Nine books and magical book locations to help your wanderlust when you can’t travel
“
Books are the plane and the train and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” Anna Quindlen
Settle back, relax, and get ready for a journey that may be better than a plane, boat, or car trip you will ever like. So don’t bemoan your fate at this time when the Coronavirus may restrict you from traveling far from home. Times will change, and the world will get back to the hectic pace of rapid travel and overcrowded travel airports. Since you may stay home now this is a great time to explore journeys in all its forms in the following books and places.
Fictional Travelers
Let’s start with fictional travelers, who may inspire you just as much as real-world travelers. To get your travel mood charged up are three books of the many Fictional travelers.
For the kids in your family, and who would be the best fictional traveler for your children? Dora the Explorer, of course.
For the history travel buff who’s looking for a time travel history trip with the Host, also known as Harry Bailey, is the innkeeper and the tour guide featured in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
A must-read and travel with the non-comparable real or fictional exuberant Sal Paradise for the restless wanderers. The On the Road narrator, who crisscrosses the United States in a feverish dream embarking on one mad journey after another.
Time Travelers
For the mystical dreamer who wants to travel from different times and places, there are some excellent time traveler characters to read and join in their time travels.
You can’t go wrong reading it for the first time or rereading H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, a novel that crafts a vivid and haunting picture of the earth some 800,000 years into the future.
Get enthralled with Michael Crichton’s Timeline about a team of historians and archaeologists going back in time after finding modern artifacts at an archaeological site, trying to investigate the origin.
You may want to read the SF masterpiece The End of Eternity by Issac Asimov. This stand-alone novel is a monument to the highpoint of SF in the 20th century.
Fictional movie and book locations
For future planning here are some fictional movies and novel locations to visit.
Do you dream of traveling to far off places, the places that you may have seen in a movie, or read in books? Writers and directors of novels and films use their creativity and ability to take us to magical worlds and interesting places that exist.
Whether it is historical structures from an ancient world, the natural scenery that inspired a fantasy land, or abandoned film sets, there are many places that fans can visit and retrace the footsteps of their favorite character or work of fiction.
The Shire Village, Hobbiton, can be toured on a Visit to Matamata, New Zealand. The film location for Tatooine may be a potential safety risk; however, there is no issue in visiting Hobbiton to experience the wooden homes of the hobbits in Peter Jackson’s films.
Journey on to Harry Potter’s Castle, Hogwart was inspired by Alnwick Castle, located in Northumberland, England. The first two films (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) used the castle for the location for filming.
Ashford Forest might be on your England list with a visit to the Hundred Acre Wood found in ‘Winnie The Pooh. If you take a trip to Ashdown Forest in the High Weald Area of Sussex, England, you may feel as though you have taken a trip down memory lane because this is the forest that is said to have inspired the setting for childhood favorite Winnie the Pooh. The author of the books, A. A. Milne, is said to have lived on the outskirts of Ashdown Forest (a 6,500-acre wood) and watched his son, Christopher Robin, play with toys there, which inspired him to create the Winnie the Pooh books, and the Hundred Acre Wood, where the adventures of the characters took place.
