Setting as refuge

[radiantfracture]

I have trouble focusing on reading in the dark part of the year. That's possibly why I tend to do more painting in the winter.

I am currently re-reading old comfort books -- right now, mysteries that aren't themselves scintillating qua mysteries, but which have rich, textured settings -- ones you want to walk around in. The characters are pretty stock, but really that makes them also part of the setting. (Also, they are the stock characters of another era, which gives them a kind of patina, like figurines taken from a drawer.) All mis-en-scene, all the time.

There's no doubt something extra escapist about this, given the givens; like one of those little street scenes or interiors built into the space on a bookshelf, a place to crawl into and, if not hide, peer out from.

What are your favorite books for a richly imagined, lived-in setting? Any genre welcome, including nonfiction. For example, Pamela Dean's Tam Lin is all about the setting.

{rf}

Comments

[sonia]

I love that image of crawling into a little scene on a shelf and peering out from it!

I think this might be a different angle, characters strongly connected to their settings, but I immediately thought of Patricia McKillip's "Forgotten Beasts of Eld" and Riddle-Master series. Those books felt very embodied to me as I read them, and I still feel them in my body.

[radiantfracture]

I've read the first book of the Riddle-Master series, but I think that's all. Thanks!

[marycatelli]

The Bell At Sealey Head for me.

[calimac]

I love Dean's Tam Lin, and McKillip, but when you mention "setting" I think of Austin Tappan Wright's gigantic Islandia, which is the only novel I've ever read that I'd rather live through than read. It's set on a rather utopian imaginary South Seas country described in awesome detail.

[larryhammer]

You've got a point about Islandia. I should pull it out again.

[anne]

Those mysteries sound like just what I want right now! I did a Cadfael-and-Wimsey reread in March-April, and I'm thinking about a Miss Silver reread next.

[radiantfracture]

They're the Cat Who books... the first four have such great settings.

[anne]

I read a couple of those when they first came out...I remember liking them. Thanks for the reminder!

[larryhammer]

Always Coming Home, Le Guin

The Zimiamvian Trilogy, E.R. Eddison

[radiantfracture]

Ah, yeah, Le Guin for sure. I haven't read Always Coming Home in a long time.

[larryhammer]

I used to reread it every year.

[isis]

I listened to the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series as audiobooks narrated by the excellent Lisette Lecat some years ago, and I have strong, fond memories of running in spikes on the barely-plowed path through feet of snow, imagining I was in Botswana with the sun beating down on me, seeing the cows huddling in the shade of the acacia trees. It was transporting!

[radiantfracture]

Thanks!

[cmcmck]

Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books.

[radiantfracture]

Thanks!

[sabotabby]

Tam Lin is hardcore for that.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley, a.k.a. the vampire bakery AU, is one of my go-tos for comfort reading.

[radiantfracture]

I mean I'm in.

[shewhomust]

For crime fiction where setting plays a large part, have you tried Ann Cleeves? Especially her Shetland series ...

And I've just read Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent - I didn't fall in love with it, but I enjoyed it, and it's all about the setting.

For rich setting that I don't want to walk around in, I'm a sucker for Arctic exploration ...