BookTok is turning favorite books into real-life trips ｜ The Excerpt

For a lot of readers, loving a book doesn't end when they close it. They want to visit the places that inspired it, stand where characters might have stood, and find other people who care about the same fictional world. That's helping fuel a growing literary tourism market, from Harry Potter trips in Scotland to Anne of Green Gables tours on Prince Edward Island. And now BookTok is helping bring those communities offline. USA Today Books reporter Claire Mulroy joined 30 strangers on a Percy Jackson-inspired trip through Cairo, Athens, and Rome. By the end, they completed quests, signed translated book copies, and built the kind of real-life community many readers first found on the page. Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Claire joins me now to to live inside their favorite fictional stories. Claire, it's so great to have you back on The Excerpt. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk about this. Let's start with the trip itself. As I mentioned, you joined a Percy Jackson-inspired tour that went to Cairo, Athens, and Rome. What was it about Percy Jackson that made you interested in taking this kind of trip? So EF Ultimate Break had a lot of different tours that I could choose from, you know, from Fourth Wing to A Court of Thorns and Roses, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson. But for me, Percy Jackson was a book in a series that meant so much to me as a kid. And when I thought about taking these tours, I was thinking about the nostalgia component too, that a lot of readers would want to kind of find the community that they longed to have as kids. And I mean, I remember growing up playing Greek gods and goddesses on the playground at recess and being fairly convinced that I was a demigod myself. And I wanted that experience, you know, of visiting those places that I had read about and seen so far away to me when I was younger. And now the opportunity to get to travel with other fans, with other book lovers, just, you know, too good to pass up. Could you walk us through the trip? What motivated its design? And how closely was it tied to the books? Yeah, so this is EF Ultimate Break's new line of book tours. They invited me on to review the trip and check out what this new line of book connected with tourism would look like in real life. So it adapted existing trips that they had, this one now being more specific to the books themselves. And we visited the sites that were in Rick Riordan's mythology series. You know, he has the Cain Chronicles where he goes into Egyptian mythology. There's Greek mythology in Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus. You have Roman mythology. So at each of those stops, we were getting to learn about the places that kind of became historical hyperfixations for us as a kid. You wrote that this tour represents two trends in the book world, a growing literary tourism market and the desire to connect with like-minded people in real life. Why do you think those two things are coming together right now? I think it has a lot to do with book talk and the way that book talk blew up during the pandemic. Those who were teens during the pandemic, young adults, even adults who were reading during the pandemic, finding these new communities online and now finally getting a chance to connect. I think people are lonely and they're craving community. A lot of people on this trip, you know, had either never traveled outside of the country before or never been on a plane before, never solo traveled before, didn't have these kinds of book communities in their friends and family back home. This was a space for people to connect in ways that they had never connected before over something that really shaped them as young adults and was something that they've loved most of their lives. This trip was led in part by Zoe Mahler, who runs the New York City-based book club and social media platform at NYC Book Hoe. How important are influencers or online book communities in turning a fandom into a travel experience? For this trip specifically, Zoe was helpful in kind of being a liaison between the book and the destination. You know, we had EF Ultimate Break helping us out with actually going to the pyramids and visiting the Acropolis, going to the Roman Forum, but it was nice to have every morning who was sending us in our WhatsApp group chat trivia questions and who was helping out to plan this tour. I think this is something that could happen also without influencers too. I think it was definitely, you know, a nice touch to spread the word about it. I was a little worried going on the trip that it was going to be very dedicated followers who are hungry for attention on there, but most people had never heard of her before or followed her and they found the trip because of a viral video that she posted. So I think definitely the book influencers help with reaching the right audience, but I think that this could be run. As long as you have people who are passionate about the book and passionate about finding these experiences, making these experiences for themselves, jump from the page to real life, you could make a literary tour like this happen. Literary tourism isn't new. People have long visited places tied to Shakespeare, Hemingway, you mentioned Harry Potter. What feels different about this BookTok driven version? BookTok has been particularly helpful in revisiting old favorites, finding new favorites that were published a decade ago, keeping books like Percy Jackson in the zeitgeist. I don't think it ever would have left. You know, we have the new show. This is a fandom that is very, very active, but it's also a fandom that is growing in part because of BookTok. A lot of fandoms are growing. You look at Sarah J Maas' books and Rebecca Yarrow's books, these romanticy books that were published years and years ago, but now are finding a rejuvenated fan experience. I think we're also just, again, craving in-person community, craving ways to get offline and find those people that we so connected with on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube, find them in real life. And it can often be a very disarming way to travel and try new experiences. I definitely felt better traveling with 30 book lovers who were strangers than I would 30 strangers who I maybe didn't know what I had in common with them. I want to circle back to something you touched on earlier. Percy Jackson is especially tied to childhood for a lot of readers. People grew up with these books. They're now coming back to them as adults. How much of this trip was about nostalgia or reliving a childhood sense of wonder? Oh gosh, so much. Entirely. It was wonderful to get to relive that childhood wonder. I have a quote in one of my stories about someone who, one of the travelers said she never thought she would get this kind of experience ever again, let alone to get it as an adult and not a kid. Half of the group got matching Percy Jackson tattoos, which was pretty special to see. I think even the parts of the trip where the book wasn't so connected, where we didn't, we weren't doing quests or, you know, split up into groups based on our godly parents, even those parts, it felt like just so special to get to see a bunch of kids who were really nerdy about mythology growing up, getting to see in real life these ancient ruins that inspired this mythology, that inspired the author to create these books. Can I ask which half of the tattoo group you were in? I can guess and say that you did not get the tattoo. I am a tattooed person. I did not get this tattoo, but I had so much fun watching them all get it, and we have a group chat that's very active now, and people are still going to get the tattoo at their tattoo artists now that they're home. So we had a strong coalition in Rome that got tattooed, and it was actually really nice. It was designed by one of the attendees on our trip, so that was, that made it even more special. Claire, these trips aren't cheap. You reported the base cost was about $3,500 with flights, excursions, meals, souvenirs, and tips, tattoos, adding even more. Beyond the itinerary, what are readers paying for? I think they're paying for the experience of not having to plan anything else on that trip. I mean, it was, I am a planner when I travel. I am a person with an itinerary, you know, a color-coded Google Doc, but it was nice to turn my brain off on this trip and not have to worry about how we were going to get into the Vatican and getting to skip the lines because we were with a tour group. Also, the experience of traveling with locals is something that really added to the experience. I found myself, you know, remarking when I was visiting the pyramids or, you know, when I was doing a walking tour, a food tour in Athens, that I don't know if I would have gotten this much of an experience out of it. Getting the history, the history that I wouldn't have known just walking the streets myself. So it was nice to get to have an experience that was very local-led and also just getting to focus on enjoying less than the logistics. Stick with that for just a moment. The tour included real history and mythology, then also quests, cabins based on godly parents and skits. How did the trip balance the educational side of travel with the more playful band-centered parts? At the beginning of the trip, it was definitely a lot more educational. When we were in Egypt, it was go, go, go from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. or later every single day. I definitely was slightly disappointed at parts of this leg of the trip, that it wasn't more tied into the Cain Chronicles, that we didn't talk about the book as much. We had Zoe there who was keeping us focused with the trivia questions and a couple of lunchtime conversations. But when we got to Greece, the references really kicked up and our tour guide split us into these groups. We had a claiming ceremony and got into our cabins and every day we would have a quest, sometimes multiple quests, having to run around the Acropolis and take pictures trying to find proof of the gods. I appreciated that through line, especially as we traveled to Rome too. Culminating in the last night, we did a sudden death trivia, we did mythology skits. It was a really fun way to bond with people and to be split up into groups randomly and get to know some people that I maybe hadn't talked to as much on the trip. It felt like as close as we'll ever get to living out the pages of Percy Jackson, the journeys that he went on with his friends at Camp Half-Blood and beyond. It sounds incredible, but for readers who are intrigued by literary tourism, don't necessarily want to spend thousands of dollars on an international trip, what are some lower-lipped ways to build a trip or experience around a favorite book? It's a heavy price to pay for some. Literary tourism does not have to be going halfway across the world to the site of your favorite book. Your favorite book could be in your backyard, it could be down the street, it could be a state away. I think there are always opportunities to connect with readers in person, to connect with your favorite book off the page. One of my favorite ways to do this is small-scale retreats with friends. You could rent a cabin, go to a hotel, an Airbnb, a place that is meaningful to you or maybe even doesn't have to do with the book and you're just there with book lovers reading together and talking about the book, having a mini book club retreat of your own. You could do this in a park near you, you could do it in your house or your apartment. I've had book club meetings with friends where we just decide to sit there and talk about our books and we almost feel transported in a way just being with each other talking about reading. You could do this by dressing up as your favorite character and going out and or developing a fun costume or a look that is inspired by your favorite character. You could do this by cooking food that's inspired by your favorite book or you could visit some of these places on your own. It's helpful to do it with a community with at least another person who sees the meaning in this book and sees how special it is and how it influenced you as a person. It just adds so much to the experience. Claire Mulroy is USA Today's Books reporter. This was lovely. Thank you so much Claire for coming back on the excerpt. Thanks for having me. Thanks for watching. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll see you next time.