On Literary Places

• Posted on 18th August 2010
• in Blog
• by Erin Blakemore

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For reasons that will become apparent sooner rather than later, I’ve been thinking about literary places.  Not just real places like the Ingalls Homestead or the moors of England, but the places in which we discover the books that mean so much to us.

For example, I could never stand my brothers’ little league games (for shame!) and so I’d sneak off with one of those long Jolly Ranchers and read with my back against a tree.  And I will never forget the cement blocks next to my house in Oak Park, San Diego.  In the morning they’d soak up the sun.  Then I’d lie on them, absorbing warmth, cramming as many books into my head as my head could reasonably tolerate (and often more).

Then there are the many German trains in which I was rocked almost to sleep by my reading and the movement of the locomotive.  And the deep cool rooms somewhere in Nielsen Library at Smith College.

Nowadays, I read a lot while dining alone in restaurants or snuggled up in my bed.  Sometimes the locale becomes a part of the book I’m enjoying…the loud waiters are the Confederate soldiers leaving Atlanta, the blanket I pull up around me is a quilt hand-patched by some long-gone pioneer.  And so I have to ask…what literary places are wrapped up with your reading habits?  Do you tune out your surroundings or let place in?

Illustration via Bethany Schlegel Art and Design

Tags: charlotte bronte, jane eyre, laura ingalls wilder, little house on the prairie, place, reading, the heroine's bookshelf