2018 European Reading Challenge Wrapup

Well, it's time to accept I won't be reading any more books this year for Gilion's European Reading Challenge at her blog Rose City Reader. I completed this one at five books a while back, but I was having so much fun I just kept going, ending up with a total of 16 books. And I kept thinking I'd read just one more. There's Iceland (Laxness), Denmark (Nors), and Serbia or Montenegro (Pekič) piled up by my reading chair. And I can't believe I missed Ireland. But I guess those all remain for next year.

Here's my final list:

1.) The Odyssey. (tr. by Emily Wilson) Greece
2.) Arthur Schnitzler's Casanova's Return To Venice. Austria
3.) Jorge Carrión's Bookshops: A Reader's History. Spain
4.) Italo Calvino's The Baron In The Trees. Italy
5.) Amélie Nothomb's Pétronille. Belgium
6.) George Eliot's Silas Marner. UK
7.) Duc de la Rochefoucauld's Maxims. France
8.) Olga Tokarczuk's Flights. Poland
9.) Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. Russia
10.) Herta Müller's The Land Of Green Plums. Romania
11.) Ismail Kadare's Broken April. Albania
12.) Dubravka Ugresic' Fox. Croatia
13.) Romain Rolland's Jean-Christophe. Switzerland
14.) Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Monaco
15.) Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone. Germany
16.) Antonio Tabucchi's Time Ages In A Hurry. Hungary

For me, the best book on that list was probably the least exotic: George Eliot's Silas Marner. Maxims and The Baron In The Trees were rereads (so I must like them.) But there wasn't a bad book on it, and Ugresic' latest novel Fox was a real revelation, as was Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey. Hint: it's not too late to sign up for the new year.

Thanks to Gilion for hosting!