We’re just slightly past the halfway point in this year’s 20 Books of Summer challenge and our host, Annabel, has suggested that we look back at our reading so far in the form of a summer road trip:

Take a look at the books you’ve read so far and plan a road trip around them: put them in an order that makes sense – use locations, author nationalities, landmarks, key words – whatever works. Feel free to wax lyrical about how you’re travelling, your transport.

Then thinking ahead, to books you’re planning to read later in the challenge, where will the next stops be?

Here’s my attempt…

Our journey starts in the 1950s on a sheep station in Western Australia with A Far-flung Life by ML Stedman. We then take a trip north to Japan (and a short trip back in time to the 1940s) to solve a murder in Seishi Yokomizo’s She Walks at Night.

Next, The Persian Boy by Mary Renault takes us all the way back to the 4th century BC and a range of locations including Persia, India and Babylon. We stay in Ancient times for a while and head to Greece to hear the story of Aphrodite in Jennifer Saint’s This Immortal Heart. Then we’ll need to jump into the time machine again and travel forward many centuries to 1936 for The Lost Château by Dinah Jefferies which begins in Greece before quickly moving to the beautiful Dordogne region of France.

The Unicorn Hunters, Katherine Arden’s historical fantasy, is set further north in Brittany and features a visit to the enchanted forest of Brocéliande. After this, we spend some time in Paris during the late 19th and early 20th centuries with two books by French authors: The Kill by Émile Zola and Gigi and The Cat by Colette.

Crossing the Channel to England, The Boleyn Secret by Alison Weir is set in the Tudor period and tells the story of Kate Carey. Although the book moves around to several locations, including Switzerland and Germany, much of it is set in and around London. The Scandalous Ladies Football Club by Frances Quinn, inspired by the formation of the British Ladies’ Football Club in 1895, is also set in London. Heading south-west to Cornwall, an election campaign unfolds in The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott, before our journey comes to a temporary end in Haworth, West Yorkshire, home of Emily Brontë, the subject of Deborah Lutz’s biography, This Dark Night.

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As you can see, although I’ve read twelve books for 20 Books of Summer so far, I’ve only reviewed seven of them. I’m hoping to catch up with the rest of the reviews soon. As for my plans for the second half of the challenge, my two current reads are No Fair Maidens by Kim Willis (nonfiction about British myths) and The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly (this year’s Walter Scott Prize winner, set in Vienna). After that I still have another three books on my list – The Crownless Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick, By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie and The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett – as well as three empty slots to fill with anything I choose.

Are you taking part in 20 Books of Summer this year? How are you doing? Which countries have you visited in your reading so far?