Around the World in 80 Books

 

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch 412 pp.

Created as a kind of antidote to the Covid lockdown, the chair of Harvard's Comparative Literature Department evokes the travels of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg by selecting 80 books by a wide variety of authors. The books have settings that roughly follow Fogg's itinerary. Damrosch also pairs books with similar themes, settings, or authors. I read 13 of the 80, some for pleasure, others as school assignments. A couple have been summer Big Book Challenge titles including last summer's Tale of Genji and this summer's Things Fall Apart. While most of the titles can be classified as "great literature", I was excited to find a Donna Leon title from one of my favorite series in the list. While I don't expect to read the entire list, there are a number that are already in my TBR books and I will be adding a few of Damrosch's suggested titles. If you can get past the often dry, professorial tone to the book, it's an interesting read. The audiobook was read by the author.