Well Dinsdale I live on the Connecticut coast most of the time that is. Occasionally you can find me in the Southwest…Anyway! Peter Benchley’s "White Shark" and most of “Jaws” was written right in my home town. In White Shark Benchley describes places to eat on water st. that I currently frequent. And he describes places on Long Island Sound that I fish quite often. I know the currents and tides in some of the places he described like the back of my own hand. And from his descripters, he has to have been there before. This added quite a bit to my enjoyment of the books. Granted one was about killer gigantic sharks but hey who cares, it’s a lovely place to live.
Also Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs" Hannibal Lecter describes Plum Island Animal Research center as a vacation spot. And that is in my field of view every time I look out onto the sound. Kinda freaky.
Living in Manhattan, there’s just too many books set here. But, originally, I am from Buffalo, and I only know of a few books set there.
A fairly recent novel set in Buffalo is Lauren Belfer’s City of Light. It takes place around the turn of the century (the 1900 one), and relies heavily on Buffalo architecture and culture to set the tone of the story. I usually find myself delighted to recognize things about the city in books, and this was no exception. In fact, I don’t think I would have enjoyed the story nearly as much had it been set in some other city. I found it much easier to visualize what was going on since I was so familar with the area landmarks that were mentioned.
On the Manhattan books for a moment, I often don’t pay much special attention to the setting, because it’s not fun or unusual to pick up a book and discover that it takes place in NYC – it’s just too typical to get much notice from me. One thing, however, that does strike me as somewhat amusing is when I read one of these books and get the feeling that the author is actually describing the New York of 10, 15, or whenever he/she last lived here years ago. ejrn, I’m also a big fan of Block, although more the Bernie books, but the most recent ones to be published seem to have Bernie and Caroline still living in the New York of 1985. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why I get that impression, but a lot of it has to do with trends that are mentioned – say, when Bernie dates a woman who lives in an “up and coming” neighborhood, and then it ends up being SoHo.
When I travel, one of the things I do is try to find some novels that use my destination as a setting. This past year, our vacation was in New Orleans, and I read quite a number of novels set there, both past and present, to prepare for the trip. I usually get a better idea of what I want to do and see from novels rather than from guidebooks.
The “this world” part of Guy Gavriel Kay’s fantasy The Summer Tree takes place around the north end of Queen’s Park in Toronto, and on the campus of the University of Toronto, my graduate alma mater.
Anne McCaffrey’s Year of the Lucy, a novel about a Hungarian-descent sculptor, takes place in my native and current hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
Stephen Fry’s The Liar is for a large part set in Cambridge, England. I’ve lived here all my life, so even though it’s mostly set in university grounds the locations are all very familiar.
On the one hand I love to be able to read a book and think “I know that! I’ve eaten in that pub!” or whatever (especially as the author also lives here and can accurately describe the decor and regulars at a pub), but on the other hand it can be very off-putting when a mistake is made [or artistic licence is employed] because the rest is all so like real life.
On the whole though, I found that the book was so true to life that it enhanced the experience.
One part of the world that I am very familiar with is South Florida. Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, and John Katzenbach are excellent writers who get all the facts straight. This greatly enhances the read for one familiar with the area. On the other hand, I’ve read some novels by other authors who got things “mixed up” so to speak, and that ruined their books for me, much more than it should have, perhaps.
So my thought is, if the writer gets it right, great! If not, the reader is better off not knowing the details of the setting.
We used to live in Boulder, CO, so I got a kick out of re-reading The Shining and The Stand.
Also, I was born & raised in Newport Beach, CA, and a number of writers either set stories here or reference the area. Dean Koontz (spelling?) lives here, and at least one novel (Tick Tock) was set in Newport, and he did all right on the landmarks and stuff. Clive Cussler’s most famous character, Dirk Pitt, recalls his childhood in Newport in almost every novel.
Well, I don’t know if you know the book “Il cuore” by the italian author Edmundo de Amicis. It is certainly a classic but I don’t know if it known worldwide or only in Latin countries. Anyway one of the stories of the book is about a little boy who travels alone from Italy to Argentina in search for his mother, and he reaches my city Tucuman (the story is based on the author’s experience for he was an inmigrant himself).
There is a mystery author, Susan Holtzer, who sets her books in Ann Arbor, where I live. The fictional character has an office just 1/2 a block from my office. I like recognizing all the landmarks and street names. There aren’t too many books that take place here (not a huge city) so it makes the books a lot more appealing to me than they would be otherwise.
I read a book called “The Chimney Sweeper” by John Peyton Cooke a while back. It’s set in “Isthmus City,” which is Madison in disguise. I recognized some of the geography but some of it pre-dated my arrival in the city. I later found out that it’s based on an actual murder case but I haven’t been able to find out much about the case.
“Waiting to Exhale” was set here in Phoenix. I’m not African-American, but it was clever of her to choose a big city (2 million) with a relatively small Black population for her story about how hard it is for Black women to find a good Black man. (Remove the word “Black” and the Phoenix setting and it would be just like a million other, less interesting, books.)
The book “Hot Zone” is a true story and deals with ebola and other such nasty viruses. Part of the book takes place at a “monkey house” near Washington DC. The monkeys were, it was thought, infected with a species-jumping virus and all had to be destroyed.
I lived within three miles of that monkey-house.
YEESH!
Thankfully, I’d already moved to Ohio when I read the book.
Still gives me the creepies when I see that book on the shelf at home.
Earth Abides is set in the Bay Area, at least initially. It’s really a trip reading passages about walking across the Bay Bridge, or through a deserted UC Berkeley campus.
Just an update:
The setting in the book I’m reading has since changed to Lexington, KY. I fond myself wondering if he was the same way about places there as he was in Chi. I actually think I read these parts more smoothly, cause the descriptions did not jump out at me and cause me to step out of the story and do my little analysis bit. Unfortunately, I am losing interest in this book but will probably finsish it as it is not too long and I am halfway through - at least mildly interested at what happens to a couple of the characters.
As a child, I lived in Bangor, ME, which is the setting for many of Stephen King’s books and stories. Not only that, but many of those stories take place in the early '70’s when I lived there. His fictional town of Derry also has many of Bangor’s landmarks, such as the Paul Bunyan statue (along with Babe the Blue Ox). There is a theological seminary in Derry which is mentioned in that evil clown book that is actually the alma mater of my parents.