I don’t know about you, but I love it when a book includes maps in the front. I love how they allow you to situate a book in a place – especially when that place is not part of this world. Whether you reference the map as you read the story, or only look at it at the start, the map is one of the tools that the author uses to ground their story in a setting and to create a world. If the places that the characters visit are marked on a map, they are made that much more real.
I love maps. Between maps in books and maps in travel, I am often referencing them.
Today I want to introduce a new series that combines books and maps in a different way. I’m not actually sure if it should be classified as a series, as it’s more of a way to manage and organize books and posts… but don’t think there’s a word that sums that up. And since there will be posts directly related to this organizational method… series it is.
The Background
As I have mentioned before, when I started up this blog I knew that I wanted to write about both reading and travel. I had many brainstorming sessions to think up ways to combine the two on an ongoing basis. One of the ideas that came out of these sessions was to map out the books that I read, books that I would like to read, or use maps to create reading lists for specific places.
The more I thought about it, the more I started to get really excited about the idea of being more intentional in reading books from different areas of the world. I also wanted to see where the books that I read and talk about are located, and how they’re spread out around the world. I have an idea about where the majority of books I read are set, but as someone with both history and math in her background, I love the idea of seeing it actually laid out and plotted.
My vision for this is to have clickable maps that allow you to navigate to a section of the world of books and see all the posts about the books from that area. At this point, however, I’m not completely sure how to make that happen. I don’t know if I can add such a thing to a blog without major programming required. I have a few ideas, but I need to work on it and play with it some more. In the meantime, the world of books will be organized into separate pages to group the books from each area.
A Series in Two Sections
This series is going to consist of two parts, at least to start. The first will be mapping books in the physical world. This section will include books of any genre that are set in “real” locations on earth or in space. These might be books that are set in alternate, or more fantastical, versions of real locations, as well as those that are more realistic. If you can find it on a map then it can be included, even if it’s completely different than how we know the place in the past or present.
The second section will be the world of genres. This section is one that will definitely be more interesting once I can figure out how to make clickable images, but I’m going to start it up now and work towards the vision. For now, this section will organize the books I read and talk about by genre. I would like this world map of genres to include everything from Fantasy to Non-Fiction.
I love the idea of seeing books and genres on a map. In the case of the genres, it’s fun to imagine what they would look like on a map. What are the continents, and the countries? Which genres are “border” each other? There are so many things that I want to explore with this series, and I’m excited to get started with it.
You can find the “Map of Books” page and the “Map of Genres” pages linked below. They will also be linked under the “books” menu going forward, once I get that set up.
Do you enjoy maps? Do you categorize the types of books that you read or look for trends in this way? Do you find that you read books mostly from one area of the world or do you read more widely? Let me know in the comments!
World Map of Books
The Map of Genres
Until next time!
