Trip Fiction - The Ultimate Resource for Finding a Book about Your Next Destination

When I travel, I try to read all the books I can find -- about, set in or written by an author -- from wherever I'm going. I cover the gamut from classic literature to contemporary fiction, children's books to historical non-fiction, but finding these books isn't always easy. Enter TripFiction.com.

Imagine finding a website that solved my exact problem. TripFiction.com is a website for books set in location where you can search for books by location, genre or author – and cross reference across all three – or read reviews from like-minded travelers before choosing a title.  

In their words: "TripFiction was created to make it easy to match a location with a book and help you select the literature that is most pertinent and relevant to your trip in a way that has not been practical before." 

But the clever editors didn't just stop with a list of books by place, they've included reviews of every book listed and cool features like My Backpack where you can store titles to consider later. Plus, they offer giveaways each month as well as the opportunity to post your own reviews and discuss books with other like-minded travel readers.

I was curious about how a website like this started (and why it hasn't been available until now), so I asked. Here's everything you want to know about TripFiction from one of its founders, Tina Hartas:

"My love of books set in location – you can get under the skin of a place in a way that is quite different to a conventional guidebook – started seven years or so ago in Bangkok. We were staying at the BelAire Princess Hotel just off Sukhumvit Road. I was sitting by the rooftop pool reading a book called Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett that I had picked up at the airport on the way out. A thriller that absolutely came to life when I discovered that much of the action was taking place in one of the Soi streets, a short way beneath us. And the book was great for creating the atmosphere of the city – somehow seedy, with street food and strange (to us) customs. A city I descended into by lift and then explored, memories of the book still fresh. It was a great experience as I followed the story…

I then went to Vienna for a weekend, and really struggled to find a book set there. I eventually - after much painstaking research - found The Fig Eater by Jody Shields  which gave me such a flavour of the city over 100 years before. I could almost hear the horse-drawn carriages clopping past - it gave me a real sense of history of the city as I explored it. It was then that I thought, together with Tony Geary, that we could set up a fledgling enterprise and meet a need which is clearly there. And that is TripFiction today." 

I spend quite a lot of time on TripFiction and have found it to be a fantastic resource and just a fun place to visit. One of my favorite discoveries on the site was The Space Between Things by Charlie Hill, a unique story about an obscure group of young people in Moseley, UK that struggle through a tumultuous time in history starting with the day that Margaret Thatcher resigned. And before leaving for a week-long trip to Singapore, I found a slew of recommendations like The Singapore Grip, The Moonlight Palace and Breaking the Tongue. (FYI, I picked up a copy of The Singapore Grip.) 

If you are looking for that perfect book for your next vacation or a different angle on the country you are thinking of visiting next year, check out TripFiction.com and I bet you'll find many ways to immerse yourself in a new place.

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