Update: The Read Local map is now live! Find books connected to places across Canada. Add your favourites, too.
Have you ever fallen so in love with a Canadian town, village, or landscape described in a book you had to visit it yourself? Has it ever felt like you’ve been somewhere you actually haven’t, simply from having read about it? Have you ever used a guidebook or reference book to help you get the most out of a road-trip or vacation?
Of course you have, and it goes to show how important Canadian place-based books are to our identity and our experience of our country. We want to celebrate these books—and we need your help.
We have launched a very cool new feature called Read Local: The 100-Mile Book Diet. Central to this is the Read Local Map on 49th Shelf, which is a map of Canada with a difference: it is populated by books either set in a certain place (fiction) or about a certain place (non-fiction). And, it's populated not just by the editorial team here but by readers’ suggestions.
Through the summer, we’re going to announce special themes for the map. Obviously, we have to have an Eat Your Way Across Canada theme (how could we not? it’s barbeque season! it’s corn and tomato season!). But there will be more … some obvious and some more obscure and off-the-wall. Again, we want you to help us put Canadian books on the map.
As we go along, Read Local is going to get more and more layered. And more and more beautiful.
There are only three ground rules:
- Books have to be about a place or set in a place—one place per book (so if a book is about three places, choose the one that’s most meaningful to you), and the author’s hometown does not make a book eligible for a place on the map.
- Books can be entered only once on the map—we’d love to make exceptions but we can’t because otherwise certain books might get entered hundreds of times by those who love them a little too much.
- Anything else goes!
Please stop by and add your favourite books today. You can also pass your recommendations along via Facebook or by using the #readlocal tag on Twitter.
Update: The Read Local map is now live! Find books connected to places across Canada. Add your favourites, too.