Let's Talk Settings

Recently a friend of ours, Jen, who runs the The Secret Life of a Bibliophile blog, asked Sophie and I if we'd like to be apart of a series of posts she's doing on her site, talking about settings. We were thrilled as we love talking about books. You can find Jen's post about Settings here

http://tinyurl.com/2a8g5o5. Did I mention that with each weekly post (on Friday's) Jen will be giving away a book that features the mentioned setting?

My chosen setting to talk about is the Northwest. This is not a post about Twilight. My post is about the setting, which is the Northwest. If you're from there or if you've been there, you'l know what I'm talking about, when I saw the Northwest is beautiful and hards to leave. Here's what I said,

"Settings create the tone of a book, and have the power to either pull me into the story, or turn me off of it completely. There's been a handful of books I've read lately that have captivated me and sucked me in not just with the story, but also with the setting. Beautiful Darkness, Clockwork Angel, Firelight, Paranormalcy, and Guardian of The Gate are a few. I'll admit there's one book that I read just because of the setting, and that was Twilight. I had friends for months trying to get me to read Twilight (long before it was a huge seller) and I kept refusing. Why would I want to read a "stupid vampire love story", were my exact words. It took one paragraph with the words, "Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State" for me to be hooked on this book. Why? I'm from the Northwest. Born and raised there and though I don't live there now, the setting took me back to what I love and miss about the Northwest and it's beauty with it's lush green trees and ferns that liter the woods, colder weather and even the rain.

Places I'd been, and some things I grew up doing where captured in the Twilight series. Of course I never ran with wolves or vampires, but Stephenie brought to life a series that couldn't have survived in a different setting. The Northwest brought the story to life and made it more real. People flock from all over the world to see this amazing, real setting of dense, green, moss covered trees and to climb over old pines trees washed up on the rocky beaches of La Push, just to walk along the shore where real dog prints can be found among the colored pebbles that wash up on the shore. Who wouldn't want to go there? You don't need to love Vampires or Wolves to want to go here. It's the ideal place to let your imagination run wild and if you grew up in a place similar to this, than you can relate to running around for hours in a small wooded area, letting your childhood imagination run wild. Maybe that's what the appeal is to the older readers.

While the Twilight series has a great story, if the setting hadn't been in the Northwest, it wouldn't have been as appealing to me. This is one series where I love it for the setting first, and the story second. Stephenie not only described the outdoor element of the Northwest perfectly, but she took real aspects of the Northwest with Native American culture, hobbies of the Northwest, like hiking, fishing and camping, along with life in a small Northwestern town and wove it into her story. She made me feel like I was really there, experiencing the story. It's not just the story of Edward and Bella or the closeness of the pack or the Cullens, or the feelings of a first love that appeal to fans. Twilight's setting can connect us through experiences we've had or places we've been and that adds realism to the story. Settings can be real, like places we've lived or visited, or they can be made up, and allow us to expand our imaginations and get lost in an imaginary place that comes real in our minds." (quoted from Jen's site)

You can find the rest of the my post here http://tinyurl.com/23d86t9 AND be sure to leave Jen a comment and enter to win The Body Finder! Another great book takes place in the beautiful Northwest.