2014 Challenge: Sign Up Post for the European Reading Challenge

This is my sign up page for the 2014 European Reading Challenge!

TO SIGN UP OR SEE DETAILS, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE,

OR CLICK THE BUTTON ABOVE.

The gist: The idea is to read books by European authors or books set in European countries (no matter where the author comes from). The books can be anything – novels, short stories, memoirs, travel guides, cookbooks, biography, poetry, or any other genre. You can participate at different levels, but each book must be by a different author and set in a different country – it's supposed to be a tour.

It's my challenge, so I am signing up at the highest level, the Five Star (Deluxe Entourage) level, to read at least five books by different European authors or books set in different European countries.

MY BOOKS

So far, I have read the following:

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (Norway)

Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy (Greece; reviewed here)

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn (France; reviewed here)

Sinful Folk by Ned Hayes (United Kingdom; discussed here)

Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell (Italy; Ancient Rome, really, but . . .)

Prague by Arthur Phillips (Hungary, despite its title)

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera (Czechoslovakia)

Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Holland)

Some other possibilities for 2014 from my TBR shelves include:

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean (American; Russia)

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie (American; Russia)

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker (Dutch; Holland)

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Polish; Nobel)

How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish (Germany; PEN/Faulkner)

I, the King by Frances Parkinson Keyes (American; Spain)

UPDATED: November 1, 2014