fajrdrako | The Invisible Library

One of the notions I most love is that of the magical library - though "magical" is only an approximate word for it. These are improbably libraries, sometimes impossible libraries, libraries that appear in fiction, which don't exist and never could exist, but are delightful in themselves. There's such a library in the beginning of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. There's the wonderful labyrinth-library in The Name of the Rose, which was my favourite thing about that book and practically the only thing I remember. There is the wonderful library of books that were never written, owned by Morpheus in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics. There is the library of Ankh-Morpork, with its orangutan librarian, in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I suppose the library in Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books is a library of this type, though it's much more ordinary in its plain magicalness - though I suppose it warrants inclusion because it is inhabited by ghosts. I love finding libraries of this type.

Anyway, I've discovered a variation on this theme - one that actually makes mention of at least some of the above. This is The Invisible Library, a virtual listing of fictional books mentioned in fictional works.

How nice to know such a bibliography exists. It's a sort of a meta-extension of my libraries mentioned above. What a wonderful thing.