Challenge Post - 2021 European Reading Challenge

Books read for the 2021 European Reading Challenge. The terms of the challenge are to read at least one book either set in or written by an author from as many of the following countries as possible. I will be listing books below, with links to reviews, as I read them.

Albania - Sworn Virgin (Elvira Dones)

Andorra -

Armenia -

Austria -

Azerbaijan -

Belarus -

Belgium -

Bosnia and Herzegovina -

Bulgaria -

Croatia -

Cyprus -

Czech Republic -

Denmark -

Estonia -

Finland -

France - A Very Long Engagement (Sébastien Japrisot)

Georgia -

Germany -

Greece -

Hungary -

Iceland -

Ireland - Exiles (Dónall Mac Amhlaigh)

Italy -

Kazakhstan -

Latvia -

Liechtenstein -

Lithuania -

Luxembourg -

Malta -

Moldova -

Monaco -

Montenegro -

Netherlands -

Norway -

Poland - Forefathers' Eve (Adam Mickiewicz)

Portugal -

Republic of Macedonia -

Romania -

Russia - The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar (Yury Tynyanov)

San Marino -

Serbia -

Slovakia -

Slovenia -

Spain - Collected Poems (Federico García Lorca)

Sweden -

Switzerland -

Turkey -

Ukraine - "Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul": Mykola Bazhan's Early Experimental Poetry (Mykola Bazhan)

United Kingdom - The Three Impostors (Arthur Machen)

Vatican City -

Comments

Reading Challenges for 2021

I usually do set a numerical goal on the Goodreads reading challenges each year, and find them to be a great way to feel some sense of accomplishment in reading [x] number of books in a given year. Since I also started reviewing some digital ARCs through NetGalley last year, I've been writing more reviews in general (though the non-ARC books I read I may or may not review). I've toyed with the idea of doing some additional challenges before, but haven't--so I'm going to try for it this year! Because this is my first time doing this, I tried to choose challenges that mesh pretty well with what I already tend to read. This means, basically, that they're challenges I could have done okay on with books I read naturally over the course of a year. Yeah, that might not quite be in the "move out of your comfort zone" spirit of many challenges, but it seems like a way to ease into it. So, without further ado, I'm going to be trying the following: Rose City R...

Review - Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times (Cristina Vatulescu)

In one sense, I only reading Cristina Vatulescu's Police Aesthetics because the ebook was available on Hoopla Digital through my public library, and I was looking for something interesting to read. The reality is that this is primarily how I discovered it, because in all likelihood if I had learned of its existence otherwise I would have requested it from interlibrary loan and read it anyway. It's exactly the kind of book that would have been very useful to me for various term papers as an undergraduate Russian Studies student, too, so there's almost a nostalgia factor for me when reading books like this. That said, I imagine its appeal to a general American audience is probably somewhat limited. It's a book about the role of the secret police in the literary/film world of the Soviet Union and Communist Romania, among other things, and it's at times a bit dry. But it's also an interesting look into what is (and isn't) to be found in the opened archives of p...

Review - The Introvert's Edge to Networking

I received an electronic ARC of this book via Netgalley for an honest review. This book does, at its core, have some useful advice that I hope to work into my life. That said, it could have taught its lesson in a fraction of its length--and in my opinion, at least, would have been stronger for it. Most of the book's advice centers around identifying your professional passion, identifying a niche audience for it, and then--in essence--crafting a clear mission statement and using that when you meet people. The biggest issue I had with this book was that, despite being an introvert who struggles with the idea of networking, I spent most of the book feeling like the target audience was a person I both am not and have no desire to be. A considerable portion of the text seems to be aimed at a hypothetical reader who is already either a small business owner or else very successful in their field of passion, working in a capacity that specifically involves sales to wealthy clients. As a g...

Undirected Reading

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