Salon.com > Readers and Reading http://www.salon.com Wed, 22 May 2013 00:22:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Most contemporary literary fiction is terrible” http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/most_contemporary_literary_fiction_is_terrible/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/most_contemporary_literary_fiction_is_terrible/#comments Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:36:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13255673 In a recent piece on the Review Review, Dan Chaon writes about the need for young writers of literary fiction to emulate their counterparts in music, and develop an obsessive interest in the products of the culture they hope to join. He bemoans his students' unfamiliarity with the litmags they hope to be published in, and encourages them to explore the literary world. He recommends the annual best-of short-fiction anthologies, and name-checks a few good magazines. “Young writers,” he says in conclusion, “if you want to be rock stars, you have to read.”

On the face of it, this thesis seems impossible to refute. But I'm going to try.

It does go without saying that fiction writers ought to be reading, and most of us do, naturally. But I feel as though the particular course of action that Chaon is suggesting — immersing oneself in the world of contemporary literary fiction — is, potentially, a recipe for hackneyed, insular, boring writing.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/most_contemporary_literary_fiction_is_terrible/feed/ 129 Sneaky author tricks http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/sneaky_author_tricks/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/sneaky_author_tricks/#comments Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254681 "No. And no again. Not that." So says Serena Frome, the narrator of Ian McEwan's 2012 novel, "Sweet Tooth." What she's protesting is a story written by her lover, Tom, in which an author at work on her second novel is scrutinized by a worried companion, a talking ape. "Only on the last page," Serena explains, "did I discover that the story I was reading was actually the one the woman was writing. The ape doesn’t exist, it’s a specter, the creature of her fretful imagination."

Serena, who has been earlier established as a certain type of hungry but unintellectual reader, dismisses this device as a "trick" to be "distrusted." "There was, in my view," she observes, "an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honor. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on authorial whim."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/sneaky_author_tricks/feed/ 14 Back to the Round Table http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/back_to_the_round_table/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/back_to_the_round_table/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13221170 There was a time when rereading seemed a nearly unimaginable luxury to me; with one book review to write per week, plus miscellaneous new books that need to be checked out on top of that, I just didn't have the time, or the eye-power. I'd long yearned to revisit what I remember as one of the most beautiful books I read in my youth, T.H. White's "The Once and Future King." Originally published as four separate novels (the first, "The Sword in the Stone," was animated by Disney) with a later add-on title, "The Book of Merlin," this is an unusual epic, the story of King Arthur and his Round Table -- material that resonates through Western culture -- yet in White's hands the story is also intimate and even humble.

How sad to think I might never get the chance to revisit it! (The list of older books I plan to read once I "retire" is probably longer than the list of books I've already read.) Then I came across the audiobook, an option made irresistible by the fact that it is narrated by Neville Jason, whose sensitive rendering of Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" has helped me get past the famous second-book hump in that series of novels. The ideal place to revisit White's masterpiece: Lying in bed in the dark at night, with my iPhone set to turn itself off in a half hour. Soon, however, I found myself squeezing in bits of listening as I waited for the bus or baked a friend's birthday cake.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/back_to_the_round_table/feed/ 2 Sorry, the short story boom is bogus http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/sorry_the_short_story_boom_is_bogus/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/sorry_the_short_story_boom_is_bogus/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13206082 The short story, like the western, is periodically said to be on the brink of a comeback. The most recent example of this boosterism: an article by the New York Times' new(ish) publishing reporter, Leslie Kaufman, titled "Good Fit for Today’s Little Screens: Short Stories," in which "a proliferation of digital options" is said to offer short fiction "not only new creative opportunities but exposure and revenue as well."

This would be good news — if there were any reason at all to think it was true. Kaufman's only evidence for this imaginary renaissance is the success of George Saunders' story collection, "The Tenth of December," published earlier this year and currently hovering in the middle ranks of several prominent best-seller lists. Saunders' longtime fans (I count myself among them) have reason to celebrate this, but it really has nothing to do with "digital options." Saunders has built a devoted following over the past 17 years, hadn't published a book in a good while and -- most important of all -- was heralded in the headline of a long, radiant profile in the New York Times Magazine as producing "the best book you'll read this year." All of that could have happened 10, 20 or 30 years ago and produced the same result.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/sorry_the_short_story_boom_is_bogus/feed/ 31 PJ O’Rourke: We live in an age of “1984″-lite http://www.salon.com/2012/10/22/pj_o%e2%80%99rourke_we_live_in_an_age_of_1984_lite/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/22/pj_o%e2%80%99rourke_we_live_in_an_age_of_1984_lite/#comments Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13046222 Let’s hear the top five. Gulliver’s Travels.

