An interesting read for the reader who loves to travel to the real-life locations of literature. Loved the illustrations.

Quarto publishing always deliver some interesting reads. This book was no exception. Dip in anywhere and you will find something new about the place books you have enjoyed are set or decide to read (even reread) a novel after discovering the real place it was set. What ever way tou approach this book it’s a little gem.

I think I'm always guilty of browsing through NetGalley during my free time, admiring book covers, analyzing synopses, and looking for a unique read. It only seemed right that I would pick up a book about books.

I think I fell in love with this book from the very get-go. It details places around the world that are featured in literary masterpieces. The book has a wonderful format with colorful and vivid drawings accompanied by writing.

The writing is absolutely stunning. What the pictures fail to show, the descriptions make up in sight, sound, and smell. While Sarah Baxter sets you up with the rich history of the setting, she also allows you to follow the story line of the novel.

You learn so much in a compact 144 pages. The book also introduced me to many pieces that I have yet to read and expanded my knowledge on the places I have yet to go. But I am certain that when I make my next trips, it will be so much more enriched knowing the literary value of the places I visit.

It was so interesting to read a little more about the setting of so many great novels, most which I have seen in person. The illustrations were absolutely beautiful! This book will be very enjoyable for any literature-lover to sit back and flip through.

Thanks to Quarto and Netgalley for this ARC!

A nice read. I would recommend! A very unique book. I loved that it had places from some of my favorite books.

Who hasn't read a book and wished they could just jump straight into its world? The great news is that for a large number of brilliant books, this is absolutely and utterly possible since they're set into our very own world! For me the most vivid memory of this is Barcelona. I fell utterly in love with Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind and wanted nothing more than visit Barcelona and get lost in it. Thankfully I got to do so a few years later and now Sarah Baxter has given me a whole new list of cities and books to visit. Thanks to Quarto, White Lion Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The magic thing about literature is that it transports the reader. Whenever I open a book I travel, explore, learn and discover. Hogwarts may not be real but from the moment I first read the Harry Potter books I could smell the food in the Great Hall, map the old corridors and feel the heat of the fires in the Common Rooms. It's been the same for me with many real places, like I mentioned above with Barcelona. I had a really vivid picture of it in my mind and although the city, of course, was different from what I had pictured, it still felt familiar, like an old acquaintance whose face is a faint memory.

A wide variety of places are covered in Literary Places although none of them are exactly surprising. There's Paris, of course, famous for itself but also for Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The city may look different from Hugo's heyday, but the feel is still there. Perhaps less famous but equally as attractive to me are the Yorkshire Moors, made immortal by Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights. Just watch me, one of these days I'm going to wear a full-skirted dress and stand in the moors, the wind moving through my hair! Anywats, Sarah Baxter travels across the world in Literary Places, mostly visiting famous cities like Berlin, Cairo and Kabul, but also the culturally important or memorable places such as Monroeville or Hanging Rock. The last chapter is dedicated to the entire country of Chile, inspired by Isabelle Allende's The House of Spirits. The main thing this book reminded me of is just how full this world is of homes. What I mean is that each of the books mentioned in Literary Places were written by people with strong ties and a strong love for their home, which they bring back to live in their writing.

Baxter's writing is charming and simple. She paints vivid pictures with her words, her experience as a travel writer clearly shining through. But there is a strong love for books there as well, which helps her look at all these places anew. If you're looking for active recommendations on where to sleep and what to eat, Literary Places might not be the best book. But if you're hoping to get a sense of how a place feels, what it has meant to those who've written about it, what it continues to mean, then Literary Places is a great read. The book is enormously aided by Amy Grimes' illustrations, which are absolutely stunning. They remind me of those old school travel posters that give an instant classic feel. (You can purchase her art at Hello Grimes, it's stunning!). I wish I could frame the cover of this book, it's gorgeous and is what first drew me to the book.

I loved reading through Literary Places, although ithas a definite coffee table-book vibe to it. Leaving through it, marveling at Grimes' illustrations, your mind will take a journey all on its own. Anyone who wants some literary inspiration for their next holiday, look no further!

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Gives 25 places (Dublin, Paris, etc) and a novel that has taken place there and how it relates. It talks about the place, book, author, inforamtion that go for a few pages with 2-3 images. It is not a long book, nice mix of the information. It can be a nice jump off point if doing anything related to one of the books or topic of books.

This is such a lovely, well illustrated little book that would make a great gift for any literary or travel lover in your life. Detailing classics such as Wuthering Heights and Oliver Twist, as well as modern classics like The Kite Runner. I found some fabulous new places to add to my travel bucket list, as well as some new-found books to add to my TBR.

Would have loved if there was just a bit more detail about each book/place to visit and maybe some formatted highlights to make it easier to pick out information, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

I found this to be a beautiful little book that should grace everyone’s coffee table! I’m curious how the author chose the places she writes about and how she limited it to 25, seems like there could be so many more. Each chapter picks a place where a book is set and she describes how the book fits into the setting, plus a little about the author and the story. Each is beautifully illustrated as well. I especially like it where she outlines a path the traveler can follow to see the specific places from the books. Perfect for a bookworm who loves to travel like me!

