"Placing Literature" Puts Your Favorite Novels on the Map

World Map HD; Source: stock.xchng

Location is one of the foundations of every great story. Some authors, like Stephen King's town of Derry, chose to set their stories in places that don't exist. Others draw on the rich history and visuals of real world locations to the point where you feel like you're really there. A smaller but even greater group uses the location so well that it feels like a character all its own. That's why this website "Placing Literature" is cool. Visitors can map the places from their favorite novels, so you can actually visit them in the real world. Here's a quote from Indiereader.com:

Using the website, detective novel fans can see where Sam Spade of the Maltese Falcon lived and worked in San Francisco. Book lovers in Duluth, Minnesota, can track the literary scenes that take place around the shore of Lake Superior. Amy Tan fans can track the Woo, Hsu, Jong and St. Claire families through their journeys from China to the Bay Area.

Most of my favorite books are set in outer space, anyway, so I don't have much I can do with this website. But it's still pretty cool. Someone needs to make an intergalactic version.

[Via indiereader.com]