‘What happens next?’ asks Nick. It’s a good question.
Sitting here in my comfortable southern abode, it’s already obvious that this is not the last of the Kidmapper. Sitting in South Queensferry is a provocation: a bottle of whisky sent to me by Famous Grouse’s PR company congratulating me on completion of the Kidnapped Trail! (Thank you @deluca1985!)
If this first primitive foray into literary blogumentary can glean such riches, who knows what could be achieved next year. A whole case!? Perhaps I should consider a similar treatment of Whisky Galore.
The list is growing of books that might benefit from the kidnapper treatment.(bookmapping? booksteps? litwalks?) Sticking with Stevenson, Richard has suggested An Inland Voyage, although this would require the use of canoes, not something I feel confident about.
Lesley opts for The Amateur Emigrant and the idea of plotting Stevenons’s American peregrinations. California does interest me, not least because it leads me to Steinbeck country and he does seem like another writer who was keen to map out the landscape across which his characters travel. Some of the work involved in mapping out The Grapes of Wrath, for example, has already been done for me. Check this out: http://www.infinitethinking.org/2007/03/great-mashup-mapping-literary-journeys.html
I’ve written already about my ambitions for extending what I’ve done so that we could make the experience of walking all or part of the Kidnapped Trail into something that could be fun, enriching and thought-provoking for one and all.
James has had some good thoughts on this score. I particularly like his reference to http://yellowarrow.net/v3/ and how that kind of idea could be applied to Kidmapped. Thanks for your insights, James.
In short, there is no end and there are many things that could happen next. Indeed the hard work starts here, using this year’s journey and blog to work towards something more valuable & useful, more mobile & personal & context-sensitive, for other people who want to takes great books for walks; oh, and also to plot a bigger, better, weirder, richer, funnier Kidnapped Trail that more and more people could come and take part in next year. Stay tuned!
Comments