
Show HN: Destination Reads – Find the best books set in cities around the world - xenophon
http://www.destinationreads.com
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christudor
This is something I’ve been interested in for ages. I recently went to India
and the first thing I Googled was “best books set in India” (answers:
Shantaram, A Fine Balance, Midnight’s Children, God of Small Things). So
definitely something I would use.

Some comments from me:

1\. Needs to be much bigger. You currently have four books recommended for
London, both fiction and non-fiction. But there are hundreds and hundreds of
books set in London, which leads me on to ...

2\. Needs to be curated. When I was searching for the best books set in India,
I was looking for the most popular, critically-acclaimed, ‘important’ books,
not just any old book set in India. Some sense of priority would be useful.

3\. Needs to include more than just cities. Could you also include regions and
countries, too? If you’re travelling in the Deep South, for example, you’ll
want to be recommended things like Faulkner, Steinbeck, etc. even though these
books aren’t always set in specific cities. (I think Faulkner set lots of his
books in a fictional county somewhere in the Deep South).

4\. UX. I don’t need photos of cities on the buttons. If this is a site that
_might_ be used by people on holiday = people with really slow internet, you
might want to think about getting rid of needless graphics, or offering a low-
bandwidth version. Again, to return to the India example, the Internet here
(and lots of other places I’ve been) is woeful. Some services (e.g. Reddit,
WhatsApp) do really well in those circumstances, others (e.g. Twitter) not so
much.

Great idea, however. Looking forward to see how it grows!

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xenophon
Apologies for the belated response - this is incredibly helpful! Thanks a ton
for taking a look - prioritization in particular, figuring out how to
highlight the "best of the best" as the amount of content on the site grows,
feels key to me as well.

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xenophon
Hi HN! Whenever I travel to a new city for work or fun, I like to read a book
set in that place, or about that place, to set the mood and build a rapport
with my new environment before I arrive. After a conversation with one of my
friends, I realized that many frequent travelers do this, and thought I'd make
a website to curate and collect "destination reads" \-- novels, memoirs and
other long-form works of fiction and creative non-fiction that capture the
character and essence of a city.

I plan to add more cities over the next few weeks, and hope for nominations
and contributions from the community. This is the first webapp I've ever built
(I used Webflow) -- would love feedback on design, content, and anything else
that I can improve!

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Ryel
Looks really cool! Congratulations on shipping. Looking forward to reading
some of the NYC books =)

