History SceneryPorn / Literature

* There's an awful lot of Scenery Porn early on in the ''ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant''. Once Lord Foul really gets going, however, it turns into a kind of BreakTheCutie exercise on ''the world''. SceneryGorn, anyone?

* LMMontgomery's ''Literature/AnneOfGreenGables'' put Prince Edward Island on the map, for this very reason.

* TalesOfTheCity is the urban version of this trope featuring not just streets and locations both notable and mundane, but accurate (for the time) bus lines. While it was admittedly a serialized story in a local newspaper and thus explicitly aimed at a local audience it can still feel like more effort is spent on showing off how real and local it was than writing a compelling narrative.

----

* Creator/HPLovecraft is best known for indescribable {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, but he certainly didn't skimp on description when it came to scenery. He was very much a fan of architecture, and his stories feature long and detailed descriptions of the scenery (see for example the descriptions of Providence in ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward''). Usually this worked well and helped to set the mood, but on a few occasions it came out as rather {{egregious}}. ''The Dream Quest to Unknown Kadath'' in particular has a scene near the end where it seems like the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep has been hired as the spokesbeing of the New England tourism committee.

* ''María'', the novel by JorgeIsaacs, is all about this. The author spends pages and pages talking about the beautiful scenery of the region of Valle del Cauca, in Colombia.

* The novels of TonyHillerman are famous for their depictions of the deserts of the American Southwest, especially in his Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee series. The characters are Navajo, Pueblo, and Zuni Indians, so the scenery has spiritual importance as well.

* Ridiculously long sections of ''{{Gormenghast}}'' are dedicated to descriptions of the titular castle.

* DanielleSteel sets her novels in glamorous locales such as Paris, London, San Francisco, New York, etc, and treats her reader to endless descriptions of them.

* Both of the primary narrators in ''TheHistorian'' describe their surroundings in lengthy and exquisite detail. Landscape and architecture both receive near-fetishistic attention, taking up a sizable portion of the book's 650+ page length.

* DanAbnett does this in droves, particularly in the ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novels, where he'll spend a couple of paragraphs just describing a ''single room''.

* The first two books were fine, but the last two books of the ''{{Hyperion}}'' Cantos -- especially the last one -- are largely endless descriptions of pretty nonexistent locales on other planets (well, aside from the transplanted Vatican City), with little bits of completely inconsequential {{plot}} and exposition thrown in here and there.

* Ben Aaronovitch does this with London in his ''RiversOfLondon'' books, it starts to get a bit out of hand in the {{sequel}} ''MoonOverSoho''.

** ''FromTheEarthToTheMoon''

* GeneStrattonPorter's ''The Song of the Cardinal'' opens with several paragraphs of lavish description of the Limberlost. Other works often

* There's an awful lot of Scenery Porn early on in the ''ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant''. Once [[CompleteMonster Lord Foul]] really gets going, however, it turns into a kind of BreakTheCutie exercise on ''the world''. SceneryGorn, anyone?

* ''Literature/María'', the novel by JorgeIsaacs, is all about this. The author spends pages and pages talking about the beautiful scenery of the region of Valle del Cauca, in Colombia.

* HPLovecraft is best known for indescribable {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, but he certainly didn't skimp on description when it came to scenery. He was very much a fan of architecture, and his stories feature long and detailed descriptions of the scenery (see for example the descriptions of Providence in ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward''). Usually this worked well and helped to set the mood, but on a few occasions it came out as rather {{egregious}}. ''The Dream Quest to Unknown Kadath'' in particular has a scene near the end where it seems like the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep has been hired as the spokesbeing of the New England tourism committee.

* StephenKing is a big fan of describing the surroundings even when the characters are being hunted by TheLegionsOfHell. If it weren't for the [[BroadStrokes looseness of his geography]], it would be possible to draw a map of his fictional Maine towns... and he spent extra time describing the entire American landscape in ''TheStand''.

* In [[Creator/StanislawLem Stanislaw Lem's]] ''Literature/TalesOfPirxThePilot'', a spacesport is described very vividly. You can almost smell the Diborane.

* VictorHugo is notorious for devoting whole chapters of ''Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'' to describing the cathedral itself and the Paris skyline. The book is actually called ''Notre Dame de Paris'' -- the name of the church -- and a large part of it is a plea for the preservation of old cathedrals. Many literary critics in fact consider Notre Dame to be TheProtagonist.

* UmbertoEco's ''Literature/TheNameOfTheRose''. According to rumour, he wrote the first few chapters especially Scenery Porn-heavy in order to drive off readers looking for cheap and quick thrills. Elitism isn't dead!

* All of JulesVerne's ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_Extraordinaires Les Voyages Extraordinaires]]'' are like this.

* ''{{Literature/Discworld}}'' novels don't usually have too much of this stuff beyond the EstablishingShot of the Disc at the start of the early books. But you can definitely tell that ''Discworld/MenAtArms'' was being written at the same time as ''The Streets Of Ankh-Morpork: A Discworld Mapp'' was being compiled. The description of the "gnarly ground" in ''Discworld/CarpeJugulum'' probably counts as well. And then there's ''Discworld/TheLastHero'', and Paul Kidby's gorgeous pictures of the Rimfall, Cori Celesti, and [[TheWorldIsJustAwesome the Disc as seen from the moon]].

* In [[StanislawLem Stanislaw Lem's]] ''Literature/TalesOfPirxThePilot'', a spacesport is described very vividly. You can almost smell the Diborane.

* JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''. At least 80% of it was Scenery Porn, or it felt like that. This is why it made such good stock for film. There's a particularly good speech by Gimli about the caverns behind Helm's Deep, which goes on for a page and a half.

** Forget ''The Road''. Look at ''Blood Meridian'' or ''Suttree''. Just read the first page of [[http://books.google.com/books?id=ZGNzeO8EGpIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Suttree&source=bl&ots=X5yqS1h2x5&sig=s1TBi0DY0ldp0RjIIOQn4st8TW4&hl=en&ei=JmVUTKOmBoemsQPZ-LHaAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false Suttree]]

* E. Annie Proulx does this really weirdly. In "The Half-Skinned Steer," she has a character trapped in a Wyoming blizzard compare the swirling snow to mythical beasts and Arab women. Never mind that a character trapped in a Wyoming blizzard wouldn't be thinking about how pretty it is; he'd be wondering why he was stupid enough to be outside in a Wyoming blizzard. Proulx Did Not Do the Research.