After the long silence...."One Book One Country"

Let's face it, i really don't have much to say, not even rambles! Writing is hard work, and writing about nothing at all is much harder. So I took a break from writing and realized that it is much more difficult to get back on the horse. And then i stumbled upon this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

An excellent talk by Chimamanda Adichie, which resonated with me so much. Some of her experiences growing up on British books just brought back so many memories to me. For e.g my fascination with scones! That was one of the first things i tried when i set foot in the UK... why? i've read so much about having scones with Tea!

But of late i've been grappling with what kind of books i should expose my pre-schooler too. I've been looking for a variety that exposes her to a number of cultures. Nope i didnt want a book which just had a few people of color thrown in as your "token diversity" representations. I wanted books that expose her to different cultures, including her own.

So I made a list of children's books that I thought will be a good sample and here is my list

1) Lights for Gita
2) I love my hair
3) Jalapeno Bagels
4) Old Turtle
5) Seventh Spot
6) Dona Flor
7) The first strawberries
8) Peach Heaven

Lights for Gita especially proved to be handy as we celebrated our first Diwali with her.

This led me to a project for myself which I am calling "One Book One Country". My aim is to read one book from an author from each country of the world, something that will give me some perspective about the country outside of what I see in the news (if they indeed make the news) or in wikipedia. Of course since i can read only English I have to make do with translations in some cases.

And this gives me a great way to keep blogging and keep writing about my experiences as i get exposed to maybe one other story about each country and its culture.

First I started doing this in an adhoc manner - done with South Africa, Nigeria, and right now reading Sweden. Since then have made it more orderly - will start from the A's and work my way down to the Z's. So its been a month of Afghanistan, Albania and Algeria for me.

So from now on the blog will focus on my reviews and rambles on the books i read from each country.

That's a wrap!