Well, in the first place it is very funny. We read it first as kids as an adventure story, without understanding the political context in Europe or the philosophical context. Then when we read it again as adults we realise that Swift is having a good deal of fun here. Just the religious allegory with the Big-enders and the Little-enders and the idea of people who live for ever. And don’t they just turn out to be the kind of people who live for ever today? They show every sign of Alzheimer’s.

The Browser

When did you first read it?

I was about 14, I think. It was a little bit of a slog, but such a good story that I pushed forward with it. Swift’s take on human nature is evergreen. Whether people would use horses any more [as the perfection of nature], I don’t know. I don’t suppose we’re as familiar with them as Swift was; we’d use dogs or cats. No, not cats. There’s something a little wicked about cats.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/22/pj_o%e2%80%99rourke_we_live_in_an_age_of_1984_lite/feed/ 10 So many books, so little time http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/so_many_books_so_little_time/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/so_many_books_so_little_time/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2012 18:33:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13022084 At some point, most avid readers experience a sobering realization: There's a limited number of books you can get to in the time you have left. For Will Schwalbe's mother, Mary Anne, a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer made this arithmetic even more stark. At 73, after a lifetime spent as a teacher, college-admissions administrator, refugee advocate, wife, mother and passionate reader, she learned that she had somewhere between two months and two years to live. As it turned out, she made it to the longer end of the spectrum, but — when not raising money to found a library in Afghanistan — she spent much of the time sitting in doctors' offices and waiting rooms, and receiving chemotherapy.

Will, a book editor and author, was one of the relatives and friends who accompanied Mary Anne during these sessions. Often, the conversation between mother and son would turn to what each one was reading. To make these discussions more interesting, they decided to read the same books, beginning with Wallace Stegner's "Crossing to Safety," a novel that let them address, obliquely, Will's worries about how his father would get by once his mother was gone. Will and Mary Anne's two-person experiment in communal reading is the focal point of Will's memoir, "The End of Your Life Book Club," a tribute to a remarkable woman and an exemplary reader. I met with Schwalbe recently to talk about it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/so_many_books_so_little_time/feed/ 4 Your brain loves Jane Austen http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/your_brain_loves_jane_austen/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/your_brain_loves_jane_austen/#comments Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:05:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13015011 Few freshly minted English professors expect to end up learning how to position people in an fMRI scanner -- that noisy, white, coffin-like medical instrument used to measure blood flow to the brain. Yet that's just what has happened to Natalie Phillips, an assistant professor in the English department at Michigan State University, who is working on a study that originated at the Stanford Humanities Center. The project measured subjects' brain activity as they read chapters from the Jane Austen novel "Mansfield Park," asking that they switch between the relaxed mode of pleasure reading and the more analytic practice known as close reading.

Preliminary results have shown significant differences between the two types of reading, which may not surprise any undergraduate who slacked off on his Milton thesis by reading a James Bond novel. Nevertheless, neuroscientists who have studied such things in the past have rarely distinguished between types of reading or observed subjects engaged in the protracted reading of complex texts. The pioneering research that Phillips and her colleagues at Stanford and Michigan State are doing will provide us with unprecedented information about how our brains accomplish the mysterious and remarkable act of reading a novel. It's early days yet, but I telephoned her recently to find out more.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/your_brain_loves_jane_austen/feed/ 7 Can babies read? http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/can_babies_read/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/can_babies_read/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:08:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13009032 Pacific Standard The video clip on Larry Sanger’s website shows the cofounder of Wikipedia looking both scholarly and paternal with his owlish glasses, thinning pate, open book, and lapful of chubby-cheeked 3-year-old. Sanger’s son is gazing hard at the book pages and pronouncing words with the charming r-lessness of a toddler: “Congwess shall make no waw wespecting an establishment of wewigion or pwohibiting the fwee exewcise theweof or abwidging the fweedom of speech or of the pwess…” It’s not clear whether the boy is working toward a doctorate, like his dad's, or training to be our future pwesident. But it is stunningly obvious that the boy is sight-reading the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at an age when most tots can’t tell an a from a b. When an influential philanthropist viewed the video, says Sanger, “he was gobsmacked.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/can_babies_read/feed/ 8 Who’s to blame for NPR’s super-white book list? http://www.salon.com/2012/09/10/whos_to_blame_for_nprs_super_white_book_list/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/10/whos_to_blame_for_nprs_super_white_book_list/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2012 21:13:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13007054 NPR just wanted to ask its audience about their favorite young adult fiction. But this seemingly harmless gesture stirred up all sorts of controversy. Out of 100 books on the list, only three have non-white protagonists. Now people are angry, or at least politely clearing their throats.

Here's the question: Who is to blame?

Theory 1: The panel of experts is to blame
The panel of experts are suspiciously all white. NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote that “Much of the criticism was directed at the white panel of experts," but he added, "the censure is misplaced.”  Panel member Pamela Paul, features editor and children's book editor at the New York Times Book Review, confirms Schumacher-Matos’ claim via email, writing:

Our role on the expert panel was simply to advise on how to make sure the readers' nominations fit the definition of "YA novel." Many of the readers' nominations were actually adult or middle-grade books, and we helped them weed out those titles. But I didn't make any judgment with regard to quality in determining the final list, which were all reader-generated.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/10/whos_to_blame_for_nprs_super_white_book_list/feed/ 41 The case for positive book reviews http://www.salon.com/2012/08/17/the_case_for_positive_book_reviews/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/17/the_case_for_positive_book_reviews/#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12984470 Did you know that today's literary criticism is submerged in a flood of niceness? Me neither. Yet that is the opinion of Jacob Silverman, a contributor to Slate, who complained of it earlier this month, and of my former Salon colleague Dwight Garner, who seconds Silverman's emotion in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Silverman claims that "cloying niceness and blind enthusiasm are the dominant sentiments" in book reviews and blames this namby-pamby development on Twitter and Tumblr. Garner maintains that we are "drowning" in "yes-saying critics." Silverman calls for more "blistering critiques" to "make our culture more interesting," and Garner worries that eschewing harsh reviews will lead to a "zombie culture."

The idea that book reviewers have gone soft is a very popular one, and as Jane Hu recently and amusingly demonstrated in a history of the decline of book reviews for the Awl, it's been popular for a long time. The deplorable state of literary criticism is something somebody complains about every decade or so; most notably, Elizabeth Hardwick fulminated on the subject in Harper's magazine back in 1959 (which suggests we can let Twitter off the hook). The too-nice argument alternates, roughly, with the slightly less prevalent "too-nasty" essay, in which someone asserts that reviewers have become gratuitously vicious. (Presumably, the readers who find book reviews to be "just right" curl up, Goldilocks-style, for a nap.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/08/17/the_case_for_positive_book_reviews/feed/ 27 Click here or we’ll burn this book http://www.salon.com/2012/06/28/click_here_or_well_burn_this_book/ http://www.salon.com/2012/06/28/click_here_or_well_burn_this_book/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12946107 In order to save the books, they had to threaten to burn them. At least, that's the story told by Leo Burnett Worldwide, a Michigan advertising company that just won nine awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The kudos were for a P.R. campaign on behalf of the Troy, Mich., public library. A ballot measure was up before the Troy electorate last summer, seeking a local property tax increase to cover the operating costs of the library. Without the funds, the city council maintained, the library would have to be closed.

Leo Burnett Worldwide stepped into the debate as a ringer, pretending to be a Tea Partyish outfit called Safeguarding American Families (SAFE) that planned a bonfire of library books should it succeed in getting the ballot measure defeated. They created a Facebook page and went around town putting up yard signs advertising a "Book Burning Party" to be held after the election. The response from the public was almost equal parts puzzlement and ire, but when the moment of truth came, voters turned out in droves and the measure passed.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/06/28/click_here_or_well_burn_this_book/feed/ 11 Can you identify? http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/can_you_identify/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/can_you_identify/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12921315 The news of recent research documenting how readers identify with the main characters in stories has mostly been taken as confirmation of the value of literary role models. Lisa Libby, an assistant professor at Ohio State University and co-author of a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, explained that subjects who read a short story in which the protagonist overcomes obstacles in order to vote were more likely to vote themselves several days later.

The suggestibility of readers isn't news. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel of a sensitive young man destroyed by unrequited love, "The Sorrows of Young Werther," inspired a rash of suicides by would-be Werthers in the late 1700s. Jack Kerouac has launched a thousand road trips. Still, this is part of science's job: Running empirical tests on common knowledge -- if for no other reason than because common knowledge (and common sense) is often wrong.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/can_you_identify/feed/ 43 Reading, revolutionized http://www.salon.com/2012/04/16/reading_revolutionized/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/16/reading_revolutionized/#comments Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12852691 Imprint"Between Page and Screen," a groundbreaking collaboration between poet and book artist Amaranth Borsuk and programmer Brad Bouse, is truly a first: a book that only can be read when simultaneously using a codex book and a computer’s webcam. When placed in front of a webcam, the black shapes printed on the pages, sans words, trigger animated text on the screen, revealing a correspondence between characters P and S.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="370" caption="via Between Page and Screen"][/caption]

As e-readers continue to gain market share within the publishing industry and the “future of the book” remains a much bandied about phrase among publishers, writers, agents, booksellers and readers, "Between Page and Screen" has embraced the what-ifs and used them to achieve their true potential, an astoundingly realized book that shuns either/or designations. It champions both the book’s esteemed history by valuing ink printed on the page and also celebrates the potential of digital technologies that are resulting in all of us, no matter our preferences, having to change how we read.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/16/reading_revolutionized/feed/ 2 Stories don’t need morals or messages http://www.salon.com/2012/01/31/stories_dont_need_morals_or_messages/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/31/stories_dont_need_morals_or_messages/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12248041 What is the purpose of reading stories, especially made-up stories? That's the question lurking behind a recent posting to the New York Times' education blog, SchoolBook. Ann Stone and Jeff Nichols, the parents of twins, wrote about taking their kids' third-grade English Language Arts test with some friends as a party game on New Year's Eve. The group read an inane little story about tiger cubs learning to tear bark off logs, but, to their surprise, couldn't agree on a single answer to the multiple choice question that followed: "What is this story mostly about?"

Tests like this, the couple asserts, do students "a double disservice: first, by inflicting on them such mediocre literature, and second, by training them to read not for pleasure but to discover a predetermined answer to a (let’s not mince words) stupid question." The problem, they feel, stems from the standardized testing regime, which forces the learning experience into a too-rigid structure. Even a "banal" story like this tiger-cub number admits "multiple interpretations," and the prod to "reduce the work to a single idea" does a disservice to both reader and text.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/31/stories_dont_need_morals_or_messages/feed/ 73 Reader responses: Books you want banned http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/books_you_want_banned/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/books_you_want_banned/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:59:00 +0000 Earlier this week, Laura Miller and other Salon writers weighed in on books they'd like to see banned from school reading lists -- from "Lord of the Flies" ("Is it pure sadism [that makes teachers assign that book]?" asked Andrew O'Hehir) to "Ivanhoe," which went a fair way toward dulling Life editor Sarah Hepola's enthusiasm for high school English.

Laura also asked readers to weigh in on their least favorite books from their school days, and you were quick to volunteer (there are nearly 200 comments on the article so far).

So, which books won't we be finding on your grown-up bookshelves, with 8th-grade annotations and yellowed endpapers lovingly preserved?

Well, for one thing, some of you really, really don't like "Ethan Frome." In your eyes, it's not just "tedious." It's also "bleak," "depressing" and "insufferable" enough to "[crush] your soul." And if anything, "Silas Marner" is even more unpopular; one commenter quipped that it ought to be "hurled into the Mariana Trench."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/books_you_want_banned/feed/ 54 What did you really read this summer? http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/summer_reading_slideshow/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/summer_reading_slideshow/#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2011 19:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2011/08/27/summer_reading_slideshow For readers, summer often starts with grand ambition. This will be the year we really tackle Roberto Bolaño or David Foster Wallace; it will be the summer of nothing but lemonade and Alice Munro. Or perhaps we'll educate ourselves by delving deep into accounts of the financial crisis or the war on terror. Then the days turn lazy and even the most sincere intentions wilt in the heat.

With September looming, we thought it would be a good time to check in with some of our favorite authors -- and some of the writers you're likely to be reading this fall -- to see what they really read this summer. Click through the following slide show to see what they had to say.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/summer_reading_slideshow/feed/ 22 Can a computer ever give good book recommendations? http://www.salon.com/2011/08/24/booklamp/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/24/booklamp/#comments Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/08/24/booklamp Recommending books is an art, replete with mysteries and moments of inexplicable grace. When I wrote about the topic last year, John Warner -- sometime "Biblioracle" at the website the Morning News -- reminisced happily about the time he "went out on a limb and recommended 'Gravity's Rainbow,' and the person said it 'changed my life.'"

