2016 European Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m a huge fan of Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge. Over the years she has encouraged us to read as many books as possible that are set in, or about different European countries. With one country per book and each book by a different author, over the course of the year we readers find ourselves moving from book to book across Europe, like some post-modern armchair version of a Bella Époque grand tour of the Continent.

As for the 2016 edition of the challenge, the bad news is I didn’t read and review nearly as many books as I would have liked. However, the good news is unless my count is wrong, I reviewed 13 books and that’s up slightly from last year’s total of 10. Just like in past years, there was variety in countries, ranging from large European counties like Russia and Ukraine, but also smaller ones like Latvia and the Czech Republic and even the micro-state of Monaco. Also like in past years it was a mixture of fiction and nonfiction, with history and historical fiction leading the pack. Looking back on what I read for the challenge, I read some quality books since three of those novels made my year-end best fiction list. One of those three novels, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (France) ended up being my favorite piece of fiction from 2016. As for nonfiction, Matthew Brzezinski’s Isaac’s Army: A Story of Courage and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland made that particular year-end list.

Like I said at the start, I’m a huge fan of this challenge and I encourage all you book bloggers out there in the blogosphere to sign up. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.