h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought about that too but didn't like my chances of surviving very long!

A helmet would be neccesary, not eating saugages offered by any streetvendor and not falling in the Ankh would be conditions to last a few hours!

I'd like to visit (though not live in) the world of Marcus Didius Falco, from the Lindsey Davis 'Falco' series. Set in ancient Rome during the Vespasian empire (approx 75 AD) it centres around the adventures of Falco, who is an informer/private detective. Wonderful series - entertaining, funny and often educational (Ms Davis is also a published historian).

I wouldn't want to actually live there because, like Crescent, I figure it would be just my luck to be born a slave rather than a senator's daughter.


az

I'm not small enough to live in one.

Cant' really make my mind up.... For a serious sugestion anyhow... It'd have to be a kinda romance, preferabably with a sad ending when the main character dies, In a kinda Graham Green style of ending... Hence why Brighton rock is still looking kinda about right, though it doens't really have quite the romance streek in it as such... Yeh... I'd be pinky, stuff sucks, then it sucks a lot more, and eventually die unhappy.... think maybe I'm choosing the rong way round here

What book would you like to live in?

Preferably a big, detached, double glazed and centrally heated one near the coast...

I would love to live in an Enid Blyton book, maybe the faraway tree. It's about a couple of kids who find a tree at the end of their garden where a load of magical and excentric creatures live, and when they climb it they come out in different lands, so there's a whole new adventure every time....would like a book with a little more romance though, so not perfect....hm...i'll keep thinking. Excellent topic though!

Spookily that was the first book I thought of when I saw this thread! It really was! But I would be worried about being trapped in one of the nastier lands above the tree...so I decided to play safe

I would actually kind of enjoy the brave new world of Huxley's Brave new World, where with the exception of a few misfits, everybody is happy to be where they are, plenty of sex and drugs, and the overall feeling that whatever you do is worthwhile.

Y.

well jules...great minds

Brian Johnston's biography, as Brian Johnston. The first half of his life was a bit messed up but the second half was something I could quite definitely enjoy.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books would be pretty cool, having a go in one of those flying suits would be especially cool.


Or

Any Robert Rankin book would also be great, Drinking in the Flying Swan by day, battling Lovecraftian loathsomes by night. (or visa versa) All within the confines of the site of eden that is Brentford. Though a trip to Penge might be nice.

Hmm, Ooj has a point there - there are a few autobiographies I could spend a few weeks living in, with the cash to match!

I would absolutely love to live in a PG Wodehouse book. I could be a fairly silly lady with no worries whatsoever except for whether the butler would ever find out that it was in fact my fiance the curate that stole the policeman's helmet, and whether it'll be a nice sunny day when Gussie and Madeleine get married. I would spend all my time staying in large country houses with thoroughly ridiculous people like Sir Watkyn, and plot with my Aunts to get someone to administer a bop on the nose to Sir Watkyn. (In Wodehouse it's no longer common assault, it's just giving the old crumpet a bop on the nose to teach him a lesson!)

"I would absolutely love to live in a PG Wodehouse book."

Oh, yes! That would be a perfect book to be in too!

It's just that you probably won't be able to appreciate the fun of it unless you are, in fact, the butler

I'm going to throw in my lot with the Iain M Banks fans, and say The Culture. I really must get round to writing that entry...

RF

Sunset Song
enjoying a hard but simple life as a Scottish crofter around the time of WWI
like Ewan Taverndale I'd marry Chris but unlike him I wouldn't be conscripted and die for desertion
or being Long Rob or Chae Strachan wouldn't be bad either but they die in the war too

thats one of the more cheerful books I can think of

living under the benign matriarchal rule of Awa before history began as in 'The Flounder' by Gunter Grass might be ok too

I like to live in Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist". It's a beautiful fable about a boy who follows his dream, lives his personal legend, and finally, after many adventures, discovers his treasure in the place where he began his journey. And once he does that, he's freed to devote his life to love, while he's still young and healthy with a whole future ahead of him.

That's a book that, once I read it, I've never been quite able to leave the mindscape. Since then life has been very good, indeed.

My Autobiography.