2013 Online Reading Challenge Round-up, Part III.2: Geographical challenges with + countries

From individual country challenges we move on to areas, continents and world reading challenges. Actually, I only found one each of the first two, Sadly, neither the Africa challenge or the South Asia challenge are running this year, but instead we have a Middle East challenge and a repeat of the Europe challenge.

The 2013 Middle East reading challenge is hosted on a dedicated blog of the same title. It is a challenge to read books, to quote the host: "...which are written by Middle Eastern writers, or take place in the Greater Middle East, or are concerned with the Greater Middle East and with historical and contemporary Middle Eastern issues." The area covered is more or less what is sometimes referred to as the "Greater Middle East" and is comprised of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories and all the nations within, bordering or relatively close proximity to the Arabian Peninsula including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and the Gulf Emirates. Some exceptions are given in the introduction post.
The challenge runs all year, I did not see a sign-up deadline, there are 4 levels, from 1 to 15+ books, and more rules can be found in the intro post. Considering how much the area has been in the news lately, remarkably few people have joined, so why not pop over and join them?

The European Reading Challenge is becoming a stable among reading challenges. It is hosted by Rose City Reader and is, quite simply, a challenge to take a tour of Europe through books where each book must be by a different author and set in a different country. There are five levels: to read 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 books. The challenge runs between January 1, 2013 and January 31, 201, there is no sign-up deadline, and there is a prize for the most books read. Overlap with other challenges is allowed and reviewing is not necessary unless you intend to compete for the prize, in which case you must review, either on a blog or in comments. There are 55 people already signed up and I can foresee a fierce competition for the prize.

Next we have the 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - Reading Challenge2013. This one has 7 categories, each covering 7 countries, and you must choose one and read book belonging to each category.

Visit the hosting site for more information on the categories and the philosophy behind the challenge. I did not see a sign-up deadline, the challenge runs Jan 1, 2013 – Dec 31, 2013, and there are already 19 participants. Why not become the 20th?

EDIT - I forgot about this one, so I'm adding it (1 Feb.):

The Global Reading Challenge is hosted on Mysteries in Paradise and is, as the title suggests, about reading globally. There are three levels, explained in the intro post, and it runs all year with no sign-up deadline. There are only 16 participants so far, which is a pity because itðs a great challenge. I may even join it myself.

The final challenge in this category is the Around the World in 80 Books challenge. Hosted by Have Books, Will Travel, it is a 5-year challenge that started on October 1, 2012 and ends on September 30, 2017.

You can join at any time (but the sooner, the better) and each book must be set in a different country. If you're ready for a long-haul challenge, go join the 24 other who have already signed up.

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

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