Books near you

[Violentvixen]

Someone analyzed book locations in America and broke them down by location and genre. Also it finds books near your zip code which is neat.

Most of them I can puzzle out or the top ranked ones just make sense, but the mystery one baffled me, I guess Bisbee Arizona is the setting of a popular series I'd never heard of!

Sadly the ones near my town weren't that interesting, but it's a fun tool.

 

[Falselogic]

That's real neat. Some interesting books, though not very many, in my own town. Maybe, I should try reading some of them.

 

[Issun]

I forgot Fifty Shades of Gray was set in Seattle. Ew.

 

[Adam]

That reminds me that last time I was at a bookstore, I found out that John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats wrote a book taking place in my hometown, which weirded me out until I realized that not only is it based on a true story, there was already a movie.

 

[jpfriction]

I put in my hometown and it didn’t mention that Main Street by Sinclair Lewis is set in a fictionalized version of a town a bit down the road, which is all anyone from that town ever talks about (we took field trips to tour said “
main street” more than once in elementary school).

I should probably read that book some day.

 

[Lokii]

High in the Rockies a mysterious disease breaks out threatening the world's forests.

Matthew Dilke and his miniaturized agents - including the delectable Hyacinth - are sent to investigate. And in the branches of a soaring pine they find their enemy - and face the awesome power of the warrior ants he controls.

 

[ThornGhost]

Looks like Knoxville has Suttree by Cormac McCarthy as its top historical work, which I definitely need to get around to reading at some point.

Our top ranked romance novel is described as a "Christmas gay romance" called Mr. Frosty Pants which is just some good good book naming if I've ever heard it.

 

[Kirin]

Hah, someone totally screwed up in the blurb about places with a high percentage of fantasy fiction a good ways down the page. Ranked #1 is a place they claim to be “Blue Ridge Mountains, Arizona”. Now, there is in fact *a* mountain in AZ called Blue Ridge Mtn, but I strongly suspect that the actual data (and am absolutely sure that the picture they used) are from the Blue Ridge that runs through a bunch of southeastern states including mine. Which I’m sure has a lot of fantasy set in it, old-ass backwoods mountains are good for that.

 

[Adrenaline]

The only book on that site that I've heard of is Water for Elephants, where the main character leaves Cornell University early on to join a circus. One of my friends from school is actually a published author now, and all her books take place around the area.

 

[Issun]

High in the Rockies a mysterious disease breaks out threatening the world's forests.

Matthew Dilke and his miniaturized agents - including the delectable Hyacinth - are sent to investigate. And in the branches of a soaring pine they find their enemy - and face the awesome power of the warrior ants he controls.

I had a layover at Denver International a few years ago and I wondered why they had posters everywhere on what to do if you encounter warrior ants. Thanks for clearing that up, Lokii.

The only book on that site that I've heard of is Water for Elephants, where the main character leaves Cornell University early on to join a circus. One of my friends from school is actually a published author now, and all her books take place around the area.

I read Water for Elephants years ago. I remember it had elephants and that it was part of that present tense narrative craze of the late 2000s and that's pretty much it.

 

[Rosewood]

Someone analyzed book locations in America and broke them down by location and genre. Also it finds books near your zip code which is neat.

Most of them I can puzzle out or the top ranked ones just make sense, but the mystery one baffled me, I guess Bisbee Arizona is the setting of a popular series I'd never heard of!

Sadly the ones near my town weren't that interesting, but it's a fun tool.

I know the Bisbee connection because I have a sib who works there. That's the "Joanna Brady" mystery series by J.A. Jance. (I picked up the first book out of curiosity and never got around to reading it)

My current town has a single book that I've never heard of. Oddly, two books set in Virginia, literally all the way across the country, were chosen to fill in empty spaces. The rest were the more predictable Santa Barbara and Malibu.

The city I grew up in, St. Louis, was able to fill everything in. Among them are The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, the Anita Blake series by Laurell Hamilton, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (Hannibal, et al).

 

[Paul le Fou]

The only ones I remember from around my hometown in Ohio are the ones that my childhood friend's mother wrote. (And even then, most of them are down closer to Oberlin than to Cleveland.)

 

[Johnny Unusual]

This fall, my mother is releasing the last book in the "Abigail Massey" series, about a teen growing up near a small town in New Brunswick during World War II, as it's train station saw a lot of traffic of soldiers and important folks (and was very close to the US border). She's been working on this last book for a long time so I'm proud of her.