This is a pleasant enough little book and would make an ideal present for a bibliophile friend, but it felt very lacking in substance to me. 25 literary places associated with 25 writers – an interesting premise, but each is only sketched out in a couple of pages, and although the illustrations are charming, I would have much preferred actual photographs and maps. There are a plethora of books about writers and places and I don’t feel this one adds anything to the genre.

This was such a great piece! Literary Places is one of those few books that I’ve read as an e-book and would be more than happy to buy as a hardcopy, as well.

Let’s start with the title, though, “Inspired Traveller’s Guide”. I peeked at the worse reviews on Goodreads and realized that the majority of people who rated this book with 3 or less stars did so because they felt mislead by the title. If you’re expecting a lengthy novel which you can use step by step to literally follow the characters of certain novels on their journeys, this is not it.

I, however, had no such expectations. I kind of expected that the book will cover a bunch of locations with brief stories about them and lovely pictures, and even though the book does exactly that, it still impressed me and surpassed my expectations.

Literary Places is a short book which paints luscious landscapes and beautiful, if short, descriptions of literary locations. It takes you through Victor Hugo’s Paris of Les Miserables, the St Petersburg of Crime and Punishment, and Don Quixote‘s La Mancha, as well as some not so popular locations, like the Rock from Picnic at the Hanging Rock, and Kerala from The God of Small Things.

The book offered me a new look into locations which I’ve already visited through reading some, if unfortunately few, of the novels mentioned, but it also inspired me to read many new ones and created an entirely new reading list for me for the upcoming year. It would be a real pleasure to read the books that I hadn’t, now that I’ve read Sarah Baxter’s short guide for them.

The second thing I really liked was the simple, yet attractive way the author makes descriptions. In fact, although the book is very small, it manages to capture the best and most important details, the essence of the literary places:

"THE AFTERNOON is heavy, hazy, lazy; the viscid air, damp as an unwrung sponge, awaits the imminent squeeze of the monsoon. For now, it’s curry-hot, the sun beating indiscriminately on red ants and yellow bullfrogs, whooping coucals and long-legged lily-trotters. It glitters on the corpses of silver fish. It nurtures the mango and jackfruit. Then, finally, the sky cracks."

Or…

"Florence is culturally magnificent, from the priceless art at street level to the tip of the Duomo’s cupola. But there’s also the Florence of the senses, the city that comes alive when you feel its hot sun on your skin. When you loiter over lunch, take a slow passeggiata in the cooling afternoon, watch a pink-orange sunset, sip a glass of good Chianti. When you stop questing for information but think of ‘nothing but the blue sky and the men and the women who live under it’."

I want a plane ticket now!

Lastly, the art of the book is so simple, yet so enticing. It manages to show exactly what the author describes, but to do so while also presenting the location perfectly, so that the reader knows exactly which city we’re talking about, without even having visited them.

Never was a title more apt, as in just a heading, it sums the book up better than any review.

Taking some iconic and other less visited destinations, Sarah Baxter has brought places alive where various books and novels have been set or an author has been influence by such a location.
Charles Dicken's London as described in Oliver Twist, Soweto through the eyes of Nadine Gordimer and Bath where Jane Austen is still remembered and most consider Northanger Abbey and Persuasion as true examples of English Literature.
I enjoyred reading about Paris, Kabul and Cairo, indeed each essay holds some interest for me regardless of the work and author it relates to and despite being a place I'd never considered a travel destination.
Sarah Baxter has a distinct style to make each setting come alive, your senses are stimulated and the artwork of Amy Grimes compliments this wonderfully where photographs would perhaps reflect a different mood. Sarah uses every creative skill to pen a brief discription of the place, including: cliché, alliteration and onomatopoeia. This creates a sence of being there. She also links this with a knowledge of the original location and it's connection to the author of the book that relates to it. Therefore in many cases she enables one to follow in the footsteps of writers with care to connect fiction with streets and buildings.
I absolutely absorbed each chapter and in nearly every case either made me want to pick up the original novel or dream of visiting these special settings for myself.
Overall, it has given me renewed memories of cities I have visited and rekindled an affinity to some treasured books and authors. Any book that both makes you want to visit the places your imagination has taken you and gives you a desire to read more is a sure winner for me.

Literary Places: Inspired Traveller’s Guide by Sarah Baxter, illustrated by Amy Grimes


White Lion Publishing
Nonfiction, travel
March 5, 2019
Rating: 5/5

I received this digital ARC from NetGalley and White Lion Publishing in exchange for an unbiased review.

