Reading Around the World: Los Angeles

Reading Around the World is a feature that combines my love of travelling with my love of reading. Each month I plan to spotlight either a city I have visited, or a city I plan to visit in the near future, and recommend some of my favourite books set there. After all even if you can’t visit these cities yourself the next best thing has to be reading about them and living the experience through the eyes of the characters.

Los Angeles was the middle stop in mine and my sister’s tour of the West Coast, after Las Vegas but before San Francisco, and there was a lot we had to pack into the few days we were there. First stop was, of course, Universal Studios. After that we spent time exploring Hollywood – travelling up into the hills to get a closer look at the Hollywood sign – and the city of LA itself, before travelling to Santa Monica which was a little out of our way but a destination we couldn’t say no to.

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The Last Bookstore is one of the places I insisted me and my sister go to while we were in Los Angeles. It’s full of used books and I loved exploring it, wandering around the Labyrinth of Books and what books I could find on the shelves. Basically if you’re a book lover you need to visit The Last Bookstore.

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The Mediator series by Meg Cabot defined my teenage years so when it comes to books set in Los Angeles this is the first, and in my opinion the best, choice. Suze moves to Los Angeles with her mother and her new step-family, and as well as fighting ghosts her priorities are spending time on the beach which having seen Santa Monica beach I can definitely identify with.

I haven’t got to The Dark Artifices trilogy yet, I’m waiting for all three books to be released because I’ve heard about the cliffhangers endings Clare leaves her books on, but I know these books are set in Los Angeles. Where The Mortal Instruments tells the story of the New York Institute and The Infernal Devices the London Institute, The Dark Artifices follows Emma and Julian in the Los Angeles Institute.

Another book I haven’t read but know is set in Los Angeles is Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour. I’ve heard good things about her books, and I featured another one in my Reading Around the World: San Francisco post, so one day I will get around to them.

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Have you ever been to Los Angeles before; what was your favourite part of the city to see and explore? Also what are some of the amazing books you’ve read set in Los Angeles, or America, that you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments.