Goodreads asked Sarah Shell Teague:

If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?

Sarah Shell Teague Just as I answered the previous question about ideal fictional marriages, it’s one thing to enjoy peeking into a fictional world, but it’s another to want to posit oneself in it and interact. Conflict and resolution in fiction is interesting because it’s distanced from us. We all have enough conflict in our own lives; in fact, reading is frequently an escape from our own conflict. Many of the fictional places I have adored are not ones I’d choose. Hardy? I’d fear for my fate. Buck? I’d crumble under Wang Lung’s tough life (though Olan’s was even tougher!). Steinbeck? I wouldn’t stand between George and Lenny. Runner up would be Scrooge’s London and environs in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I would hide behind Tom Cratchit, nephew Fred, or the Spirits until Scrooge woke up after the third Spirit’s visit. But then what a happy moment: Christmas morning as it should be, with the joy of helping the less fortunate and feasting with family and friends.
The fictional world I would dare to inhabit is not so far removed from me geographically, but very far in every other way: that of Mattie Ross in fellow Arkansan Charles Portis’s True Grit. Having read other books about early Arkansas history, I would love to follow Mattie and Rooster through the brushy woods into the Oklahoma territory. I would savor the physical exertion and satisfaction of horseback riding and campfire coffee in the great, unspoiled outdoors. I would hope that nighttime animal calls and meeting up with Lucky Ned Pepper’s band would enable what little “grit” were in me to grow and develop as it surges in Mattie. I would profit from the perspective of life over a century ago--how it’s different and the same—as we find when we travel to other countries. All this as a shadow, of course; I'd try not to complain.
I guess I’ll have to forage about for my own true grit, careful to appreciate the Ranger LaBeoufs and Sharps Cavalry Carbines that come my way.

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