank you =)

[@shizu2345]

@Trinity M i read mostly books English nominalist era lmao. Continue trying to strawman strangers, we'll just call it a sophism.

[@quynhanhle710]

"Thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever before for a stranger to share a worldview, a story, a book with someone she may never meet on the other side of the planet"

[@gilmarbeta]

Brilliant idea.

Good job! Recently I thought about the same project :)

[@positivenergylife]

Lovely accent! :)

[@skateshare1022]

1:54. " I ended up going with the list of UN recognized nations to which I added Taiwan..." OMG 1.4 billion people were pissed off.

[@216trixie]

I'm reading one book from each planet in our solar system.

[@216trixie]

@Trinity M mostly good, though some of the planets were really boring. And hi to me from 6 years ago.

[@moondance16]

For Taiwanese writers whose works have been translated into English, I would recommend Ming-Yi Wu.

[@fadoshad]

I am interested in the same idea I want to ask about from where web you have started

[@chas-on5jt]

Of course, she utilised the greatest collection of libraries and communications infrastructure in the entire history of mankind, the Internet and the WWW.

[@CyberneticOrganism01]

Ann Morgan... are you also a writer yourself? The author of "Beside Myself" which I think is a very interesting story... I have not read it, but I will, just to reciprocate 😊

[@satoyoshihisa1089]

I want to become friends with you Ann Morgan ! 📚🌍

[@Heldin33]

Her rythm of speaking sounds like one of those learning things from my school (English lesson) "Green Line, page 4, unit 3, Sally's first day in school..."

[@cameronfleming488]

So prior to this had she really only read North American and British books? I am assuming she leaves out Mexico from North America because of the mention of English. But seriously no Bolano, Camus, Nietzsche, Nobokov or anything of the sort? I'm sure she at least read something of Tolstoys

[@eddieracket]

Go back to where she says 'pretty much all...' Not all, but most. But even if she had never read any of those authors, or others (I've read Bolano, Camus and Nabokov, but nothing by Tolstoy or Nietzsche), so what? I have friends and family who are avid readers of popular fiction and would never think to pick up a book in translation. This woman realized she was missing out on something and so did something about it.

[@rjaminulislam1424]

Thanks

[@cameronfleming488]

@@rjaminulislam1424 thanks

[@saijalovesmusic]

This is a fantastic idea even though it doesn't really work as well if you're reading translated works. As someone who has read the same books in two languages, it's really easy to see that the translated versions are not very true to the originals. Translations are quite loosely based on the original author's use of language especially with poems, plays or any works with a lot of figurative speech or connections to the culture of the country of publication.

[@InshruTripathi]

Can we get her reading list?

[@yashfeenzehranajmusanii]

Hey can somebody list all the books she read??

[@azareel516]

bien que tomen el cuenta al habla hispano.

[@YUKi.84610]

テスト勉強自分用音声 0:12,3:52,9:25,11:47

[@stttar2020]

Gorgeous!!

[@FatimaZahraTaghlaoui]

i wonder what book she read from Morocco!??

[@eddieracket]

I read Horses of God

[@ICHMUSSMALPIPI]

I came here from the latest Reading Glasses

[@youliveonce3242]

now u r someone else Ann :)

[@superplan89]

I wanted fiction and nonfiction from japan...it seems hard or impossible....any tips KZbin world...all they have is war and some landscape stuff

[@areebajamal6117]

I would strongly recommend Haruki Murakami.

[@eddieracket]

I don't think you tried very hard, Haruki Murakami is internationally renowned, try also Ryu Murakami for a very different kind of read. Yukio Mishima has also been greatly published in English for decades...

[@JojoJojo-bd6dz]

@@areebajamal6117 there are other and better writers.

[@scorpiudr7102]

Her facial expressions startle me

[@soumayyahrahmtullah9563]

I would rather want to visit the world, but i dont have enough money

[@aishayas2]

Cool

[@aminesamabenh8602]

I am in Algeria and I need books in English. Its hard for me to find it here. help me.

