World Religion & Reading the World Challenges

I have decided to join two more challenges, both of which I originally found through Eva's blog:

• World Religion Challenge 

• Reading the World Challenge

World Religion Challenge is hosted by Bibliofreak.The challenge site is here. The aim of the challenge is to read books (fiction or nonfiction, poetry, religious texts) about different religions. The challenge runs all through 2010 and there are 4 levels of participation. I have chosen to join The Unsheparded Path, also known as The Don't Tell Me What to Do -path. :) That allows me to choose freely how many books I'll read and about which religion(s).I am a cradle Lutheran and have also read quite a lot about Catholicism. So, I guess, I will be reading something about Christianity also for this challenge (I actually just finished my first book for the challenge. In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, but more about that in a review later.), but I will try to use the challenge as a means to read more about other religions. As I will be walking the Unsepharded Path :) I don't want to make too many plans about which books to read. There has been, however, this one book sitting in my bookself for quite a while now that I think would be perfect for this challenge and this challenge would also be a perfecr reason to finally read it. The book is The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah by Karen Armstrong. I might also read something else by Armstrong. Years ago I read her memoir of her years as a sister in a Catholic teaching order and have been thinking of reading more by her ever since, but somehow never did. In addition to The Great Transformation (and maybe something else by Armstrong) I will probably read fiction where religion or themes related to religion play an important role. Possible books (three of which are only available in Finnish] include:

• Rumer Godden: In This House of Brede (just finished this one & will count it as my first read for the challenge) [Catholic Christianity]
• Aaron Hamburger: Faith for Beginners [Judaism]
  
• Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha [Hinduism, Buddhism, eastern & western spirituality]
• Juha Itkonen: Myöhemipien aikojen pyhiä [Mormons]
  
• Bahiyyih Nakhjavani: The Saddelbag [Islam]
• Eila Pennanen: Pyhä Birgitta [Catholic Christianity]
  
• Hannu Raittila: Ei minulta mitään puutu [Laestadian religious movement, Christianity]
  
• Ilia Trojanow: The Collector of Worlds [Islam, Hinduism]
  
• You Are Not Here and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction, ed. by Keith Kachtick [Buddhism]
  

These two nonfiction books I have read earlier, but will highly recommend for anyone wanting to know a bit more about Catholicism:

• Elizabeth Kuhns: The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns
• Nancy Klein Maguire: An Infinity of Little Hours: The Trial of Faith of Five Young Men in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order
  

Let's move over to the Reading the World Challenge then. I've been wanting to join some kind of a "reading around the world -challenge" for a while now. Actually I would love to do a challenge where one should read books set in different bordering coutries and in such a way travel all around the world through one's reading, but that would be quite a big undertaking. Reading the World Challenge, hosted by papertigers.org asks the participants to read one book for every continent once a month. See the challenge website here. I have decided to start the challenge this month, but what books to choose that's difficult! Too much choice, all too much! :) Well, the following list is compiled mainly from my TBR list. Maybe this challenge will help me shorten it a bit... I'm hoping  to read maybe more than one book per continent, but we'll see. Here's my list:

Africa:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Thing Around Your Neck [Nigeria]
  
• Faarah M. J. Awl: Ignorance Is the Enemy of Love [Somalia]
• Buchi Emecheta: Joys of Motherhood [Nigeria]
  
• Petina Gappah: An Elegy for Easterly [Zimbabwe]
• Naguib Mahfouz: Before the Throne: Dialogue's with Egypt's Great from Menes to Anwar Sadat [Egypt]

Antarctica:

• Caroline Alexander: Mrs Chippy's Last Expeditions [1914-1915]: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-Bound Cat
  
• Beryl Bainbridge: The Birthday Boys
• Vivien Kelly: Take One Young Man
  
• H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness
• Rosie Thomas: Sun at Midnight

Asia:

• Nathalie Abi-Ezzi: A Girl Made of Dust [Lebanon]
• Rumer Godden: The River [India]
  
• Sanjida O'Connell: The Naked Name of Love [Mongolia]
  
• Mahbod Seraji: Rooftops of Tehran [Iran]
• Fan Wu: February Flowers [China]

Australia:

• Wilkie Collins: Ioláni, or Tahiti, as It Was [Tahiti]
  
• Richard Flanagan: Wanting [Tasmania, Australia]
• Janet Frame: Towards Another Summer [New Zealand]
• Apelu Tielu: Forever in Paradise [Samoa]
  
• Kate Grenville: The Lieutenant [Australia]
  

Europe:

• Gurbergur Bergsson: The Swan [Iceland]
  
• Jens Kristian Grondahl: Virginia [Denmark]
  
• Ismail Kadare: The Three-Arched Bridge [Albania]
• Claudio Magris: Danube [Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia]
• Herta Müller: The Passport [Romania]

North America:

• Patrick Chamoiseau: Childhood [Martinique]
• Edwidge Danticat: Breath, Eyes, Memory [Haiti]
  
• Elizabeth Hay: Late Nights on Air [Canada]
• Mayra Montero: The Red of His Shadow [Haiti, Dominican Republic]
  
• Luis Alberto Urrea: The Hummingbird's Daughter [Mexico]

South America:

• Roberto Bolaño: By Night in Chile [Chile]
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Of Love and Other Deamons [Colombia]
  
• Tomás Eloy Martinez: The Tango Singer [Argentina]
• Colin Thubron: To the Last City [Peru]
• Lily Tuck: The News from Paraguay [Paraguay]
  

As my very own bonus book for the Reading the World Challenge I shall read The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson.