I am a big fan of the book of Imaginary Places and this is similar to that. I really enjoyed reading it along with the accompanying graphics I felt transported to new realms and Lands.

In the fall of 2010, I decided to start reading George RR Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. I knew that HBO was going to make a show based on the books, and I thought it would be the perfect time to dive into the land of Westeros. My first move was buying A Game of Thrones. My second move was to buy a map of the famous island. I had heard many things about the books; besides adding twenty characters every hundred pages, Martin is apt to shift the setting pretty quickly, and I did not want to get lost.  I put the poster up next to my bed, with the condition that I'd only keep it up there until I finish the series. Yeah, we all know how that's going...

The Writer's Map is for people like me. People who include notes to publishers with their reviews asking, "Will there be a map in the final draft?" People who look at graph paper and see tombs and dungeons and locks needing a DC 15 dexterity check.  People who escape in the possibilities of other planets, plains, and plats. 

The Writer's Map is a thorough examination of literary cartography.  It is a collection of authors' and artists' writings about maps, and the maps that inspire them. The essays cover their personal connections to maps, the history of literary cartography and its continued inspiration of future writers and artists. From the Hundred Acre Woods to Middle Earth to the worlds that have been imagined so far beyond ours.

David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, sketches his settings while planning out his narratives.  Cressida Cowell, author of How to Train Your Dragon, spent many summers of her youth on a small island off the coast of Scotland developing her writing and honing her drawing talents. Other artists and writers were inspired by real maps and expeditions.  There's even a couple entries about designing the movie props for the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films. 

Editor Huw Lewis-Jones collects the personal connections, the nuts and bolts of mapmaking, and the history of. Also, a ton of great maps! If you’ve ever dogeared or bookmarked that page in the front, this is for you! It is an absolute joy to discover how storytelling and mapmaking connect and continue to inspire authors.

A collection of writers', cartographers', artists' and scholars' accounts of maps of fictional places and how maps influence and guide fiction writing. While many of the essays included here are beautifully written and thought-provoking, every contributor is white, and although a few mention historical maps of non-Western places or non-Western influences, almost all of the maps and writers and places they cite are also predominantly white. So although I enjoyed reading about how ancient maps sparked writers' imaginations, how some authors begin by making maps of their new worlds, and so on, I was enormously disappointed in the lack of diversity represented in the collection. Where was N.J. Jemison to discuss the geography of the Broken Earth or the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? Where was Nnedi Okorafor to write about the worlds of Binti or Sunny's Nigeria? Why weren't Amy Tan or Haruki Murakami or other Asian writers included?

In addition, it's pretty clear that this book needs to be read in hard copy to be enjoyed. The Kindle edition I read was a terrible mess in terms of layout and design.

I've been a map lover since childhood, greedily looking over the real-life maps in the World Book Encyclopedia and tracing the roads and features of story map in such books as FRIDAY'S TUNNEL and THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH. As one of my "what do I want to be when I grow" musings I would have gladly tossed in "cartographer," as I created my own stories and drew my own maps, rejoicing in being able to name bodies of water, bays, shorelines and streets, coloring in mountains of brown and grey, and plains in green. Needless to say this book about the magic of maps both real and fictional was just my cup of tea. Each essay included in this book talks about the joy of reading maps or creating them, drawing the legends and, sometimes, with a chill of joy, being able to label an area of mysterious mountains, a place where dragons might still lurk.

The text is liberally illustrated with both ancient maps (some extremely rare) and maps of fictional worlds as far reaching as Lyra's Oxford from "His Dark Materials" and Westeros from GAME OF THRONES to dreamy locations like the Hundred Acre Wood of Winnie-the-Pooh and the golden world of the crews of the "Swallow" and the "Amazon." Those who dream of making maps and exploring unknown lands will love this book.

(This has nothing to do with the book's contents, but I need to mention to the publisher that I hope the official release electronic copies are better than the ones I had to read. It took me a long time to read this book because both the Kindle copy and the Adobe DRM version were so difficult to read. I could read the text easily in the Kindle copy, but the accompanying maps were all over the place and often a page away from their legend. The Adobe DRM version was even worse because it would not allow you to read one page at the time, but only a double-page spread was available to read. I had to read the book horizontally and could barely make out the text on my 10 inch tablet and couldn't read more than four or six pages at the time since it gave me such a headache. Nor could you zoom in on it. I hope the published e-book version is better.)

I'll be honest: I didn't read many of the essays. I found most of them to be more about the authors than the actual maps. There were a few that piqued my interest; Phillip Pullman gave an inside look and the creation of the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter was very interesting. The best part of the book was, of course, the maps. There were many beautiful maps of a variety of real places as well as fictional places. I particularly loved looking at all eh different maps of Yggdrasil.
This book is beautiful but most of the essays are duds.

