Talk:List of fictional books/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

This talk page previously redirected to Talk:Fictional book. Discussion took place over there. Please remove this notice if someone copies the discussion back here.Colin°Talk 08:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

Copying most of Talk:Fictional book to this page

I'm about to paste in virtually the entire talk page from the parent article, simply because nearly all of it was about the list article. Feel free to delete irrelevant sections, if any, from each Talk page.Karen | Talk | contribs 09:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Copied text and notices begin here:

Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on October 15, 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Dean Koontz and Stephen King

So many of Dean Koontz's and Stephen King's characters are writers, many fictional books are mentioned in their works. None of them are listed here though, nor is The Book of Counted Sorrows, the fictitious book Koontz quotes from regularly.

If you know of some good entries, you should add them. --maru (talk) Contribs 05:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Of all the works cited here, especially those of Stephen King, wouldn't it make sense to also cite the works that they are from? For instance, Thad Beaumont's and George Stark's books are from The Dark Half (George Stark is also mentioned in Bag of Bones). Michael Noonan is from Bag of Bones and so forth. Does that violate the format of this list? LACameraman 10:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Not listy enough

This article doesn't look like an actual list to me. Info on the books should appear in the article for them (or their fictional source) and this article should become an actual list instead. --LGagnon

I'm one of the guilty parties, but I agree that making this an actual list would be most appropriate. --cobra libre

Suggestion: add Sandman books

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman has a lot of these, in the Sandman's library. Those are books never written, only dreamt, by real authors, and contains many fantastic entries. I'm too busy to work up a list from that source right now, but if there are any Sandman fans reading this... --Mortene 15:36, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A good idea, but I dunno- does anyone think this list should be exclusively important fictional books? Just get a quick poll here. --maru 21:37, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
How would we determine "important" ? On the other hand, we might be able to rate the books in some manner, by (1) critical to the surrounding story (2) incidental to the surrounding story (3) totally irrelevant to the surrounding story. So The Hitchhiker's Guide, or some of Borges', would be ranked 1 since the entire story is sort of built around them, while Agatha Christie's Ariadne Oliver books would be ranked 3 since it's important she's an author but the actual books aren't important per se... --Bookgrrl holler/looksee 15:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it's worth at least mentioning them. Something like
  • Unwritten books in the library of The Dreaming, from P.G. Wodehouse's Psmith and Jeeves to numerous books with titles like The Bestselling Romantic Spy Thriller I Used To Think About On The Bus That Would Sell A Billion Copies And Mean I'd Never Have to Work Again.
If you look under List_of_fictional_books#DC_Comics you will see that the Sandman books are there, including the Library of Dream ones. --Bookgrrl holler/looksee 15:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
On the subject of comics, I notice that the list has an entry for Other- Comic Books, which contains one book from a comic, and two comics from TV. I think the former is right (and this is where the Sandman entry would go also, and the latter should be under list of fictional media#comic book. --Daibhid C 13:46 27 Aug 2005 (UTC)

While we're talking comics, what about the fictional comics in Kavalier & Clay? Does The Escapist not count because Chabon actually started writing it after he published the book? Does Luna Moth still count? --Holli, Jan 16 2006

Monty Python's bookshop sketch

On the Monty Pyton album "Contractual Obligation Album" there is a sketch featuring John Cleese and Marty Felman in which Feldman enters a bookshop and makles a series of increasingly ridiculous requests of Cleese, from "David Copperfield by Charles Dikkens with two K's, the well-known Dutch author" to "The Amazing Adventure of Captain Gladys Stout-Pamphlet and Her Interpid Spaniel Stig Among the Giant Pygmies of Beccles". A list of these would provide a much-needed opportunity to link to the article about the gannet. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.52.193.8 (talk • contribs) .

This was done but not here -- it's in List_of_fictional_books_from_non-book_media#From_Monty_Python. --Bookgrrl holler/looksee 15:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Books in manga

Where could I add a fictional book from an anime and manga? The A City With No People book is a main part of both the Chobits tv series and the manga. Would I put it in the tv shows section? Or would a new section be better? I could probably find a few more fictional books in manga if that would help making a new section? Tartan 22:26, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd say add them under comics and graphic novels. --Bookgrrl holler/looksee 15:25, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

A Perfect Vacuum

I don't have a copy available, should the books referenced in Stanislaw Lem's "A Perfect Vacuum" be on this list? APV is a collection of reviews for books that don't actually exist. 208.65.151.4 17:39, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely, sounds perfect :) -Quiddity 20:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Added "A Perfect Vacuum", "Imaginary Magnitude", and "One Human Minute" directly under Borges since Lem's fictional works are of similar nature and seem to be influenced directly by Borges. When I get home I will comb through the three books for each fictional work mentioned and add them to the List page. - princemuchao
Added all of the title stories from all three books to the list page. I am sure that many of the other books mentioned throughout are fictional, but since I cannot tell for sure without researching every one I am going to stop there.--Princemuchao 01:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Level 4 subheadings

Would anybody mind if I changed the Level 4 subheadings in the List of fictional books to just bold text? They'll look the same in the body of the article but won't be in the TOC. The TOC is getting awfully long and unwieldy... I'll give it a few days to see if anyone objects and if not I'll go ahead. --Bookgrrl 16:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC) (Why does the talk page for list of fictional books redirect me to the talk page for fictional book?? Is this some weird List-y thing??? It's very confusing...)

