The World From My Armchair Challenge – Update

In November 2016 I embarked on a journey around the world. I didn’t need to plan an itinerary, book lots of tickets and find places to stay, I was to undertake this trip from the comfort of my armchair.

It had all came about because I love travel writing and wanted to discover more about the planet that we are on through the eyes of other people. It did involve some planning though, find a book that matched a country was in a lot of cases quite easy, but as you come across the more obscure and faraway parts of the world less people have visited and even less have written about them.

Other people have been interested in this so I copied over the books that I had chosen for each country and popped them in a spreadsheet here.

I initially thought that I could complete the whole challenge in four or five years, and boy was I wrong. Of the total of now 213 countries, seas and oceans I have so far read 83. I started well when I read 20 in 2017 and then peaked again in 2020, when no one could go anywhere, but only managed to read one, yes one, book for the challenge last year.

So where have I travelled to? Well as you can see from the map below I have been all over the world so far. I have chosen not to read the books in a deliberate route, partly because I chose to read what was around me at the time and also trying to get a route through every single country in the world would be quite some task logistically.

This is a list of the regions and countries and the number of books that I have noted and read for each.

Whilst I have titles for most countries, there are a few that I haven’t been able to find any books for. These are listed below, so if you know of any travel books that are set in these places, or pass through, please do let me know.

Capo Verde

Central African Republic

Chad

Gambia

Grenada

Micronesia

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Sao Tome and Principe

Seychelles

Swaziland

Uruguay

The Journey So Far

As with any reading challenge, the point is to discover books and authors that you wouldn’t normally pick up. This isn’t quite the case with this as I love travel writing, but there has been the odd duff one and some outstanding books that I have discovered so far. These books include Ottoman Odyssey, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, The Gardens of Mars & Minarets In The Mountains and authors such as Noo Saro-Wiwa, Jonathan Raban, Monisha Rajesh & Kapka Kassabova.

Next Stages

Ideally, I would like to be around halfway through the challenge by the end of this year so that means reading 23 books this year towards it. Of the 120 books that I have listed on my spreadsheet, I have 52 of them in the house. The other 68 I haven’t yet got copies, but occasionally find them in my weekly trawl of charity shops and second-hand bookshops. (If you’re looking at the spreadsheet, green are books that I had read, and blue is for books I have, but not yet read) At this rate I have a completion date of 2030, assuming that I can find books for the countries listed above.