"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Top Ten Favorite Book Settings

Broke and Bookish

I realized that a lot of YA books do not have strong or memorable settings. So I dug down in my memory to think of books which have fun, romantic, exotic, historic, or interesting settings. I am very fond of books where I learn something while I am enjoying the book. Here are my top "ten" favorite book settings:

1. Brideshead, the Marchmain Estate in England, complete with a huge house, a private chapel, and a beautiful garden described in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. A close second in the English estates category is Manderley the deWinter estate in the West Country found in Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier.

2.Heart of Gold Spaceship for its improbability computer and its chronically depressed robot found in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (It makes me smile to think of it!)

3. Oia on the Greek Island Santorini with its white washed houses and beautiful blue skies and sea as experienced by Lena, one of four friends in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares.  This is about the most exotic that I can imagine.  I wish I could live in such a setting for a year or so.

4.  Botswana as seen through the eyes of Mma Romatswe in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. I also want to visit Scotland thanks to this author's other series.

5.  Australia, every single part of it!  I've wanted to visit it ever since I read In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson.

6.  Paris!  After reading Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins and Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly I am ready for another visit to the City of Love!

7. New York City with its book stores, museums, and Central Park. I love NYC but I want to see some of the spots described in Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Cohen and Levithan.

8.  I can't help myself.  I want to visit live in Mr. Darcy's estate, Pemberley.  Can you imagine the decadence? Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

9.  Camelot with its knights in shining armor found in the Arthurian-tale, The Once and Future King by T.H. White.

10.  Narnia, of course!  Talking beast, dwarfs, kings and queens,  fauns and other magical beings.  I've read the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis so many times I feel like I belong in Narnia.

11.  Savannah, Georgia.  After read the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt I decided that I MUST visit this city, so different than where I live.

12.  There's no place like home.  The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting is set in Bonney Lake, Washington which is less than five miles from my home and The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein is set in Seattle.  The books have geographic references that I recognize and love.

Do you have any favorite settings that you discovered in books?
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8 comments:

  1. We Heart YAJune 7, 2011 at 8:13 PM

    Wow, first list we've seen that didn't have Hogwarts on it!

    Well, we recommend Hogwarts, and the magical kingdom in PEGASUS by Robin McKinley. Like you, we'd love to see Narnia and Camelot and Santorini. We've had the good fortune of visiting NYC and Paris before. ;)

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  2. RitaJune 7, 2011 at 8:43 PM

    How could we have forgotten Hogwarts?! My favorite setting was when the Murry children (from A Wrinkle in Time) travel inside Charles Wallace's mitochondria in the sequel A Wind in the Door. It was such a foreign idea to set the climax of a story in such a small part of a cell....it is just so intriguing to me.

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  3. LBCJune 7, 2011 at 8:50 PM

    Good answers, especially the last one. There aren't many books set where I live, but I do enjoy books about the Southwest in general.

    Check out my list here

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  4. Christina / Book AddictJune 8, 2011 at 4:29 AM

    I had Paris as well and I was going to add Savannah and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil....loved that book! Good call adding Narnia. I completely forgot about that one!

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  5. Two BibliomaniacsJune 8, 2011 at 4:31 AM

    Great settings! The Heart of Gold would be quite an adventure. Also, I love how Africa is described by Alexander McCall Smith - I need to give his other series a try.

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  6. AnonymousJune 8, 2011 at 6:13 AM

    Why didn't I think of... Heart of Gold and Savannah! I love both those books. Great choices. (And Pemberley is a must!)

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  7. Heidi’sbooksJune 8, 2011 at 8:41 AM

    Thanks for visiting my blog. I almost put Cry, the Beloved Country for Africa--but I really wouldn't want to visit the setting in that book. Botswana, however, sounds lovely especially sitting down with a cup of tea with the first lady detective.

    I really must try Anna and the French Kiss.

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  8. Jenni ElyseJune 8, 2011 at 9:29 AM

    Paris made my list too. Anna and the French Kiss made the city come to life and now I want to go there more than ever.

    ReplyDelete

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