I don’t shy away from reading widely, as many of you know, but one thing I want to make more commonplace with my reading and reviews is the diversity of my reads in terms of their authors, characters, and settings. I don’t just want to pick up an asian author once a month, or when there is a specific event or monthly awareness for such works. I don’t want to overlook the tremendous novels writing about corners of the world the western world hardly hears about. I want to be a more conscious consumer, a more invested reader, and overall, a more understanding person.

When someone in my PhD Book Club suggested an ‘authors around the world’ prompt for our reading, I was immediately on board. Not only will this be an incredible exercise given the different people in my book club, but it will be a great way to showcase the wonders of reading more diversely, more widely, and more intentionally. By seeing what books others pick up with this prompt, I am hoping to learn more about them and the cultures they come from as well as the cultures and characters from the books they read.

So, what does this me for me? Well, I have already started expanding my TBR to include more books from around the world, from Singapore and Scotland, Nigeria to New Zealand, Australia to Argentina, and many more in between. Yes, I am including New Zealand books on the list even though I live in New Zealand. One thing I want to look at is how similar and relatable cultures are around the world, especially indigenous cultures. I want to see where the heart lies with these characters, because I have a pretty strong assumption that we are all quite similar once you get past the surface of things. This is a fairly tamed belief, one I am sure many around the world share, and I want to help prove that through reading and reviewing books where characters, setting, cultures, circumstances, and so forth appear different. I know the core will shine through with each novel, short story, or non-fiction piece, hacking away at the idea that we are too different to understand each other.

I also just like diversity in my reading. I get so frustrated when I read the same thing over and over again. Seeing different cultural influences in books hooks me into the story, it engages me in the world, and I want to learn more. I want to be able to smell the food, feel the atmosphere of a gathering, hear the language move through the space, and feel the everyday life settle in my bones. I get to experience this with historical fiction, and I am finding some good literary fiction novels that carry this same energy.

This isn’t a goal for 2026 necessarily, more so a habit I want to instill in my reading without the societal push for plans and goals to be set. It isn’t that I feel it is less genuine, because there are goals I set and aim to stick to each year, but it is that I don’t want to treat it like something that needs checklists and boxes ticked. I love reading, and I love learning about new things, and I want that to be all the motivation I need to make better reading habits.

My summer reading pile currently has a handful of stories I am really keen to get into: several South Korean books, a Nigerian novel, some historical fiction stories from Vietnam and Singapore, some Scottish, Irish, and English novels, A Palestian novella, a South African classic, and the first book in an Italian series. Safe to safe, my summer will contain a lot of travelling, and I won’t even have to leave New Zealand! If this sounds like something you want to get into, consider having a staycation this year and become a literary globetrotter instead.