Thursday, August 29, 2013

Mapping Your Favorite Book Settings





If you've ever wondered where exactly in the world a scene in a book takes place now you can find out. I've run across a few places that can help you pinpoint locations.  

The first is Placing Literature and it's more general. It's a crowd-sourced website and non-profit project with more than 1000 data points already logged. Locations range from the locations in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club in San Francisco to Stephen King's The Mist in Maine. You can also log in locations once you sign up to participate. 

The second is just for locations in Agatha Christie books. You pick which detective and which story, and the map reveals the locations. Here's the map for Poirot in Cat Among the Pigeons

The San Francisco Chronicle developed a beautiful Literary Map of San Francisco with quotes from books that took place throughout the city.

Finding the setting on a map adds another dimension to the reading and is also great fun.  

4 comments:

  1. That is SOOOOO cool.

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  2. Very cool. It would be neat to travel to places and do tours of where scenes in books took place. Like going to London and following Sherlock Holmes.

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  3. I'm always curious about literary locations and scout them out when I can. I went on a literary walking tour in Paris last year ~ it was terrific! Thanks for an interesting post, Deb!

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  4. Thanks for the post. I teach high school science and have been adapting maritime themed material for Google Earth touring. It's a nice way to engage students. Feel free to use the material at: http://Sailthebook.net

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