Armchair BEA Day 4: Beyond the Borders

Today's topic for Armchair BEA is Beyond the Borders. Actually I've just been looking at lists of World Literature and trying to improve my whole reading of non-British or American authors, but there are a few things that spring to mind already and fit the subject:

Books Which Taught Me About Another Culture

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz 

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Books Which Transported Me to Another World

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis

Inkheart, Inkspell & Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke

Also represented in this category in a slightly different way, books about books, which make me dream of all the different places I will be transported to while reading:

Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch

Books Which Made Me Step Into the Shoes of Someone Different

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Naming Monsters by Hannah Eaton

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Apologies for the listishness of this, but due to my current stage of pregnancy and exhaustion, lists are pretty much as far as I get now. If it helps, all the titles link through to Waterstone's website where you can read a synopsis :-) 

For me, this list kind of sums up one of the major points of reading, which is to expand your experience beyond the things you have actually physically experienced and to give you understanding and empathy of the situations of others, as well as providing total escapism when necessary. Whether it be from the point of view of a child with Asperger's syndrome, a teenager living with abuse, a repressed Iranian woman, or literally transporting you to the magical land of Narnia, they all take you out of your own experience and add somebody else's to it. There's not much more magical than that!