The Discarded by Colin Hamilton sounds interesting…an imagined librarian pulls imagined books from the discard room at the library. “In an age of decreasing literacy, disposable content, and banned books, what do we preserve and what do we discard?”
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Comments 3
Sounds a bit like If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Calvino.
Speaking of books, this book seems like a book for Kottke readers.
Related: In 2007, curators Levi Stahl and Ed Park started compiling a list of fictional books in their "Invisible Library".
http://invislib.blogspot.com/2008/08/d.html
Not sure if the effort continues, but it's fun to browse the "stacks". The project has even inspired an exhibition of artist-created covers, as well as single pages written by real writers. I imagine if the exhibition were put on today, some number would be AI generated.
https://www.pw.org/content/invisible_library_0
It does start to make you confront the question of where real books end and where imaginary books start. E.g. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a real novel by Douglas Adam, but The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is also a fictional reference that appears in the novel.
[Side note: I appreciate that "The Discarded" cover recalls a desktop reference text.]
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