[@asmachouki7917]

Hey everybody ! i have watched the vedio just some minutes ago , i really love the idea ...so please suggest me books to read ( am from Algeria I can read books in arabic , english , french )

[@ferideak9761]

from Turkey , Zülfü Livaneli , Orhan Pamuk , Elif Şafak . these re the authors that have books in other languages, you can check them out if you re interested

[@user-gh4zs4sj9y]

when people say the whole world and doesn't count the arabic countries i mean there are 22 arabic countries and didn't count one !!!! yeah i don't know WTF the whole world mean

[@lovaaaa2451]

What's the point of the whole country classification? It seems quite unreasonable to treat India quantitatively equal to luxembourg just because they are both classified as one country? What about nationally marginalized cultures such as kurdistan, what about indigenous cultures? Nation states are not equivalent to cultures. It would be better to set up some quantitative model comparing how many books you have time to read in a given time period and deciding your topic based on geographical populations, eg. you have about 1/2 of all people living in southern- eastern Asia so it makes sense to read half of all your books from these areas, where you will then also find out that most countries cannot be seen as ''a culture'', but you get a better understanding for how peoples coexist in culturally diverse settings. This however still doesn't exactly do it justice since some of the more interesting cases are in quite small places: it might be interesting to investigate writings from Israel and Palestine for example, where the whole population of the states are just 8.4 million, which is around 0.112% of the entire population, so you would essentially have to read 2000 books in order to get to both sides following the model. It might in this case be better to go off of language instead, since we in this way can get a much better perspective on peoples who have not come to be dominating the world population-wise. A much more interesting attempt would be to try and read books in all widespread literary languages. Obviously a seemingly impossible task but reading in foreign languages is something that can be developed where it does not require you to be conversational. Knowing one romance language for example will open up the possibility of understanding the other ones with practice. And as they say, when you speak to someone in their second language, you speak to their mind, when you speak in their first language, you speak to their heart. Same is true with translations, they lose their original soul in translation, or their ''voice'' you might say.

[@eddieracket]

So make us your own list then, start a new challenge. It's a valid point that India are and Luxembourg are not the same size. But her point was to broaden her horizons, she achieved it. You now can set your goal and share with us.

[@DomsDocs]

*KNAWWLEDGE*

[@obsideonyx7604]

*FAWK YEAH*

[@PaulThePuppetier]

FUEL UNITS

[@plartoo]

The book that she picked for my country (Myanmar) is not a very well known one. I also doubt she can grasp the "culture" or about the country in that book. Also, she claims on her site that my country's government tries to suppress the book. No it did NOT. We have never heard of the book and almost everyone in Myanmar that I know are cool with (or don't care/mind) "Natkataw" (aka transvestites, which Ann Morgan misinterpreted as transgenders). Yeah we may make fun of their flamboyant displays (who doesn't like looking at transvestite if one walked across you?) and such, but there is a week long festival every year for transvestites in Myanmar, which is where the book's story is based upon. There are so many cultural and societal issues other than transvestites in Myanmar that are worth reading about, and if she thinks by reading that one book, she has a sense of what Myanmar is like, she is very wrong.

[@rh33dan]

+plartoo Do you think it's possible to grasp an understanding of a culture or country from any single book? You seem to be implying that she would understand Myanmar if only she had read something more well known.

[@plartoo]

Ahrin Dee Not at all. That's why I don't see a point in reading one book from every country in the world. At best, it might give her a false belief that she has learned a lot about the cultures in the world. Having said that, this is her time and her goal of reading books, so I don't have a business of telling her it's pointless or how she should be spending her time better, but if I were her, I'd pick a country and read at least a few well-known books including the history of that country (that spans back to 100 years) from now. It'd be a tough luck trying to find a book that explains the gist of a country fairly well. That is especially true for Myanmar because we have 135 officially listed ethnic groups. Also, I would certainly need to live in that country for a year or two to start getting a sense of what the heck is going on.

[@eddieracket]

'We have never heard of the book that my country's government did not try to suppress.' Interesting...

[@kalbininkas]

There are countries which have no literature, not even a language of their own.

[@krim2880]

👍

[@SpaceWalker2013]

UN has NOT recognised Taiwan as an independent country but it is an integrated part of China. We are all entitled to our own opinions but facts are facts if one still believe in a law and order world order….

