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.

From Arches National Park