Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week a new ‘top ten’ challenge is posted – anyone can join in. This week’s topic is ‘Top Ten Most Vivid Worlds/Settings In Books’. It made me really think about books that have been memorable because of the setting. Here’s my ecclectic list:
1. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden – the descriptions of the kimonos are so exquisite, you feel you could reach out and touch them.
2. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank – needs no comment. I first read this book when I was very young and it stays with me thirty years later.
3. A Widow for One Year by John Irving – for a modern literature take on Amsterdam’s Red Light District.
4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – for an eerie look into the future.
5. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain – with detail like this, you might never eat in a restaurant again.
6. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt – the miseries and the joys of growing up poor in Ireland.
7. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – the ‘joys’ of working in an open-plan office?! The detail is so painstakingly real you might not want to go to work the next day.
8. All the Rivers Run by Nancy Cato – riverboat life for early settlers in Australia.
9. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – another glimpse of the future – this one less likely but chilling nonetheless.
10. Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany – the dry Australian landscape is described so perfectly, you can almost taste dust in your mouth.