Around the World in 80 Books discussion

Well, last year didn't work out, but hope springs eternal.

1) Unspecified South America - Bel Canto
2) Austria - The World of Yesterday
3) Burundi - Small Country
4) China - Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China - finished 28-Jan
5) East Africa - Afterlives
6) Turkey - The Architect's Apprentice
7) Germany - Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955
8) Hungary - Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
9) Korea - If I Had Your Face - finished 27-March
10) Japan - The Easy Life in Kamusari
11) Kenya - Weep Not, Child
12) Various - Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe
13) Greece - The Penelopiad
14) Malaya - The Garden of Evening Mists
15) Poland - The King of Warsaw
16) Dominican Republic - In the Time of the Butterflies
17) Saudi Arabia - The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
18) Russia - Ten Days that Shook the World
19) France - Matrix
20) Middle East - Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
21) India - Black Narcissus - finished 26-Feb
22) Sweden - After the Fire
23) Tibet - Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet
24) Haiti - Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life

I finished Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China a couple of days ago. A biography of the Soong sisters who married, respectively, the man who became Chiang Kai-Shek's Finance minister (Big Sister), Sun Yat-sen (Red Sister), and Chiang Kai-Shek (Little Sister). I learned a lot about Chinese history in the first part of the 20th century.

I just finished Black Narcissus. A band of five nuns attempt to establish a convent in a former harem palace high in the Himalayas. The challenging situation tries all of them, and breaks one.

This sounds like quite the story!

My March book was If I Had Your Face. The lives of four disparate women in modern South Korea. I found it fascinating, but was disappointed that it didn't so much end as just stop.