20 of the Best Places to Visit Through Books
As someone who literally used to judge a book by its cover, spending my childhood allowance of one book at the bookstore on cool cover art, I believe in the wonderful storytelling possibilities that await readers in books of unknown story. While you could hardly call my selection process strategic, I found it fun to enter a book knowing almost nothing about it except that I liked the art style. So what if you picked up a book based solely on its setting? Hear me out.
As readers as in life, we cultivate preferences, tastes, and biases for and against this or that, and we’re prone to dismissing books that don’t promise more of what we know and love. Sure, we don’t have all the time in the world to get halfway through a stack of books only to DNF most of them, but if you’ve fallen into a slump–a sort of reading ennui where every book reads stale–maybe it’s time to try something new. If you love immersing yourself in worlds, real or imagined, a setting can give you just enough to pique your curiosity without pushing bias to full throttle. And, hey, if you’re participating in the 2025 Read Harder Challenge, this completes Task #9: Read a book based solely on its setting.
I’ve collected 20 titles with interesting settings to make the task more manageable. Better yet, while I’m not going to give away what these books are about, I will tell you that they are, in my humble opinion, great reads. I’ve included a variety of settings here: completely imagined settings, fictional settings based on real settings, real settings of both past and present–all you could want for a journey of the pages. Now, choose your book and avert your eyes from any and all synopses.
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Jazz Age Mexico)
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (the upper atmosphere of Jupiter)
Swift River by Essie Chambers (fictional town in the ’90s and early 20th century)
Finna by Nino Cipri (a furniture store across several parallel universes)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (an incorporated Black town in early 20th Century Florida)
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (magical West-African inspired kingdom)
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older (Bed-Stuy alive with art)
Leech by Hiron Ennes (a wintry wasteland inspired by the Canadian Rockies and Brontë sisters vibes)
My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B. Harris (1970s New York City)
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright (U.S.-occupied Baghdad)
The Bees by Laline Paull (a bee hive)
Listen, Slowly by Thanhhà Lại (contemporary Vietnam)
Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis (remote Alaska)
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (a haunted house)
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Florida Everglades and gator-wrestling theme park)
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (a magical circus)
Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar (an elementary school built sideways)
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo (contemporary Beijing)
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1969 Kerala, India)
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (fictionalized Norfolk, UK)
Did I miss a setting you’d love to explore? Let’s me know in the comments!
Check out all the previous 2024 Read Harder posts here.
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