Our New Project: Strong Sense of Place

For about two years, my husband David and I have been working in the background on a new project.

It’s called Strong Sense of Place…

… a web site and podcast dedicated to literary travel and the best books set in destinations all over the world.

Both the subject (books! travel! recipes!) and the work itself (reading! writing! photography! illustration! coding!) feel like the culmination of our combined 60+ years of work experience. Which is a long way to say: This feels so right. And we are super excited!

Our web site is live now — www.strongsenseofplace.com — and we would love it so much if you clicked over there to explore.

About Us

David and I have been a couple since 1992. One of our favorite things to do together is explore new places — and then to sit quietly and read. We’re two introverts who crave adventures, as long as we get to choose the time and place. We’ve visited 25 countries and 33 U.S. states… so far. It’s our mission to share the things we see, learn, and read with you.

As long-time readers know, in 2017 we sold almost all of our stuff and moved from the U.S. to Prague with our laptops and our cat Smudge. It’’s a fantastic, magical, livable city — and it’s an excellent home base for other travel.

The world is a large and wondrous place filled with fascinating people — and one lifetime is too short to visit and get to know them all. That’s why our favorite books have a strong sense of place. They help us travel — at least in our imaginations — to destinations all over the globe, to meet people we might never get to know in real life.

Not only is the trip a whole lot of fun, we fervently believe that reading good books increases empathy. Empathy is good for you and good for the world around us. We want more of that.

And that’s why we created Strong Sense of Place.

The Web Site

We’re updating the new site almost every day with book recommendations, essays about literary landmarks, travel tips, and other aspects of the adventurous life. Every Wednesday, we pair a book and a recipe in our Food+Fiction series. On Fridays, we’ve got two weekend-worthy posts coming your way:

1) Endnotes, a collection of our favorite book- and travel-related links from the week

2) Weekend Getaway, our pick for an excellend weekend read that will transport you somewhere — or sometime — in the world

The Podcast

Our first 12-week podcast season begins on January 20, and we’re very frexcited. In each episode, we’ll explore one destination through the pages of five books we love and interview a fascinating guest. You can see the Season 1 schedule right here.

The 2020 Reading Atlas

When you sign up for our Strong Sense of Place newsletter, we’ll send you our free 30-page 2020 Reading Atlas that’s jam-packed with international reading and travel inspiration. There are so many gorgeous photos and book recommendations, including 14 books to take you around the world, 6 audiobooks with a strong sense of place, and 7 of our favorite book series.

Let’s Connect

We’re @strongsenseof everywhere, and we’re active on Twitter and Instagram. Please follow us in both places to talk about books and historical libraries, and delicious things to eat, and other stuff that makes the bookish life more fun.