This Site Will Help You Find a Set of Books Where You Live
I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy because I love it when books take me to new worlds or present new realities, but there’s something to be said for writing that connects you to places you already know. Few things give me more pleasure as a reader than picking up a book and discovering that it’s set in the city I’ve been to in real life, or better yet, the city where I live. Unfortunately I currently live in New York where there are no books. 🙁
I am of course JK; approximately 75% of contemporary literary novels take place in Brooklyn or Manhattan; Finding a book set in my city is as easy as closing your eyes and choosing a title at random from the buy-get-half table at Barnes & Noble. But what about those of you who are not lucky enough to live on this garbage island? How can you find a set of books in your corner of this United States? Type Books Around America , an interactive tool created by Crossword-Solver.com that allows you to enter your zip code or city to search for books that happen (more or less) near you. I tested this by searching for books taking place in my current area in South Brooklyn and the results were pretty accurate:
Of these top three results, I read one and can confirm that the majority of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay takes place in the Flatbush area. And while The Speculation Division by Jenny Offill (which I haven’t read) is located more generally in “Brooklyn City” (no one calls it that), I read the author’s follow-up novel Weather and was able to identify the elementary school she’s there describes, a school located a block away from where I once lived. But how does the site feel about books that do not take place in the most popular literary environment ? I’ve searched a few of my former zip codes and the results have been decent, though a bit less accurate. For example, while in college I lived in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood and the best match for that zip code was something else I was reading – Adam Langer’s absolutely delightful novel Crossing California , a novel so localized. that on its front pages there is a map of the streets that I walked every day. More extensive searches also turned up reasonable matches—I entered my hometown zip code (in semi-rural Illinois) and was offered novels set in the nearest major city about 20 minutes away. As with any such tool, the results are only as good as the data that generates them. The site notes that all data is taken from Goodreads databases of books, and not every book ever written has been so carefully cataloged on this site, but if you’re looking for a novel that will make you feel at home, this is the one for you. . Start.