More on Google Earth and reading

I will soon be reviewing A Paragon of Virtue (a book I am enjoying very much indeed).  I have much appreciated the way the author, Christian Von Ditfurth, provides very precise locations within his novel.  As a keen user of Google Earth I find all this fascinating.  Maybe its a childhood love of maps, or just idle curiosity, but I enjoy looking up book locations on Google Earth and seeing the aerial view provided by the system and also the many ground-level photographs which other Google Earth users have posted. 

For example, we read that the history lecturer Stachelman lives in a turning off Lichte Querstrasse in Lubeck, and that to travel to his work at Hamburg University he takes a train to Dammtor and walks to Von Melle Park.  With Google Earth I can see more or less precisely where Stachelman lives and also see the many photographs of the area which have been posted by other users of Google Earth, and then trace his journey to work and peer down at Hamburg University. 

We read that one of the other main characters took a train to Blankanese and walked down Dockenhudener Strasse and into Hirschpark by the Elbe - and Google Earth lets me see the park and once more, a photograph lets me see the very view described from the park over the Elbe. 

Later on Stachelman visits the Baltic coast and stops at Scharbeutz and walks along the promenade.  Google Earth lets me learn about this pretty seaside town and I am able to compare it with my own home on the Sussex Coast and see similarities. 

You only have to Google "literary tours" to find that many other people are interested in the locations of the books they read, and books abound describing "literary London" (or any other city you can think of).  But Google Earth enables me to glean an astonisihg amount of information from my own computer, not only by looking up locations from my current reading but also by using the technique described in my previous post.