The occasional triumph (and perhaps only a fellow recommender will appreciate just how sweet such instances can be) are inevitably balanced out by mortifying failures. Though it was over a decade ago, I'll never forget the time a friend chewed me out for suggesting she read Louise Erdrich's "The Beet Queen." It seemed the perfect choice after I'd ruminated on all the other novels she said she'd liked, but she complained that Erdrich's women characters were all "victims" who refused to do anything to improve their lot.

Can a task this ineffable be automated? Many seem to think so. For years, Amazon and other e-booksellers have offered their customers suggestions based on the purchases of other customers who bought the same books. But you don't necessarily read every book you buy from an online retailer (some are gifts) and you probably don't like every book you read, either. For that matter, the books you like best you may have bought elsewhere, or borrowed from a friend.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/24/booklamp/feed/ 29 Books you can dance to http://www.salon.com/2011/08/19/books_you_can_dance_to/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/19/books_you_can_dance_to/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2011/08/19/books_you_can_dance_to For a music-infused movie, the soundtrack to "One Day" is tasteful but limited -- '90s trip-hop, late-era Tears for Fears, college-radio one-hit wonders, a new Elvis Costello song. It's easy enough to imagine Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) two 1988 graduates of the University of Edinburgh with a Del Amitri or James poster on their dorm-room wall.

Actually, it might be too easy. A much better sense of Emma's sensibility -- cool Britannia like Prefab Sprout, Cocteau Twins, Billy Bragg and Everything But the Girl alongside English major mainstays Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell and Joan Armatrading -- appears on author and screenwriter David Nicholls' website. Nicholls has imagined the two mix tapes Emma gives Dexter (one from 1989, the other from 2000) and created Spotify and iTunes playlists where they can be streamed or purchased.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/19/books_you_can_dance_to/feed/ 9 Reading retreats: Paradise for book lovers http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/reading_retreats/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/reading_retreats/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/07/11/reading_retreats I'll be absent from these pages for the next four weeks while I hole up in a cabin far from both the Internet and reliable cell phone reception. Whenever I tell people about my plans, they ask me which books I'll be taking with me.

Too many books would make this something of a busman's holiday for a reviewer, but I've packed a big stack all the same. Vacations, with their seclusion, quiet and idleness, invite long bouts of reading. Or, rather, they do when they don't involve visiting a big city, staying with chatty relatives or herding kids. All too often, the books treasured up for the summer are still unread on Labor Day.

So why not plan a vacation devoted exclusively to reading? Twice annually, Bill Gates schedules a week-long "reading retreat" during which he does nothing but pore over the books and papers he's set aside during the year. He's not alone: The idea seems particularly popular in the UK, where you can sign up at London's School of Life to receive a customized book list (they have "bibliotherapists" on staff to compile one based on a telephone consultation) and lodging in one of several modern country houses. The website promises "the perfect combination of great books and great architecture."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/reading_retreats/feed/ 8 The greatest books that never were http://www.salon.com/2011/07/05/invisible_library/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/05/invisible_library/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:56:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/07/05/invisible_library Imaginary books seem to be nearly as numerous as the real ones, and that's even when you don't count all those bestselling thrillers people believe they'll write someday if only they can find the time to write the damn thing down. Nonexistent books certainly have some devoted fans, such as the proprietor of the ever-diverting Beachcomber's Bizarre History Blog, who is making bold moves to expand the collection known as the Invisible Library.

"The Invisible Library" has, for at least a decade or so, referred to those books that exist only within works of fiction. A man named Brian Quinette founded a website by that name in the late 1990s, presenting it as a catalog of "imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished and unfound."

The original Invisible Library disappeared from the Web in the mid-2000s (though you can still find snapshots of it in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine), and since then other pseudobibliophiles have opened their own "branches," although these too have a tendency to end up abandoned. The novelists Ed Park and Levi Stahl created a catalog of imaginary titles that inspired an interactive exhibition at a London art gallery, but they have only occasionally updated it since 2008. Loss of interest is, perhaps, inevitable, since when you maintain such a list, tiresome people are constantly proclaiming their disappointed astonishment that their particular obscure favorite isn't listed.

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