I came across "Tips on How to Read World Literature for Personal Enrichment" by Susan Abraham, which she plans to turn into a weekly series. Her perspective seems to suggest it might be a series worth following, even though I've always been a bit churlish about the increasing popularity of "World Literature", which is a very narrow vein of literature in the world. I have a similar ambivalence as lovers of novels had to the emergence pop culture commentators such as Oprah. On one hand they appreciated the expansion of markets for their dear works. On the other hand they grew wary of a homogenizing influence from the popular machinery. I'm no lover of novels, but I also look askance towards the tendency of the popular machinery to find fodder in exotic places. I can't really complain about anything that brings millions into better awareness of other cultures, but for the most part I find a great deal of homogenization of these books. They all elaborate Western traditional (and often tedious) plot devices, character development and such, careful to confine any adventure to the realm of setting. You can almost hear these masses of novelists sitting as foreign exchange students at Western university workshops, being beaten by ex-hippie professors into clones of expository form, while getting a pat on the head to the effect of: "oh but you have something special to offer; talk about that exciting war you had in your home country. And by the way, Western audiences will eat it up if you pour to the brim with tales of women triumphing over ancient tribal oppressions." Admirable stuff, for all I know, but for my taste it is hard to read more than two or three of the resulting species. They all blend together after a while. I suppose that is the way of the world itself. But perhaps someone will show me an unimpeachable crop of so-called "World Literature". Perhaps Susan Abraham.