The Read and Travel Challenge

The first time I tried to read a book in the city it was set in, I was nineteen, sitting on a bench in the Royal Crescent in Bath with a paperback of Persuasion on my knees and a cold flat white going colder beside me. I read the chapter where Anne walks down to the Pump Room. Then I closed the book and walked down to the Pump Room. The walk took eleven minutes. The book had taken me a week. And somehow the eleven-minute walk was the part I remembered, because I’d already read the page that made me want to take it.

That’s the whole pitch of the Read and Travel Challenge.

Read the book. Then go to the place. Whichever order works for your year, your wallet, and your library hold queue.

How it works: read the book, then go to the place

The premise: every book in your TBR has a city behind it. Sometimes the city is the whole point (Stieg Larsson’s Stockholm, Riordan’s Athens). Sometimes it’s a setting that’s drifted into folklore (King’s Cross, Forks). Either way, when you finish the book, the city is sitting there waiting, with all the cobbles and ferry queues and overpriced croissants the author left out. Going makes the book bigger. Reading first makes the trip cheaper, because you walk past the obvious tourist trap with the book already in your head telling you why it doesn’t matter.

Two soft rules and that’s it:

• Read the book first. Or at least most of it. Spoilers stop being spoilers when you’re standing on the bridge they happen on.
• Go within a year of finishing. A weekend counts. A two-week trip counts. A long layover where you sprint to one specific cafe absolutely counts.

That’s the challenge. Pick a book. Pick the city. Read. Go. Keep score however you want.

The 2026 launch list: 14 books, 14 cities

This is the starter pack. Fourteen city guides, each pinned to one book, each one written so you could take it on the trip without having read the novel and still come home with a real itinerary. The book is the personality. The city is the substance.

Some of these are live now. Some are still being written and will land over the next two weeks. Click through; the published ones go straight to the guide, the ones still in draft will give you a 404 for a few days. That’s not a bug, it’s a calendar. Bookmark this page and check back.

British Isles

• London for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. King’s Cross, Leadenhall Market, the Studio Tour decision, and which Diagon Alley stand-in actually pays you back. Read the Harry Potter London guide.
• Bath for Persuasion by Jane Austen. The Pump Room, the Royal Crescent, where Anne Elliot actually walked, and how to do Bath in a day from London if that’s all you’ve got. Read the Persuasion Bath guide.
• Inverness for Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Culloden, Clava Cairns, Doune Castle, plus a contrarian opinion about whether the guided tour is worth your money or you should drive yourself. Read the Outlander Inverness guide.

Europe

• Stockholm for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Lisbeth’s Söder, Mellqvist café, the actual address of Mikael’s flat, and why the Old Town walking tour is fine but the south island is the point. Read the Dragon Tattoo Stockholm guide. (The one I’d book: HappyToVisit’s original Gamla Stan ghost walk — story-first, after-dark, very Larsson. The Stockholm City Museum ran the original Millennium tour and still publishes the locations map.)
• Amsterdam for The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Anne Frank House without queuing for three hours, Vondelpark, the Oranjee location pilgrimage, and where to actually eat the night you arrive. Read the Fault in Our Stars Amsterdam guide.
• Athens for Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. The Acropolis with kids in tow, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Plaka as a base camp, and a Delphi day trip for the genuinely Oracle-curious. Read the Percy Jackson Athens guide.
• Paris for The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. The Louvre at the worst possible time of day to test the puzzle, Saint-Sulpice, and which neighbourhood is actually nice to stay in versus which one Brown made famous. Read the Da Vinci Code Paris guide.
• Cortona for Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. The town itself, the day-trip case for Arezzo, what the actual Bramasole house looks like from the road, and the car-or-no-car question if you’re flying into Florence. Read the Under the Tuscan Sun Cortona guide.
• Procida for The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The ferry from Naples, the harbour Ripley arrives at, where to eat the day you walk off the boat, and why this one beats Capri for the price. Read the Talented Mr. Ripley Procida guide.

North America

• Forks, Washington for Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The cheapest way out from Seattle (it’s not the bus), what the town actually looks like in the rain, the Cullen house drive, and whether a day is enough or you really do need a weekend. Read the Twilight Forks guide.
• Prince Edward Island for Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. Cavendish, the Green Gables house, the lighthouses worth driving to, and how to do PEI without renting a car if you have to. Read the Anne of Green Gables PEI guide.
• Asheville, North Carolina for The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The DuPont State Forest filming locations, the Biltmore (yes really), and the case for flying in versus folding Asheville into a longer Smokies trip. Read the Hunger Games Asheville guide.

Asia and Pacific

• Singapore for Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. Hawker stalls Kwan name-checks, the rooftop bar that earned its place in the book, why Marina Bay Sands is more fun to look at than to stay in, and the day-trip out to Sentosa or off it. Read the Crazy Rich Asians Singapore guide.
• Matamata, New Zealand for The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Hobbiton on the working sheep farm, what the tour is actually like, where to stay so you’re not driving from Auckland, and the Tongariro alternative for people who’ve already done the Shire. Read the Lord of the Rings Matamata guide.

That’s the launch slate. Four batches, fourteen cities, going live across late April and into May 2026. The plan is to keep adding from there: a Russia article when I’m sure I can do it justice, a Wuthering Heights moors guide, something for the readers who keep emailing me about The Night Circus even though it doesn’t have one specific city. Suggestions go in the comments and I read every one.

How to join in (no email signup, I promise)

this challenge runs on banners and link-ups. Post a “joining in” announcement on your blog, paste a banner, and tag yourself in the comments here. That’s the model. I’m not running a mailing list and I’m not asking you to sign anything. The whole point is that it’s casual.

If you want to play along, here’s the entire ask:

1. Pick your books for the year. Three is plenty. Five is ambitious. Seven is showing off. Stack them somewhere you’ll see them.
2. Decide which one is becoming a trip. It can be a flight. It can be a train two cities over. It can be a long Sunday in a city you’ve meant to revisit. The trip just has to be on the calendar.
3. Tell someone. Easiest version: write a short “I’m joining the Read and Travel Challenge” post on your own blog with the books you’re picking and where you might go. Tag the Read and Travel Challenge on whichever platform you actually use. Drop the link in the comments here so I can come find it.
4. Grab the banner. There’s a hand-drawn participation badge coming, which I’ll post here as soon as the artist’s done with it. When it goes up, take it, host it on your own server (don’t hotlink, my hosting bill thanks you), and link it back here. It’s the only “rule” of the whole thing.

If you don’t have a blog, that’s fine. A Goodreads shelf called the Read and Travel Challenge 2026 is the same thing. So is a notes-app list. The challenge happens whether anyone watches.

What I’d love to see

Photos of the book in the place. The crumpled paperback on the cafe table where you finished it. A receipt taped to the inside cover. A bookmark from a city bookshop you bought another paperback at. this challenge runs on the smell of small details. Tag me when you go and I will absolutely repost.

One last thing about the books-and-travel question

People sometimes ask if reading the book first ruins the trip. The opposite. Going to a city you’ve read about is a strange act of double vision. You see the actual streets, with their actual chain stores and their actual pigeons, and you also see the imagined version laid over the top. The argument I keep making is that this is the most fun a place can be. You’re never just looking. You’re checking. You’re correcting. You’re noticing what the author got right and forgiving what they made up. The bridge is shorter than you’d thought. The bookshop is smaller. The cafe is loud.

And then you sit down with the same book and it reads differently for the rest of your life. That’s the deal.

So pick a book. Find me in the comments when you’ve got the city. The list goes live one batch at a time, and the next four are queued for next week. I’ll see you at the platform.