Skip to main content

Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Ten Settings In Books

Top Ten Tuesdays is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. To see more lists of weird and wonderful places people would like to visit after having read about them in books, please visit the hosting site and click on any or all of the links to the participating blogs.

There are so many places I would have liked to mention, but I am going to stick to ten places. However, next time I don’t participate in Top Ten Tuesdays, I just might post my alternative list of top ten settings instead...

  1. Middle-Earth, especially the Shire and Lothlorien. From The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien. In real world terms this means New Zealand, because since the movies it is Middle-Earth.
  2. The Discworld, esecially Anhk-Morpork and Lancre. From the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. Mind you, there are areas of Ankh I would rather avoid, but I would love to visit Unseen University and take a tour of the library in the company of the Librarian. I would also like to climb the Tower of Art and have a drink in the Broken Drum and avoid having a meal off Dibbler's tray, before heading to Lancre and paying a visit to Nanny Ogg.
  3. Arches National Park as described in Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. He saw Arches in the 1950s, before it was really developed and he saw it in winter, and as a park ranger he went to places within the park that are closed to visitors. I would love to do that.
  4. Prince Edward Island as described in the Anne books by L.M. Montgomery. It is just so wonderfully idyllic and golden.
  5. Gormenghast castle in the books by Mervyn Peake. All those forgotten, dusty old rooms and strange people are fascinating. Definitely before Steerpike.
  6. The lands beyond the wall, in Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Dangerous and charming.
  7. Brekkukot and environs in Brekkukotsannáll (English title: The Fish Can Sing) by Halldór Laxness (pre-World War I Reykjavík). Another golden and idyllic place, but mostly I would like to see what the area looked like before the urban sprawl began.
  8. Xanth in the books by Piers Anthony. The books have long since gone sadly down-hill, but I thoroughly enjoyed the early ones with all those wacky puns brought to life.
  9. Fantastica from The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. Another potentially very dangerous place, but full of endless places to explore.
  10. Regency England, but only among the aristocratic classes and as described in the books of Georgette Heyer. She manages to make it seem so unutterably romantic and dashing, while the truth of course was somewhat different.

Comments

I always regret that we did not go to Arches when we were less than fifty miles away. But, hey, I did get to see it in Desert Solitaire. And maybe that's the best way!

Here's my list of Top Ten Settings in Books. I hope you will stop by and visit!
Anne said…
I love Georgette Heyer's books. I picked Prince Edward's Island too- I would love to visit there.
Professor Batty said…
Re #7:

http://laxnessintranslation.blogspot.com/2010/08/fish-can-sing.html
Trish said…
The Anne of Green Gables books are indeed lovely. I was in PEI once as a child and remember the scenery as being just beautiful!
Yvette said…
Regency England. I thought about it then I thought: no flushing toilets.
Still I love it as a setting just to read about so I should have included it too. :)
LBC said…
Arches National Park is remarkably beautiful in real life. I would say that part of the Southwest is the most beautiful place I've ever been.

Check out my list here
Bibliophile said…
Yvette, no one said you'd have to stay there for long...

LBC, Arches is indeed lovely, and the whole area is just wow! My only regret is that when I was there it was to hot to hike out to Delicate Arch. One day I'll re-visit it in early spring or late autumn and make that hike.

Popular posts from this blog

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...