[@thuyhangtran2439]

is there any person is vietnamese

[@thuyhangtran2439]

me

[@Czeckie]

I looked at her interactive google map with books she read. The first i checked was obviously czech - Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. It's actually one of my favorite books and Hrabal my favorite author. Her description is TOTALLY WRONG! What's the point of reading 196 books a year, when you don't have time to deeply connect with any of them? She reminds me of this guy, who's watching sped up movies to have more free time. What a film lover. This influx of yuppies.

[@bloodaxe5028]

Dislike for not reading anything from India. The most vibrant English language novel market in the world.

[@user-hh2is9kg9j]

soon robots will translate any language to another

[@ameliadeering8843]

+jaqen hgar language is not scientific in the way that a single word can easily be translated into every language without debate. Language is contextual. This is why (human) translators are so necessary - every word in every language has a specific origin, a context, a culture. For example, to translate the word 'ciel' (French) . The word means both 'sky' and 'heaven'. A robot translator cannot detect which translation it should use when translating the word French-English, only a human translator can. And if it is poetry, translation becomes even more complex

[@user-hh2is9kg9j]

Certified Mindblower any concept the human brain could grasp , could theoretically be understood by AT

[@ameliadeering8843]

+jaqen hgar sorry what does AT mean? okay so for instance, an online translator like google translator. Sure, it does a pretty good job as a basic translator - and it learns as it goes by people suggesting changes. However, take any poem in any language. Put it into google translate. Compare google translate's translation to an official translation of the poem (done by a human being). It won't be the same. And it won't ever be the same, for every poem - unless google translate purposely learns an entire poem's official translation, which would be missing the point of it doing the job instead of a human. Therefore, a robot/manufactured translator cannot replace the role of a human being in translating another human being's work (especially artistic)

[@user-hh2is9kg9j]

Certified Mindblower my bad AI , certainly modern Tech is no match of human Brain in language , but there is no reason that this gap will be bridge soon

[@ameliadeering8843]

+jaqen hgar ooh that makes more sense. Perhaps, I'm not sure what the nature of AI will be in the future - however the idea of it understanding creative or artistic things is difficult...can robots understand emotion? Also these things have different effects on different people... how can something created to be objective, understand something as subjective as art? (I'm aware that I've gone off the question of language a bit here!)

[@blingstar2026]

After watching this video, I have to say she has amazing ideas for reading the books, but Taiwan is not a country, it belongs to China.

[@susuilu]

books of every cuntry??? did you also read a book written by a ghanaian from a ghanaian point of view???

[@fabiofioretto9374]

Could you suggest me one?

[@thalblankson4002]

please read the Quran its the truth I hope you read it for understanding not to critize it. I am Muslim a two year convert to Islam.

[@hassousaya2683]

💓💓💓💓💓💖💖💖💖💘💘💘❤

[@princesadepresa5396]

This woman= the definition of humble brag

[@poiumty]

"One book from every country" is still woefully too little to understand the depth of some cultures..

[@ardapoda]

+poiumty it is a lot more than what most of us do (including myself).

[@poiumty]

Arda Poda broadening your horizons is a personal choice, not a moral responsibility. I do question whether she learned anything from those books aside from whatever skewed perspective she could drag out of them. It's like reading one technical booklet from each field of science and tech. Congratulations, you've successfully done... not much of anything.

[@drewg.4779]

She tried. It's impossible for her to read multiple books from every culture. She did better than most people.

[@rh33dan]

+poiumty And yet not much of anything is still more than nothing. What point exactly are you trying to make? And why did you bring up moral responsibility out of nowhere?

[@poiumty]

Ahrin Dee point was that thinking you just got broad knowledge of other cultures because you spread yourself thin and read one book from each is a silly idea. "More than nothing" is too vague a term to argue. I brought up moral responsibility because that's how the guy I replied to sounded. Certainly not out of nowhere.

[@mpking-ey7ys]

If you like reading and there is a book or a author from another country that is really worth reading, trust me you would have heard about it. Otherwise, many countries would not have any book worthy of your time.