{"id":20703,"date":"2022-02-17T11:10:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20703"},"modified":"2022-02-17T11:10:14","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:10:14","slug":"top-ten-fictional-buildings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2022\/02\/17\/top-ten-fictional-buildings\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Ten Fictional Buildings?"},"content":{"rendered":"[raw]\r\n

As I often say, the purpose of Top Ten lists is to be wrong, and David Annand<\/a>\u2019s list of the Top Ten Fictional Buildings for the Grauniad is definitely wrong. But oddly enough I\u2019m having difficulty coming up with a Top Ten that I don\u2019t think is wrong.\r\n

I\u2019m not even absolutely sure what my criteria are. I think to be top-tier, a fictional building (and I am working here from prose fiction, obviously) has to be fully realized, outside and in, to the point where I feel like I am as familiar with it as my workplace or my childhood home. But it also has to be fantastic, or at least strange\u2014a fully realized building that\u2019s too ordinary isn\u2019t going to be memorable enough for my Top Ten. \r\n

  1. Blandings Castle<\/strong>: I can totally see what it looks like from the outside, as well as the study with its French window, the dining room, the drawing room, bedrooms, stairs, the gardens, the lake\u2026 and as a Stately Home, it has the kind of ourageous fabulousness that puts it in the top tier.<\/li>\r\n
  2. Hogwarts<\/strong>: The impressive thing about Hogwarts, honestly, is that it keeps being interesting as a location, even as the books become less interesting (to me, anyway). It starts out with a bunch of charming aspects, but then it grows. <\/li>\r\n
  3. 221B Baker Street<\/strong>: Somehow, this hasn\u2019t been ruined for me by overly literal filming. Maybe because there are so many different versions? At any rate, it\u2019s one of the greats\u2014and I can totally see the view from the window. <\/li>\r\n
  4. Isengard<\/strong>: Mr. Annand mentions Bag End, but of the buildings of Middle Earth, I would pick either Isengard or Minas Tirith. I would like to pick Rivendell\u2014certainly of all the buildings of Middle Earth, that\u2019s the one I would choose to visit\u2014but somehow I can\u2019t really see<\/i> Rivendell as a building. <\/li>\r\n
  5. Howl\u2019s Moving Castle<\/strong>: Has the advantage of also being, at least somewhat, a character in the story. <\/li>\r\n
  6. Krook\u2019s rag-and-bottle shop<\/strong> from Bleak House<\/cite>:<\/strong> I think this is the Dickens building I would pick, with the wineshop from A Tale of Two Cities<\/cite> and The Wooden Midshipman from Dombey and Son<\/cite> the strongest competition. <\/li>\r\n
  7. Maybe Thornfield Hall<\/strong> from Jane Eyre?I feel like there should be at least one scary mansion on this list, I think I\u2019d put this ahead of the Castle of Otranto or Wuthering Heights or Manderley. And the House of Usher doesn\u2019t have the physicality I\u2019m looking for.<\/li>\r\n
  8. Mr. Annand includes the Library of Babel<\/strong>, which I don\u2019t think has enough reality in it to make my list, but I can\u2019t think of a better fictional library. <\/li>\r\n
  9. The Deadly Nightshade Diner<\/strong> (we never close) from the Snarkout Boys series, by Daniel Pinkwater is a terrific location, but part of its charm is that the physical building is a quite generic diner. Right? On the other hand, they have borgelnuskies. And, again, I can\u2019t think of another great fictional restaurant building.<\/li>\r\n
  10. The Wayside School<\/strong> from the Louis Sachar series? Eeyore\u2019s (Piglet\u2019s) house in the Hundred Acre Wood? The Batcave under Stately Wayne Manor? Really, I\u2019m having trouble getting to ten.<\/li>
      \r\n

      What are your favorites?\r\n

      Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
      -Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger will probably eventually come up with better ones, with the help of Gentle Readers","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-litchrachoor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20706,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20703\/revisions\/20706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}