I’m making significant progress in my quest to read a book by an author from every country in the world. I’m on number seventy which is past a third of the way. There is still some distance to go but I am encouraged that a third is closer to a half than it is to zero.
Finding the books was always going to be key to the challenge. At first I went through those that I had known I had read. After that I looked for well known authors in the missing countries and searched for their books in the library or online. Soon, that became a chore, as I would have to look through many authors to find a book. It was then that I decided to change tack.
On a visit to Morpeth library I thought I would go through the shelves and check any book where the author’s name didn’t seem to be obviously British. These days British people can have many surnames that would have been considered unusual when I was younger yet it is relatively easy to spot those who have a foreign heritage. This doesn’t mean that they were born outside of Britain but it’s a start. After picking a shelf at random, I found three candidate books before I had got half way through.
The next time I was at the Lit and Phil I tried the same thing, though this time I started at A. As you can imagine, the library has many hundreds of books spread across several rooms and two floors. By the time I had got to the bottom of the first column of shelves I already had five books, possibly six. I hadn’t even got into the Bs. This was an unexpected haul and bodes well for my quest. It is very likely though that my hit rate will reduce as the number of countries left gets fewer in number.
The range of authors I have been able to get so far has been amazing and reflects, in some part, the cosmopolitan nature of the United Kingdom. Many of the authors, while born abroad, have made these islands their home.
My strategy of looking for the unusual has paid off so far. I ought to apply it to other aspects of my life. You never know what I might find.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 