This week’s topic is, “Top 5 books with a place in the title. Any location or place in a title is fine — just share your top five with us.” I’m adding the proviso that these are the first five that I could think of with favorable memories, there are likely some I liked better (in a true Top 5 version), but these are all solid reads that tell us a lot about the location, where the place is important–even integral to the plot (which is probably why they occurred to me when thinking about place).
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 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams The universe is a place, it’s actually all the places. So it’s a good one to start with (in addition to the whole alphabetical thing). Sure, it’s kind of depressing to think of it ending, but at least you get a good meal beforehand. Even if it’s sentient, it’s at least tasty. And then you get to see all of Creation come to it’s timely end. |
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 Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell We go from evereything everywhere to a tiny town in England. Sure, it’s a very important town, playing a vital supernatural role–so that makes up for the change in size. It’s a cliche to describe a city as a character in a book/movie/etc. But it really is true here, still, it’s a cliche, so I won’t say it.. |
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 6 Ripley Avenue by Noel Holten 6 Ripley Avenue is not a place anyone wants to be. Including most of the people who work there. And that’s before the murders start. It’s a probation hostel for violent criminals (for Americans, think of it as a half-way house for parolees). In addition to the staff (some of which should not be trusted, some of which should not be in this particular line of work), eight of these parolees live at the titular location. And then, as I said, people start to be killed. And the Airbnb rating really starts to tank. |
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 Perelandra by C.S. Lewis Yeah, the Venus we can see is beautiful (hence the whole “Venus” thing). It’s captured imaginations for centuries now. But underneath the clouds, the planet known as Perelandra is exponentially better than our wildest imaginations. You could almost call it Edenic. (arguably you should call it that). Ignore the plot if you wanted to (I’m not sure you should, but you could), the descriptions of the planet, the animal and plant life there, the geography…it’d be perfectly worth your time. |
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 The Black Mountain by Rex Stout Is this the best Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin novel? It’s not even in the running. But it is striking in its singularity (it largely takes place in Montenegro, near or under the shadow of the Black Mountain). It centers on regional politics, regional history, and leaves our poor American narrator out in the cold of most of the action. I really enjoy it because of the differences, at least 70% of what I know about Montenegro (particularly pre-1990s Montenegro) comes from this book (this says more about me and my education than it says about the book).
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