Around the EU with one book per country

Brexit has just happened. It is a lost for everyone involved. It is a sad day. There are many comprehensive analysis in Internet on why it happened, I am not going to try to explain it here when others have done it so well already.

The EU has many flaws. For instance it has not achieve much on cultural integration. I am quite sure the average EU citizen consume few cultural products from other countries of the EU other than maybe (ironically) United Kingdom. I can only see benefits of such a share of culture.

Realizing my own lack of knowledge about the culture of the other members of the EU, a couple of years ago I challenge myself to read one book from one author of each of the countries of the EU. 28 countries =>28 books, it took a while to finish them all but it was totally worth it. I totally loved it.

Finding the books was in itself challenging and a lot of fun. I wanted them in digital format, to be interesting, to be in a language I can understand and to not be expensive. For some countries it was quite hard to achieve all these criteria and some research about their writers and history was needed. There is a lot to learn and it was fascinating.

I printed out an empty Europe map and kept track of my progress by physically coloring each country as I finished each book. It felt very good, like conquering a country! I had the map in the office, people would pass by and ask me about it, it was a proud moment of the day to explain the challenge and progress. It was an awesome project, really recommended it to anyone!

Finding the books was so much fun! But just in case you get stuck, below there is a list of the books I read. Each book has a link to more info so you can judge by yourself and my rating (1= junk, 5 = masterpiece). This is not at any rate the best out there only what I could find with my very limited knowledge. If you have recommendations please write them in the comments for me and for other readers.

Let’s do this! Let’s know about each other and share our cultural treasures!