Literary Homes I'd Like to Live In

This summer, we're planning to move to a larger rental home with more space. Though I expect we'll end up somewhere fairly ordinary, today's Top Ten Tuesday topic (Bookish Worlds I’d Want to/Never Want to Live In) got me thinking about interesting  homes and neighborhoods from books that I might like to live in if I could.

Skeldale House 

from All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

James Herriot's descriptions of his life at Skeldale House with Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, and later with his wife, make it sound like such a cozy place to live, filled with laughter and camaraderie. 

Klickitat Street 

from the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary 

Like Ramona, I grew up in a neighborhood filled with kids of all different ages who hung out together. It's been fun revisiting that type of community as I've been listening to the audiobooks of this series with my four-year-old. While Klickitat Street is a real place, it's Cleary's fictionalized version of it, and the characters who inhabit it, that appeals to me. 

Three Pines

from the Inspector Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny

Though a good number of murders have taken place in this small Canadian village, it does seem like a cozy and idyllic place to live most of the time. I love all the little shops, including the new and used bookstore and the Bistro. 

Jim Qwilleran's converted apple barn 

from the Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun

I have always loved the well-realized setting for the long-running and well-loved series about newspaper reporter Jim Qwilleran and his cats, Koko and Yum Yum. I especially love the renovated apple barn that becomes their home part-way through the series - I'd probably have plenty of room for all my books if I lived there! 

Kinsey Millhone's garage apartment

from Sue Grafton's alphabet series

Fairly early in the series, Kinsey's apartment is damaged in the course of solving a case. Her landlord, Henry, surprises her with a brand-new customized apartment that suits all of her needs. Every time Kinsey describes where she lives, I think it must be such a comfortable home. It also doesn't hurt that Henry, who is an excellent baker, lives right next door!

Greenglass House 

from Greenglass House by Kate Milford

I'm not sure I'd really want to live among ghosts and possible thieves, but I do find the smuggler's inn that is the setting of Greenglass House and Ghosts of Greenglass House to be one of the more interesting houses I've read about.

Rosetown 

from Rosetown by Cynthia Rylant 

The setting of this gentle middle grade novel set in the 1970s is another quaint small town complete with a used bookstore called Wings and a Chair. It seems a bit too perfect to be believable, but it would definitely be my kind of place.

Dandelion Cottage 

from Dandelion Cottage by Carroll Watson Rankin

Dandelion Cottage is a vintage children's book about four tween girls who transform an unoccupied cottage on the local church's property into a playhouse that is so well-decorated and organized that it briefly houses a tenant. I would have loved the idea of staying in a little house like that when I was a kid. 

The Burrow

from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling 

I have always loved the cozy, cluttered atmosphere of the Weasley family home. And it has a lot of bedrooms, which would be nice!