This is an attempt to read globally and democratically. Using world population to focus our efforts and the population of South America as the factor, we get the following rough breakdown for our world literature parliament:

World Population – 8.008B
Asia, pop. 4.741B – 11 books
Africa,  pop. 1.425B – 3 books
Europe,  pop. 0.749B – 2 books
North America, pop. 0.501B – 1 book
South America, pop. 0.440B – 1 book
Oceania,  pop. 0.044B – 1 book
Antarctica,  pop. 0.000005B – 1 book

Statistics from worldometers.info as of December 26, 2022.

I plan on reading mostly fiction in translation, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out your plan. Romance novels set in exotic locales? Biographies of world leaders? Science fiction from around the world? The choice is yours!

Because Asia takes up most of this list, I’ve created sub-categories based on region and population. For the remaining continents, I encourage you to take a regional approach as well. You may find the following links helpful:

https://www.worldometers.info/geography/7-continents/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-region/

Antarctica? Really?
Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Mat Johnson, Maria Semple, Angela Mi Young Hur, Albert Sánchez Piñol, and Kim Stanley Robinson are some authors that have written novels set, in part or in whole, on the seventh continent. There are scientist memoirs, expedition accounts, and natural histories as well.

I've created a bonus category called “Interzone” for areas that don’t adhere nicely to a seven continents model. The areas listed are suggestions, but take the category however you want.

Bon voyage!