I liked the look of different worlds by different authors and not just one person - even though it is one person per world. There is a few worlds maps that are looked at and is an interesting look at the maps people have come to recognize.

Super gift book for the avid reader in your life.

I enjoyed looking at the maps of various fictional worlds and reading the different perspectives on them. Lots of fun!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Are you a true bibliophile? Do you enjoy entering both fictional and real worlds? Do you enjoy seeing the maps that writers create and love? If yes, this book is an amazing one and one that deserves a place on your bookshelf or coffee table. Readers can dip in and out and explore the many places within the book guided by well-known writers. I highly recommend this one. The illustrations are intricate and reproduced well. The text is interesting and offers lots of insight. One note: I read this as a digital ARC. I am eager to see the paper book so that I can browse back and forth more easily.

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher.

Before I get into the review proper of Hue Lewis-Jones’ The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands, I have to note up front that my digital copies of the book had major formatting issues so that passages were jumbled up such that one paragraph would end and a wholly unrelated paragraph (one from either earlier or later in the book) would follow. Or the book would just stop, with pages from, say 25 onward, just being a sea of white. These issues arose on both my iPad and my Kindle, no matter how many times I downloaded a new version and deleted the old. I’m assuming the problem is just an artifact of the Advanced Reader’s Copy and won’t occur with purchased versions, but it had, as you might imagine, a bit of a deleterious effect on my own reading experience. Something to keep in mind.

The book itself is a collection of essays by authors (and a few artists) about maps, sometimes maps in general but more often literary maps in particular — book maps they fell in love with as child readers, rough sketches of maps they made for personal use while creating their own imaginary worlds, or gorgeously finalized maps that appeared in their books. Included with the essays are the maps themselves, nearly two-hundred full-color ones, making the book as much a visual treat as a narrative one.

As with any collection, the quality of the individual essays vary, though none are worse than solidly engaging thanks to the personal voice of each author. In other words, while some essays are a bit slight, or not particularly interesting or insightful, none could be labeled “bad.” The authors/artists include Philip Pullman, David Mitchell, Lev Grossman, Cressia Cowell, Chris Riddell, Brian Selznick, and Isabel Grenerg, amongst others. Some write adult fiction, some YA/MG or children’s books, some make maps for books and/or films. Some do all of those.

There’s a definite English-ness to some of the texts/shows/films referenced and though I didn’t find that a detriment to enjoying the essays, awareness of some of those references will almost certainly enhance the experience. What did detract a bit for me was the repetitiveness that occasionally cropped (lots of references for instance to Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe). While certainly not a major flaw, it was definitely noticeable, and while some such repetitiveness could be expected thanks to everyone focusing on the same topic, some editing or maybe even some notification to author of topics already covered (“You might want to skip over Robert Louis Stevenson if you were planning on mentioning him . . . “) would have negated some of what arises.

Among the essays, some of my favorites were by Robert McFarlane (one of the more insightful and semi-academic ones), Miraphora Mina (for its fascinating specificity on her creation of the Marauder’s Map for the Harry Potter films), Lev Grossman (for his smooth move from the intimately personal to broader societal analysis), and David Mitchell for his humor. Others, as noted, vary in impact and interest, but most offered up some new tidbit of information I hadn’t been aware of, despite my keen interest and extensive reading in the area.

Visually, the book is stellar. The maps are gorgeously recreated and cover a wide spectrum of type, style, time period, and intent. If you’re like me, you’ll spend a lot of time lingering over the images long past the time you finished an essay’s particular text.

I wouldn’t call The Writer’s Map an in-depth look at maps in literature or society. But as a collection of light, brief, often interesting, almost always personal stories by those who have been inspired by them and use them in their own works, the anthology is certainly a success, one enhanced by the excellent visuals. I’ll be picking up a physical copy myself.

I have to say I have always had a fascination with maps. As a librarian I hate to say, but I have to say, that too often the maps in books are published in the endpapers and the book pockets and book covers libraries use are glued over the endpapers and the users are prevented from seeing the maps in their entirety. Oftentimes those maps are the most beautiful parts of the books and certainly may be an integral part of the story. As a reader I have often gnashed my teeth over this necessity, but I digress...

I love the concept of this book. I loved some of the maps it included and some of the stories behind the stories the maps were drawn for. Reading a digital copy isn't the best format for this book, so if you're interested, I would by all means recommend a paper copy.

I could of course think of many maps I would have liked to have seen included, but perhaps that just made the reading more fun! Thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for this opportunity. #TheWriter'sMap #NetGalley

Literary maps are some of the most beautiful illustrations out there—a necessity for any legitimate fantasy novel. "The Writer's Map" is an atlas of maps from across different books, explaining the inspiration behind them and the process in which these maps are made. "The Writer's Map" is a stunning book, perfect for any lovers of maps and stories.

Love meandering down an unknown road? Love a good book whose setting is so very real in your head? Do you miss the days of sitting in the backseat of your parent's station wagon while on vacation and following the multi-day journey in the big car atlas? Do you use your phone's GPS app daily now? Is your house held together with bookshelves of your favorite reads and must reads? If any of those ring true, then The Writer's Map might be just for you.

This is NOT "just a book of maps" nor is it to be regarded as an atlas. Instead, The Writer's Map is a literary cartography book woven together with text to allow the reader to dig deeper into the imaginary lands of books they've read or have always wanted to read as well as thoughts and insights as to what maps of any kind offer a person.

I was delighted to come across Steven Spurrier's Swallows and Amazons map for the aptly named book by Arthur Ransome as we are currently listening to that audio book for in our homeschool. My favorite map offered in The Writer's Map is the full-color vintage map for Moby Dick. Created by Everty Henry, the map, as told in marginalia of the book, is said to have been created for a printing company to showcase "its high-quality inks", all in the throws of Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. That map alone is swoon-worthy. As a bibliophile I also really enjoyed seeing the pencil-sketched map in Jack Kerouc's working notes of On the Road. And the bit of trivia about the typing of the book, is quite a gem! It's little things like that that pop up throughout The Writer's Map which make this collection gift-worthy for all book lovers and a resource to refer to again and again.

Although I read this book via the free digital ARC provided to me, I will certainly be buying this as an actual paper-pages book! I highly recommend this book for your own self as well as your go-to for gift giving. It would be a boon to every librarian, English teacher, and bookhound. Map enthusiasts would certainly enjoy this for the originality and vast map collection contained within. This is a must-own for homeschoolers as no reading program, language arts program, English literature curriculum, or bookshelf should be without.

Gorgeous collection and discussion about the beautiful maps, real, historic, imagined, created, etc as they have appeared in our favorite books over the years. Featured are the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, C.S. Lewis, Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, J.K. Rowling, L. Frank Baum, J.M. Barrie, and more!

This was a complete pleasure to read.

A Very Mixed Bag of "Story-Maps"

Read this book blurb carefully - "The Writer’s Map is an atlas of the journeys that our most creative storytellers have made throughout their lives.". It tells you more about this book than perhaps the publisher intended. A great deal of the text, (and there is a lot of text), is by writers and illustrators who share their personal histories with maps - as children, as readers, as "book lovers", as professional writers, and as artists. The book is illustrated with examples - some familiar, some unique, some prosaic, and some odd and lovely - but for the greater part this is a collection of personal essays, mixed up with a rather disordered and idiosyncratic survey of maps in literature and also maps generally through the ages.

There are some hits, (the story behind the Harry Potter Marauder's Map or the challenges of creating the various maps used as props in the "Lord of the Rings" movies), and some juvenilia and ephemera that may be of interest mostly to devoted fans of the Brontes, Thoreau, "Pilgrim's Progress", Arthur Ransome, "Treasure Island", Moominland, and so on. Interspersed through this, (the book has chapter and section headings, but they are more poetic flights of fancy than an actual table of contents), are first person testimonials by a wide and varied cast of writers. These bits range considerably in appeal and interest. (I did think it was especially interesting to compare the maps that were doodled by authors with the final maps that were prepared for publication by professional illustrators based on those doodles.)

The maps themselves are first rate, and range from the familiar to the odd, with lots of stops inbetween. The appeal of the text varies, and sometimes the contributors lay it on a bit thick. But there is something for everyone, since the list of contributors is rather impressive. You'll find lengthy essays from Chris Ridell, Cressida Crowell, Robert Macfarlane, Francis Hardinge, Joanne Harris, David Mitchell, Kiran Hargrave, Lev Grossman, Brian Selznick, and a host of other contemporary writers with whom you may or may not be familiar. The upshot for me was that this ended up being a quite satisfying, if somewhat haphazard, browsable book.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

I have read a ton in my life but never a book like The Writer's Map, which is a wonder! So captivating to look at and read, this gorgeous book contains the world — literally — within its 167 full-color images. Included are medieval maps and others related to the classics, sci-fi and fantasy, adventure, collectible comics, and nursery rhymes. For readers who fancy maps, literature and high adventure. 5/5

Thanks to the author, the University of Chicago Press and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.

#TheWriter'sMap #NetGalley

Maps! I am, and always have been, fascinated by maps. Especially literary maps. Who doesn't love a map included on the frontpiece of a book they're reading? I love this! The digital version was just enough to whet my appetite for a physical copy of this delightfully imaginative book - Thank You!