Sometimes I become a bit discouraged as I watch the news and see Donald Trump speaking as the Presidential nominee for one of the major parties. It is sad to a see a great nation look to someone so non-empathetic, medieval, tribal, and parochial as its potential leader--and that's putting it kindly. It is easy to feel hopeless while watching this spectacle. That's why I try to occasionally post a positive antidote to narrow Trumpian thought and ignorance by highlighting joyful ways we can embrace global perspectives in our lives.
Earlier I posted about the importance of becoming a global citizen and featured a couple of links that looked at how we can take action to improve our planet. This post focuses on a wonderful TED talk I saw recently. It was a presentation by Ann Morgan. A voracious reader, Ms. Morgan realized a few years ago that all her reading was very much focused on books coming out of the U.S. and U.K. It suddenly dawned on her that she was oblivious about stories from the rest of the planet. She came up with the crazy idea to read one book from every country in the world during the course of one year. The TED talk linked below tells her story and how she accomplished this amazing feat.
https://go.ted.com/CjMW
If you're like me, there is a better chance that we will become the next ruler of England than there is that we will be able to read one book from each country of the world in the next year. However, I do think all of us are capable of reading one book from another country before the end of this year. There's an English translation of Kyrgyzstan's most-famous writer that I am hunting down and, in the next couple of months, I promise to read it and present a review on this blog.
Why not visit Ms. Morgan's list at the link below? Find a country you know nothing about and pick one of the books from her list and read it before the end of the year. Ms. Morgan has chosen fiction, which is a wonderful vehicle for exploring issues and ideas and truths from other cultures. If nothing else, it will be an escape from the toxic, Trumpian monologues the media will be broadcasting the next few months. And, possibly, both you and I, through our reading, will experience a slight uptick in our global perspective and understanding of the world. Because I can't think of anything more anti-Trumpian than the act of reading and gaining insight, let's stand up proudly and proclaim ourselves anti-Trumpians one book at a time.
ayearofreadingtheworld.com
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