It's all in my head!

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I'm doing a project for one of my classes on an imaginary library. So I ask this question: Do any of you know any good imaginary books? or resources that I can look for help with this project.

I have the Sandman comic books (Neil Gaiman) where some imaginary books are discussed, and I "have" the Ben Hur edition that is mentioned in The Big Sleep.

Thanks for your time everyone!

~kelly

ps. I'm new (:

― Kelly Spoer (onefingertoomany), Sunday, 29 February 2004 04:22 (twenty-two years ago)

You might want to look at some of Jorge Borges' stories. Also, Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions talks about imaginary films, which might be related.

― Rae Delve, Sunday, 29 February 2004 05:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Imaginary book reviews! Here and here!

Also, there's one in 'A Picture of Dorian Gray' which is pretty cool.

I'm new too!

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Sunday, 29 February 2004 06:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Best imaginary book title ever, from John Brunner's 'Stand on Zanzibar' - 'You're an Ignorant Idiot' by 'Chad C. Mulligan'

― dave q, Sunday, 29 February 2004 17:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Borges has already made your imaginary library for you; seek out the story "The library of Babel",which can be foun in his "Labyrinths" collection. Seemingly, the library includes every single book that's possible to write within certain restrictions on letters and length.

His "The garden of forking paths", found in the same collection, is about a lovely little book as well.

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Sunday, 29 February 2004 17:43 (twenty-two years ago)

check out the literature of HP Lovecraft and his imitators. There are more fictional books in there than you can shake a stick at.

Laurence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet contain numerous references to a book called (I think) "Claudia" by a fictional author called Arnauti, who based the eponymous character on one of the characters in the Alexandria Quartet.

I think the one in "The Picture of Dorian Grey" is meant to be "A Rebours" by Huysman.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Sunday, 29 February 2004 18:40 (twenty-two years ago)

The Brautigan Library came out of one of Richard Brautigan's books. Basically it's a library for authors who can't get their books published. In the original story, the library was based in San Fransisco.

Here's a Link

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Monday, 1 March 2004 13:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Rejected Titles for This or Any Book (By John Love, The Touch Code, 1977)

She Turned Eighteen In My Arms
Satin Cockpits
Soho Romeo
Put It Away Or It's Mine
A Fool Not To
Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Badminton
Mutiny on the Dreamboat
The Permanent Ambush
Mood Piece for a Marine Prom in Guantanamo
Cafe Polio
Muzak for the Junta
Overdrawn at the Sperm Bank
Small Moaning Sounds Coming from the Pile of Mail
Avoidance/Avoidance

And this from Sam Kashner, who just came out with 'When I Was Cool":

Naked Luncheonette

― Donald, Monday, 1 March 2004 16:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Along the lines of Borges, DEFINITELY check out the writer Stanislaw Lem (most famous for writing Solaris, than which he has several better books), who wrote a couple books made up entirely of reviews of nonexistent books: poetry by robots, etc. One of them, I think, is called Imaginary Magnitudes. I can't remember the other one(s), but look on Amazon and you'll find 'em quick. His are startling and hilarious, like Borges with a stronger science background. I'd recommend them anyway, even if you weren't doing a project.

― Phil Christman, Monday, 1 March 2004 17:24 (twenty-two years ago)

"The Man in The High Castle" by Philip K. Dick has a made-up book in it called "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" by Hawthorne Abendsen (which tells the "real" alternate history of the alternate history of the novel. He was a clever dick, that Dick) and there is the untitled Emmanuel Goldstein book in "1984"

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Monday, 1 March 2004 21:33 (twenty-two years ago)

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski cites several fictional texts throughout the "research" section of the book.

― eleni (eleni), Monday, 1 March 2004 22:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Rabelais' Gargantua (or was it Pantagruel?) has a section of several pages where he just lists up titles of books, of which most are made up. The edition I read also had footnotes that explained what some of the booktitles were actually in reference to, while also pointing out the few that were actual real books.
Some of those titles might not be fit for school projects though, heh.

Italo Calvino also wrote a book where half of the chapters are the first chapters of various torsos: "If on a winter's night a traveler" (it's funny how this book seems to constantly come up on this board!)

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Monday, 1 March 2004 23:38 (twenty-two years ago)

LondonLee I was confused by that and ended up decided that the novel Abendesen writes is actually a different history again, more like ours, but not exactly.

All I could think of were all the romance novels the heroine is writing in Lady Oracle.

And the Book of Ultimate Truth by Hugo Rune in the Robert Rankin series.

Oh AS Byatt invented a whole poet and his work for Posession, and a whole biographer and his work for the Biographers' Tale.

In Ellie and the Shadow Man by Maurice Gee a man she lives with is known for writing a book very like Plum, another of Gee's novels. Which is interestingly involved.

Some scary intellectual writes a novel called Spindrift in a PG Wodehouse story. And then there are the poems about Timothy Bobbin in another (a bit derivative, admittedly). And that guy who writes a 'slender volume of verse'

In fact often when a character is a writer they have a fictional book. I nmight stop now.

― isadora (isadora), Wednesday, 3 March 2004 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)

the novel Abendesen writes is actually a different history again, more like ours, but not exactly

That's kinda what I meant by "real" - it's an alternate history in the book but not to us. Damn Sci-Fi writers and their hard-to-explain concepts!

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Wednesday, 3 March 2004 14:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Try this site:
http://www.invisiblelibrary.com/

― Underpants Aweigh!, Thursday, 4 March 2004 05:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Hi new people!

I get the impression that imaginary books are to novelists what imaginary porn films are to sitcom writers, and imaginary action films are to Simpsons writers. They sit around and dream up these great conceits which are not worth a book in themselves, but would look great nestling in a real book. Also, they can sometimes be a laugh, like the ones Garth Marenghi writes.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Thursday, 4 March 2004 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Well there's the Akashic Records, which are apparently the books that record everything in the universe.

And of course, there's the Library of Dreams in the Sandman Graphic Novels. Filled with books unfinished by their authors in real life, or only dreamed of by famous authors.

Lovely concept - an Imaginary Library in an Imaginary World in a series of Graphic Novels about Seven Imaginary Immortals ...

― Margo B99, Thursday, 4 March 2004 15:08 (twenty-two years ago)

I know I'm going to sound like a spoilsport but this thread reminded me of a response I've often had to such "embedded" fiction (ie., a work of art within another). Beyond the purely formal/speculative/impish notions of Borges et al, I've always found that fiction within fiction to be strangely lacking in the compelling department. It just seems to be spinning in a kind of frictionless way(which makes me think that in order to appeal, there's always something about fiction that's got to seem nonfictional).
I admit this is different from the issue of imaginary books referred to in books, but it felt close enough.

― David Joyner (David Joyner), Friday, 5 March 2004 04:24 (twenty-two years ago)

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