A great story allows the reader to travel in time to places that only exist in our imagination. This book focuses on 25 great literary places around the world. Each chapter uniquely illustrated provides a reflection hoping to transport you to those places which we can only visit via the pages of these literary treasures. The author explores the location in regards to history and the author’s vision at that time.

Imagine being in Paris 1800’s during the Enlightenment amidst the squalor and revolution which existed in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. An interesting history of Paris during this era provides a historical perspective of the travails of Jean Valjean. From there you can time travel to Dublin where James Joyce describes the humdrum events in a typical Irish day in Ulysses. Imagine being Léopold Bloom exploring the streets of Dublin on 16 June 1904.

Similarly, A Room with a View by E.M. Forster allows us to see Florence during the resplendent Italian Renaissance. Fast forward to Naples 1950’s as two young girls come of age in My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. You can also imagine Berlin Alexanderplatz in the late 1920’s during a period of hardship and political unrest. Perhaps a trip to a timeless place of simplicity and awe! We might find ourselves in Nordland as described by Knut Hamsun in Growth of the Soil.

Of course, a literary jaunt would not be complete without a stop in St. Petersburg, an imperial Russian city described in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. These are only a sampling of the journey you will take in this book. A lovely guide for those who enjoy the journey as well as the destination.

It’s a short book with description of famous places in literature. Great for someone who absolutely loves reading about certain books. I’ve only read a few of the books that are mentioned in this book.

Covers Les Mis, Ulysses, A Room with a View, Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, The Kite Runner, To Kill a Mockingbird — and more!

A great guide for someone who is familiar with most of the literary locations. I am only familiar with a handful.

This book is about the setting of great literary works, not only in geography, but in history as well. I have been to almost all the places in the book, and the descriptions are very accurate.
Not among the larger books, this one is packed with well written descriptions and outstanding illustrations, making it a "must have" for booklovers.

A nice little book which provides a summary of 25 major fictional books and describes the location, era and the author's link to the setting. There's 2-3 pages of text an 2-3 pages of illustrations for each book. Initially the artwork didn't grab me but gradually I could see that it worked.
This book provides a nice intro into the "famous" novels and is what it is - a bit of a traveller's guide into various locations throughout the world.

"Truly great writers recreate not only locations but also eras and histories."


If you have a literary bent and are contemplating travel this is a fascinating book. Even if your not venturing to far flung place, this gem of a book will allow loads of armchair traveling.
Twenty-five locations were chosen from St Petersburg in Russia to Saigon in Vietnam and places both north and south of the equator and around the globe encompassing longitudes from England to Chile.
I grappled with artist's impressions for the first couple of chapters. I am used to, and was expecting photographs, ideally artistically shot. You know a bridge or archway looming through the bull rushes taken from a prone position etc. etc.
But here we have artistic impressions by Amy Grimes, superbly rendered, colorful, and often showing a 'naive' primitivism influence, with occasional magic realism touches. These art works, capturing the essence of places as we're guided through select novel pathways, are beautiful additions.
So this was unexpected! I was envisaging maps and photos to support Baxter's inclusions and find this literary discussion of the place, time and background of a selected novel, supported by Grimes' delicately nuanced works, rewarding. I found myself enjoying this different approach. And I remembered the small book and pencils I used to carry with me to do sketches with. Nowhere near as creative as Grimes' digital collage works and overlays, but I identified with the process. (BTW reading more about Grimes's artistic methods via other access points was interesting.)
In fact I was disappointed there weren't more illustrations. They were the deciding factor for me between a four star or a five star rating.
Fortunately I have read most of the books selected, and more fortunately I have visited many of their locations. So Baxter's book reminded me of not only the associated books, but my own responses to the novels and to their locations. The particular places recalled to me the times and conditions in which the novels were set, be it at the time of the Hemingway and the Spanish Wars, Steinbeck and Cannery Row in Monterey or Austen's Bath.
I would not be taking this book with me on a trip (unless in eBook form) but I would read it before and after I travelled to any of the places mentioned--just for the pleasure it gives. This is a book to be enjoyed in hardcopy, to be held, to have paper pages turning and to be enjoyed at that physical level.
'Picnic at Hanging Rock' by Joan Lindsay set near Mt Macedon, Victoria, Australia was a favorite, as was the 'God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy set in Kerala in Southern India. And yes, I had many more favs but I didn't want to list all twenty-five.
A most pleasing publication!

A White Lion Publishing ARC via NetGalley

The idea behind this book is fantastic, and I thought it was executed pretty well. The illustrations were stunning, and I loved learning more about the history behind some classics works and the cities they are set in. It is evident that the author has a passion for both travel and for books. I plan on buying myself a finished copy because it is such a beautiful book and will make for a great conversation starter. I was so happy and surprised to see that my favourite book, Cannery Row, made an appearance. Anyone who loves and appreciates the settings of the books that they read will appreciate this one. It would also make for a great gift!

Full review on my blog to come!

I wasn't able to download and convert the file into one my kindle would accept because it is in a format not recognized by kindle.