Hello, my name is Hannah McGinty.

I love reading. I love books. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t love these things. When I was child, I could spend hours upon hours sitting spellbound with a book, curled up in an armchair or on a blanket at the beach. I loved reading to a point where my parents did not want to buy me books anymore for my birthday or the holidays. “Don’t you want anything else…?,” they would (and still) ask. When I think about decorating my house, the only things I can think of are where my bookshelves should go, and how I would like them organized (oh, and some art on the open wall space too, I suppose). Whenever I read, I feel a tiny window in my mind opening, the synapses firing, and new ways of thinking about the world start to take form. 

     I own a lot of books. I have probably ~400-500 in my apartment and another ~300-400 in my parent’s house. Some of these are academic books, or cookbooks, or things I loved in my childhood, but a lot, the majority really, are fiction. I try to read other things, essays, poetry, plays, but a good novel always draws me the most. 

    Anyone who knows me knows that I love organizing and lists. I have lists for the ciders I want to try, the camera equipment I’d like to purchase, the people I need to call. And of course I have lists about books. My education at the University of Chicago profoundly shaped my understanding of canon, the inter-relatedness of fiction and philosophy and political thought. In my time there, I got a tiny taste of some of the Western canon, and, as a Westerner, reading those texts seemed and seems imperative for an adequate understanding of the world in which I reside. And thus I made a Definitive Life Reading List, in which I have separate sections for philosophy, fiction, plays, and poetry, with the hope that I can read the complete works of “the greats.” I love reading all of these things side by side to gain a more complete picture of the world, Aristophanes and Plato and Aristotle, along with the Book of Job, all approximate contemporaries. 

    This is not enough. As a Westerner, I do see a huge amount of value is reading deeply into my own tradition, and I feel that it is necessary to call myself “educated.” As we increasingly are discovering, though, fear of the Other is alive and well. So much hatred is directed towards those we do not understand and perhaps do not want to. For me, reading has always been a source of empathy. It is not action (and I do not pretend that it is, let me be clear), but it is a step towards opening yourself to others, to their points of view, and seeing through a tiny window into a different perspective.

    This project has been brewing in me for a while, and I realize I would like to document it. My plan is to read at least one book written by an author from every country in the world, as well as a number of sub-regions, semi-independent places, dependencies, etc. I am very happy to talk about these books with others and to take recommendations (please!). This blog will serve as a space for reflection on the books I read and reading in general.