Bold sounds good. Go right ahead :)
I'll stick a note at top mentioning the redirect. It's presummably so that more eyeballs (maintainers of both pages) get to see comments? --Quiddity 18:03, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Done! Also made the existing subheadings consistent in wording. Planning to add books invented by Susanna Clarke in the next couple of days :) --Bookgrrl 00:47, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Douglas Adams section

Someone made redlinks of nearly all of the Douglas Adams titles. I've removed the bulk of them, because most of the fake titles are throwaway gags, and don't really merit entries. Others could conceivably get them, because there's enough material in what Adams wrote to sustain an essay. That's pretty much a judgement call, though. Feel free to remove more redlinks, or put some back in (especially if you're planning to write the article), but they probably should not all be linked as potential articles. Karen | Talk | contribs 16:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Cloud Atlas

Each section (accept the one starting last) features as the text of a book (or set of letters or recording) in the next. Hence the text of the books is real but the physical books are fictional. Would this go here? A Geek Tragedy 09:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd say they qualify. Tolkien's books are fictional but he actually wrote some of them. --Bookgrrl 16:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Prod on List of fictional books

I must say I strongly disagree with this prod and threatened deletion. The list is well organized with headings and subheadings, and is a handy place to look up titles of these nonexistent works, and compare the modest tally invented by some authors with the extensive lists invented by others. Many are joke titles, so reading down the list (particularly the sections of Douglas Adams and other humorous writers) is entertaining as well as instructive for seeing what has been done with this convention. Furthermore, the use of fictional books helps to define the nature of the world of the real work in which is appears - absurd, regimented, religious, philosophical, or whatever. The purposes of fictional books as narrative devices are largely covered in the parent article. While I do think the parent article probably should be cleaned up a bit to focus more on the device and less on specific authors, the list article seems pretty solid to me, and should not be deleted. I'm not comfortable removing an admin's prod, though, so I thought I'd start a discussion here. Karen | Talk | contribs 07:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Mavarin.
Plus anyone who makes their way to a "list of fictional books" in the first place, is looking for some kind of overwhelmingly 'bibliophilic' experience... :) --Quiddity 08:27, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Bibliomaniacs unite -- you have nothing to lose but your shelf space!! --Bookgrrl 03:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

How best to add titles neither miscellaneous nor multiple?

So far, I have added one title by one author in miscellaneous, and several titles by one author in an individual section. How best to format titles with only two or three by author, more than fits in miscellaneous but perhaps not enough to justify a separate individual section? What does justify an individual section?Ljhliesl 14:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I put L'Engle's two titles in miscellaneous. There probably isn't a perfect answer, but I would think at least four or five would be the minimum for a section. Fortunately, most writers who use this more than once or twice seem to generate a lot of them! Karen | Talk | contribs 17:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Split off non-novel media?

A way to slow the growth of this page is to split other media's fictional books onto their own page. Perhaps graphic novels' titles should stay with nongraphic novels' titles, but I think at least television and film's titles could be split onto their own page. Ljhliesl 14:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a really good idea. Karen | Talk | contribs 17:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Bravo Ljhliesl for taking the initiative on this -- looks great :) --Bookgrrl 02:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Featured list

Think we could get this up to Featured list status? Criteria are here. I think we've got criteria 1 well covered and most of 2; we'd need to address 2a, the introdiction, and maybe get a few images. Anyone interested in helping with this? --Bookgrrl 02:57, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I took a shot at writing the intro paragraph. Thoughts? I'm also trying to think of ways to improve the TOC and/or reduce the length of the article. What do we think about using 2 columns for some of the longer sublists? See List of cults for how it could be done. --Bookgrrl 03:55, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Cool idea. I'm thinking what it would take to have an image of a fictional book. The non-book media article shouldn't be too difficult, because one can get a screen capture of a prop book or a comic book panel. (I personally have a repro copy of Gray's Sports Almanac - with blank pages, of course.)) But for the main Fictional Book list article one would need either an illustration of the fictional book (which in most cases would mean it's from a children's book) or a screen capture from a movie based on the book (e.g. Mr. Tumnus's library in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). There's probably at least one fictional book illustration to be found in the books of John Bellairs, and someone's sure to have drawn the Red Book of Westmarch at some point. But I can see a lot of potential wrangling over fair use unless we're very careful. Karen | Talk | contribs 04:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I like your ideas for images, those sound very promising. Yes, we'll have to be careful about fair use but I think we could find/make at least a few. I can do a digital photo of a footnote in Susanna Clarke's book, for one :) --Bookgrrl 14:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Copied material ends here.

