Like a lot of book nerds, I love to keep track of the books I read and create shiny reports with the data I collect. Over the years, I’ve used lots of methods, often inconsistently. But the coolest data point I’ve kept track of has been “where I read,” i.e., what countries I’ve visited in my fictional travels.
In both 2020 and 2021, I visited 14 countries. But in 2022, I visited 16 countries (and a few countries twice)!! Progress, improvement, etc.
Where I Read in 2022
Please note: for my own purposes, I do not track books that take place in the United States or England. I do track Northern Ireland and Ireland, for Reasons. Sometimes, I track Scotland and Wales, also for Reasons.
Cameroon
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
This book tells of people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are ignored. Left with few choices, the people decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
Canada
When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill
Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At 12 years old, with her blond curls and her unparalleled sense of whimsey, she’s the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, an affluent strip of 19th century Montreal. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly, and brilliant, moves to the neighborhood.
France
The School of Mirrors by Eva Stachniak
During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished girls are sent to a villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s mistress, they will be trained as potential courtesans. When the time is right, each girl is smuggled into the palace of Versailles. Living a life of silk gowns, delicious meals, and soft beds, the students at this “school of mirrors” rarely ask questions, and when Louis tires of them, they are married off to aristocrats or allowed to retire to a luxurious nunnery.
Ghana
The Teller of Secrets by Bisi Adjapon
Esi is the unofficial “secret keeper” of her family, as tight-lipped about her father’s adultery as she is about her half-sisters’ sex lives. But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women’s secrets and men’s secrets bear different consequences.
India
Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar
A surgeon flees a scandal in the city and accepts a job at a village clinic. His outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery, they tell the surgeon that they have been offered a second chance at living if the surgeon can mend their wounds before sunrise.
Italy
The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper
Amara was once the beloved daughter of a Greek doctor. Now Amara is a slave in Pompeii’s notorious Wolf Den brothel, owned by a cruel and ruthless man. Intelligent and resourceful, she is forced to hide her true self. But her spirit is far from broken. Buoyed by the sisterhood she forges with the brothel’s other women, Amara finds solace in the laughter and hopes they all share.
Japan
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
A club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then a Christian minister offers a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.
Korea
Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim
In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected—and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century.
Lebanon
The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan
The Nasr family is spread across the globe. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father’s recent death, Idris, the family’s new patriarch, has decided to sell.
Malaysia
The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
Ji Lin always wanted to be a doctor, but as a girl in 1930s Malaysia, apprentice dressmaker is a more suitable occupation. Secretly, Ji Lin also moonlights as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother’s debts. One night, Ji Lin’s dance partner leaves her with a severed finger. Convinced the finger is bad luck, Ji Lin enlists the help of her erstwhile stepbrother to return it to its rightful owner.
Mexico
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When a wealthy man proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But the hacienda is not the sanctuary she imagined…
Nigeria
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
When Korede’s is interrupted by a distress call from her sister she knows what’s expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel, and a strong stomach. This’ll be the third boyfriend Ayoola’s dispatched and the third mess that her sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family comes first.
Norway
The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Kartsuyker
Ragnvald grew up believing that he would one day take his father’s place as chief of his family’s lands. But the young warrior is betrayed and left for dead by his greedy stepfather. Ragnvald is determined to have revenge for his stepfather’s betrayal, claim his birthright and the woman he loves, and rescue his beloved sister.
Puerto Rico
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Prieto, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy.
Russia
Daughters of a Dead Empire by Carolyn Tara O’Neal
Russia, 1918: With the execution of the tsar, the empire is on the edge of civil war. Anna, a bourgeois girl, narrowly escaped the massacre of her entire family. She offers a peasant girl a diamond to take her as far south as possible—not realizing that the girl is a communist herself.
Scotland
The Wages of Sin by Kaite Welsh
Sarah fled London to join the University of Edinburgh’s medical school the first year it admits women. Sarah quickly finds plenty of barriers: professors who refuse to teach women, male students determined to force out their female counterparts, and—worst of all—peers who will do anything to avoid associating with a fallen woman.
And there you have it! Hopefully next year I’ll be able to “visit” just as many countries.
