Top Ten Tuesday: Places I want to visit after reading about them

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by the fabulous Jana at The Artsy Reader Girl. You can join in with future topics here!

I've gotten a lot of my wanderlust from reading - there's nothing like a well written book that opens up new places and makes you want to go and visit them for yourself. Some of them I've already managed to visit, but there are still plenty on my wish list!

Here are five places that I would absolutely love to visit, and the books (and in one case TV show) that have inspired that.

Capri
"I Love Capri" by Belinda Jones
One day, I will get there. This book has inspired my desperate yearning to visit Capri for nearly twenty years. I loved all of Belinda's books and exploring these romantic and beautiful places, but something about this book and the descriptions of Capri, has set off a desperate desire to see the place for myself. Who knows, maybe this year will finally be the year I escape to Capri...


New York
"City of Bones" by Cassandra Clare
This was the first book where I really felt an attachment to this city, where I found myself wanting to experience this slightly crazy place for myself. The seeds were planted many years ago reading "Drina dances in New York" by Jean Estoril - as well as wanting to sail there instead of flying, but that's beside the point... But it was with this book that that really flowered into a desperate need to see this city for myself instead of through the eyes of other people.

Japan
"Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden
Ok, Japan is quite a large area compared to the other more specific places on this list, but it's more a specific event that I want to experience, and this book was the start of that. I desperately want to see the cherry blossom trees one spring. Every description, every instance in fiction, cements that desire, and the certainty that it would be one of the most beautiful things to witness.


Versailles
"Dragonfly in Amber" by Diana Gabaldon
There have been several books exploring Versailles, but none has stuck with me like this one. I want to see this incredible place for myself, wander the halls, see all the opulence, and then find myself an incredible dress to waft around pretending I'm royalty for a while...

New Orleans
TV: The Originals / "The Casquette Girls" by Alys Arden
It just looks and sounds like such an incredible city, and I want to meander the French Quarter for myself. Over the course of five seasons of the show, New Orleans came to feel a bit like another home - and I wanted nothing more than to go and explore these streets for myself. Reading The Casquette Girls only cemented that feeling.

And five that I've managed to tick off already.

Prague
"Daughter of Smoke and Bone" by Laini Taylor
Although I was incredibly sad not to be able to visit Poison (it's now a karaoke bar) it was still incredibly exciting to wander the streets of Prague and try and find some of the places that Karou goes to.

Paris
"Anna and the French Kiss" by Stephanie Perkins
Anna exploring Paris was exactly what I needed to make living in France less scary. So when I had the chance to take a few days to explore the city for myself, I was incredibly excited. Seeing all these places that Anna had described for me, and chasing in her footsteps was such a fun experience.

Edinburgh
"Dragonfly in Amber" by Diana Gabaldon
Alright, technically I had already visited Edinburgh (a lot) before I read "Dragonfly in Amber", but I happened to read this book whilst I was staying there. I read the chapters set in Holyrood Palace, and then spent the following day wandering the Palace for myself. There's something incredibly exciting about being able to find the places in reality after reading them in fiction.

Venice
Too many books to count...
Venice has always been on my desperate wish list. From exploring it in Belinda Jones' "The Love Academy" to more recent excursions in "The Book of Life" by Deborah Harkness. It was one of those magical places that I was terrified couldn't live up to my imaginings. Yet it did. It was an astonishing, incredible, wonderful place to visit. Full of colour and life and magic, it opened up before me as though lifted from my dreams.

Dubrovnik
"A Game of Thrones" by George R R Martin
Alright, technically this is based on the TV show, I admit. But after seeing so many of these incredible places stand in for locations in Weteros and Essos, I was desperate to see them in real life. It was incredible and really surreal to find the steps outside the sept of Baelor, to see the view from the blacksmiths that Gendry worked at, and to visit the insanely beautiful and peaceful island of Lokrum to find the Qarth garden party.

There you have mine, now tell me some of yours! What are some places you've been inspired to visit because of books you've read? And are there any you'd still love to go to? Tell me in the comments below!

Review: A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke

Paul West arrives in Paris to start a new job - and finds out what the French are really like.
They do eat a lot of cheese, some of which smells like pigs' droppings. They don't wash their armpits with garlic soap. Going on strike really is the second national participation sport after petanque. And, yes, they do use suppositories.
In his first novel, Stephen Clarke gives a laugh-out-loud account of the pleasures and perils of being a Brit in France. A Year in the Merde tells you how to get served by the grumpiest Parisian waiter; how to make amour - not war; and how not to buy a house in the French countryside.

I’ve read a few other books by Stephen Clarke and really loved them; his writing is eloquent and frequently laugh out loud funny, and he tackles his subjects with both wit and an obvious deep love of the country and culture that he is writing about. It’s just a shame that he didn’t bring any of that to ‘A Year in the Merde.’

When I picked it up I didn’t realise it was a novel, so was expecting more of a travel memoir recounting a lot of the pitfalls of moving to France that people experience. What I got instead was a truly awful main character who is not only feeling displaced by his move to Paris, but is downright rude and obnoxious and makes no effort whatsoever to be anything other than disparaging and condescending throughout his stay.

Truly, other than a few more readable moments this was a disaster from start to finish. The humour was thin on the ground, and the book was instead populated with awful comments about the French culture and the people. Paul is a thoroughly unlikeable character who spends his time sulking, whinging, and taking women out for drinks and not understanding why some alcohol and half a hour of conversation don’t result in immediate sex.

It was demeaning and quite frankly disgusting in places and I’m not quite sure why I kept reading.

The drama was propelled by his caricature pantomime baddy of a boss who is doing all sorts of shady dealings and Paul just sits back and lets it all happen. There is no driving force, it is simply the ramblings of a man who couldn’t be arsed to do anything with his job in a new country.

It only vaguely tackled a few of the difficulties that people find when moving to France for the first time, and that wasn’t really enough to redeem it. It certainly doesn’t tackle the perils of being a Brit living in France. If you’re looking for an interesting insight into living in Paris, I recommend ‘Paris in Love’ by Eloisa James. I would also recommend some of Stephen Clarke’s other books, but steer as far away as possible from this pile of merde.