Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we’re talking about settings we don’t see enough of in our reading. Often, not seeing settings you like means that you should broaden your reading outlook, because there are books written about any kind of people living in any kind of place if you’re willing to search. But these settings (both literal places and kind of general milieus) are ones that I don’t encounter as much and would like to read more from!
South America: Unless it’s non-fiction about the Colombian drug trade, I’ve hardly read anything set in South America. Brazil alone is the fifth most populous country in the world, and I’d love more opportunities to look at what life feels like there or elsewhere in South America.
Eastern Europe: There are lots of books (both fiction and non) about the Holocaust, but relatively few about life before it, or even after it. What is the modern experience or even just pre-WWII experience of Poland, or the Balkans, or Slovakia?
New Zealand: There’s Australian-set literature out there that’s not hard to find, but I don’t think the Kiwis have gotten as much press as their much larger neighbors, even after Lord of the Rings!
Southeast Asia: Vietnam has obviously loomed large in America’s cultural imagination for quite a while now, but what about Laos? Burma? The non-Bangkok areas of Thailand?
Northern Africa: Egypt tends to dominate here, but the rest of Northern Africa seems to get forgotten. I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything set in Tunisia or Libya or even seen anything set there while browsing at a bookshop.
Medium-sized cities: I feel like small towns where everyone knows everyone make for ample writing fodder, as do exciting big cities, but what about places that are neither small enough where you see your neighbors every time you go grocery shopping or big enough to let you start over with new friends if something goes wrong?
The Dark Ages: It’s not as dynamic (or well-documented) of a time as the Renaissance, but people still lived back then and I’m curious about what it might have been like.
Minor wars: The World Wars, Vietnam, the Civil War, the Napoleonic wars…these conflicts are at least in the background of many great books. But regional wars can have just as much of an impact on the people caught up on them, and give some context to under-reported incidents.
Non-Christian religious social groups: There have been some great books set inside convents and abbeys…now what about a lamasery? Or a madrasa or yeshiva?
Olympic sports: There are books with characters who play the major sports, and plenty of books about ballet, but what about bobsledders? Javelin throwers? Those worlds are surely fascinating in their own right!