Reading Maps plots fictional journeys on the map. Creator Aires Loutsaris explains:

Reading Maps came out of a nagging thought that every story has happened somewhere. Odysseus crossed a real sea. The Pequod sailed real water. Phileas Fogg’s eighty days ran on real railways and real steamer lines and that you could follow him in a way. However when you read a book, all that geography stays locked in your head. Once you close the cover and it goes with it.

So I started plotting them properly. Real coastlines, real ports, one journey at a time.

There are hundreds on the map now, books and films both. You can pick one up and follow it stop by stop. Where the ship left from, where it was becalmed, what happened at each landfall, etc. Some are roughly what you’d expect. Others surprised me. I didn’t know until I plotted it that Blood Meridian opens with a boy drifting down the Mississippi or that Alexander’s whole march east fits into a shape you can take in at one quick glance.

It’s just me and Fabio Moreira, the amazing developer that makes everything work. We built it because I wanted it to exist and nobody else had.

[Kottke]