This year the theme of my reading list is Middle East and North Africa, or MENA, which includes 20 countries. I don’t really know much about the Middle East or North Africa. At first I thought I would only consider the Middle East, but then decided to extend it to cover North Africa as well.
Sometimes we over-estimate the simplicity of searching for information on the internet. It took me over a year to populate this year’s reading list. It wasn’t because there aren’t enough writers from the MENA region. It was due to the fact that only a few have been translated into a language I can read.
After a lot of research, I was able to narrow down the list to 2 authors per country. I also added some anthologies and collections to the list. My goal this year is to read 30 books, but perhaps I do finish all the books on the list (which can be found here).
Besides reading books written by authors from each of these countries, I will also be studying the religious texts from the religions that came out of this region. Five major world religions have come out of here; Judaism(the Talmud), Zoroastrianism(the Avesta), Christianity(the Bible), Islam(the Quran) and the Baha’i faith(the Kitab-i-Aqbas).
This year I will try to be better about posting my reviews of the books I have read.
Until the,
Happy Reading!
Ms Elanie 
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