Book Lovers Will Adore These Neat New Maps

About a decade ago, I read a short essay that has stuck with me by Anne Fadiman, in which she neatly named an idea any book lover will probably recognize: You-Are-There-Reading, "the practice of reading books in the places they describe."

Fadiman had read John Muir in the High Sierras, read about early expeditions of the Colorado River while on the Colorado River, read Eloise with her daughter inside the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Her description of the particular joy of You-Are-There-Reading always comes to mind when I think about the connection between cities and books – cities as backdrops and characters, books as pathways to travel to cities you've never been – or when I stumble across a project like Infinite Boston, a virtual tour (and map!) of the real-life places in fictional Infinite Jest.