5 ms·
Find books set in your hometown
- ComputerGuru 4y agoThis is the actual link: https://crossword-solver.io/books-set-around-america https://crossword-solver.io/books-set-around-america The dataset seems to be extremely small, perhaps n=5000
- bombcar 4y agoIMDB has this for locations - you can find commercials and TV filmed in your area. Works best in California, of course. https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?locations=London%2C+England%2C+UK https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?locations=London%2C+Engla...
- ComputerGuru 4y agoI upvoted because it’s pretty neat, but FYI if you put in a less popular location (say, Foobar, Illinois) it’ll show places near Foobar (if any) then any listings that have a bare “Illinois” (with no city specified) as the filming location. This is obscured by the fact that the results page doesn’t show the location for each film (you have to click through and manually see the metadata).
- nluken 4y agoI don't have a lot of faith in this data set. The Books Around America site lists the Blue Ridge Mountains as being in Arizona, which is 1500 miles away from their actual location in NC/VA.
- bombcar 4y agoThere are various blue ridges in AZ so it sounds like polluted data. https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/coconino/recarea/?recid=54898 https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/coconino/recarea/?recid=5489...
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoWell, that's hilariously less accurate than the case I tried. I tried the zip code for a suburb in Salt Lake County, UT that's ~12 miles away from city center Salt Lake City. At least I got a bunch of books set in SLC. Then there's a bunch of other places that aren't in the "Choose Location" list at all despite being similar or larger in population compared to places that are in the list. E.g., Visalia, CA[0] is not listed but Provo, UT[1] is. [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/visalia-ca-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/visalia-ca-popul... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/provo-ut-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/provo-ut-populat...
- robonerd 4y agoHarrisburg (the capital city of Pennsylvania) isn't in the list. But Harrisburg (a neighborhood of 3k people in Houston, Texas) is listed.
- breck 4y agoAlmost heaven, Arizona Blue Ridge Mountains, Colorado River... ;)
- shmde 4y agoTitle is misleading. It should be. "Find books set in your American Hometown with this neat tool."
- kevinpet 4y agoWhat does it mean that Bisbee AZ is home to the highest percentage of mystery novels? Because there's a huge number set in Los Angeles.
- bombcar 4y agoThat of all novels in Bisbee the percentage is highest for mystery. Which may mean there’s one and it’s a mystery. The article itself could probably be replaced by the actual link.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoOr, more likely given the low quality of the dataset from my own observations, a mystery series set in Bisbee skewed the results. (In my experience, mystery probably has or had the highest number of content factories - but then again, I ingested the entirety of the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Boxcar Children, and other such drivel as a misguided youth…) Edit: yes, this seems to be the case https://www.goodreads.com/places/488311-bisbee-arizona https://www.goodreads.com/places/488311-bisbee-arizona But honestly the low sample size is the biggest problem.
- lampshades 4y agoLink to the actual book finder: https://crossword-solver.io/books-set-around-america https://crossword-solver.io/books-set-around-america It's actually a pretty shitty tool. I put in William Faulkners hometown and it listed nothing by him.
- eatonphil 4y agoThat's too bad because I've been really interested in a tool like this. Sometimes I just want to read books taking place in Switzerland or St. Louis MO or Montreal.
- lampshades 4y agoI agree. I watch movies and read books entirely based on where they're based so that I can get a feel of being there.
- mwattsun 4y agotbh, I posted this hoping someone would make a better one
- thucydides 4y agoBut the tool asks you to name a city and shows you books set in that city. None of Faulkner's books were set in his hometown.
- lampshades 4y agoThey were set in Mississippi and it mentions being able to find fictional towns. Edit: Or maybe I misread it because now that I go back I'm not seeing that. My bad.
- causi 4y agoSeconding this opinion. Why does it have a useless zip code box when you can't search using your zip code? I had to pick a city twenty miles away with the drop-down box. This is garbage.
- drewcoo 4y agoI searched for books set in Iowa City, IA. None. Here is a non-none list: https://www.mappit.net/bookmap/places/958/iowa-city-ia-us/ https://www.mappit.net/bookmap/places/958/iowa-city-ia-us/
- pesfandiar 4y agoI was curious to know how the top 10 locations fare when adjusted to their metro population. It turns out New Orleans tops the list by far, with San Francisco and Las Vegas afterward. Perhaps this shows how "interesting" these cities are as a backdrop, compared to merely populous urban centres.
- MikePlacid 4y ago> There’s something magical about taking your nose out of a book and finding yourself in the same setting as the characters. I had (am having?) the similar magical feeling when reading a book on iPad you can open Google Maps, find the location a character is in now - and see pictures of the place people took, sometimes up to the exact building the author describes. E.g. in The Little Drummer Girl by le Carre you can follow the exact route characters taken. And there is a 360 deg view of some remote place in Lebanon near Israeli border that some tourists uploaded. Magical feeling, indeed.
- ask_b123 4y agoI was curious to find novels set in Rome.
- OJFord 4y ago> in your [US] hometown Also, the clickbait stripper could probably be expanded do something about 'with this neat tool'?
- themodelplumber 4y ago> in your non-rural [US] hometown
- OJFord 4y agoSure, even worse. The source (not submission, see other comments) article at least implies it should work anywhere in the USA. I was just pointing out that the title makes it sound global; it's very far from it.
- technothrasher 4y agoThe only story by a well known author I know set in my little town in Massachusetts is by H.P. Lovecraft. But he places the town about 50 miles away from where it really is, and the description he gives of the downtown area is way, way wrong- cobblestone streets and brick buildings, when at that time the town was dirt roads and farm houses. I've always wondered if he simply didn't know the town actually existed, as he used a few different non-existent Massachusetts towns in his writing and he could have thought he was doing it again here.
- robonerd 4y agoNothing for Gettysburg? Really? I am certain there are many books set in Gettysburg.
- ThomasBHickey 4y agoYou might try worldcat.org (most books as cataloged by libraries are there). Just tried my home town (village in NY state) and the results looked pretty good. Easy to just look at just fiction, biography, etc. Disclaimer: I worked at the host organization (OCLC) for most of my life, much of it related to WorldCat.
- KSPAtlas 4y agonot very useful if you don't live in america, america is the exception not the standard