Gene Wolfe

Removed a bunch of what appear to be really fictional books (in the sense that somebody made 'em up) from the Gene Wolfe section. If you have citations for these, let me know and I'll put them back, but I couldn't find any proof that Wolfe wrote any of the ones I removed. --Bookgrrl 02:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Fictional books whose titles are the same as those of the books they're in

The Times Literary Supplement's NB column has recently been compiling a list of fictional books that meet the above description. The last time I looked it the "Complete Metafictional Catalogue", as they call it, was as follows:

To which could be added the Hitchhiker's Guide and a lot of Borges's oeuvre. Might it be a good idea to have a seperate section of the list for these kinds of books?

Also, can untitled fictional books be included in this list? I'm thinking in particular of the master's Pontius Pilate novel in The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. [talk to the] HAM 20:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd vote for not including untitled works, because how would you list it? "Untitled book by Master" ? Also, then we'd have to deal with every book in which some character is said to be writing a novel or have written a novel. I think that might be too tenuous an inclusion. In fact, I'm wondering whether we should tighten the inclusion criteria (see next comment)... --Bookgrrl 23:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
But then you have to consider the book from Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is never named but it is very important to the novel overall. Perhaps untitled books should only be added when they are important to the book. Tartan 16:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

To which could also be added the (several different) If On a Winter's Night a Traveller... books in the novel of the same name by Italo Calvino... Thomasshea 14:43, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion Criteria

Anyone think that we should tighten the inclusion criteria and narrow this list down a little to only fictional books that are important to the work in which they appear? I'm thinking something like: "This list includes fictional books whose importance to the actual work in which they appear is such that, if the fictional work were removed, it would substantially negatively impact the actual work." Based on this, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be included because without the fictional Guide, the main characters in the actual book wouldn't be able to get around. Susanna Clarke's footnoted fictional biographies and histories would be included because they add substantially to the realism of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. However, Agatha Christie's Ariadne Oliver books wouldn't, because those books don't have any direct bearing on the actual book(s) in which they appear. Mostly I'm considering this because the list is so damn long :) Thoughts? --Bookgrrl 23:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I personally don't like the idea of taking out the titles mentioned only in passing, partly because they are part of the richness of the books in which they appear (imagine Hitchhiker's without Oolon Colluphid), partly because we risk losing whole categories of fictional books and the reasons for them as discussed in the intro, and partly because many of these are just too much fun to read, and the list would be less entertaining and less informative without them. Something I've noticed that User:Random Critic does with the List of fictional planets, which has similar issues, is spin off large sections into separate lists, leaving behind a list of related lists. For our purposes that would mean separate lists for Jasper Fforde, Frank Herbert, Francois Rabelais, Kurt Vonnegut and probably several others, particularly authors for whom it's a major motif and there is something to be said about the purposes they serve in that particular author's work, or in which the fictional work itself is notable enough to sustain aparagraph about it.
As for your inclusion criteria paragraph, it's probably a good idea but I'd like to suggest using the triple ' for emphasis rather than having words in ALL CAPS.
Another thought on inclusion criteria. I started to type in It Was a Dark a Stormy Night by Snoopy last night, and then stopped because it was published, although I'm pretty sure the strips about its writing were also part of the book. I guess that makes it a metabook or something. Would it be fair to say that Farmer's Venus on the Half Shell, ostensibly by Kilgore Trout, is not a fictional book because it exists, but the book of the same title as mentioned in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions is indeed a fictional book? The mind boggles. Karen | Talk | contribs 00:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I know, I hate to lose any -- being both a bibliomaniac and an inclusionist :) On the other hand, I would love to get this to Featured List status. Although the responses to my Peer Review were, to say the least, marginally useful at best given that several people didn't bother to read closely enough to find out what the list was actually OF, there did seem to be a consensus that it was too long and unwieldy... We could as you say spin off some of the longer lists, and perhaps that's the right way to do it. They might actually get more attention with their author's name in the article title, e.g. "List of Fictional Books in the Oeuvre of Jorge Luis Borges." Guess we'll see if anyone else weighs in...(oh and I'll fix the ALL CAPS...) --24.58.247.216 01:48, 31 December 2006 (UTC) oops, forgot to sign in...--Bookgrrl 01:49, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't like the idea of removing the passing-mention titles (I too am a bibliomaniac, and fictional item list-aholic). They don't always add a lot to the books they are mentioned in, but their (non-)existance does add something. That and I love being able to see them all here. :) Tartan 16:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I am strongly opposed to removing any books from the list. The value of a thing like this is its inclusivity. I think there's far too much concern over the prestige of having a "featured list" (I think this is true of Wikipedia, as a whole). It's more important we provide the most complete resource possible.--Visionthing 22:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Rating system?

We seem to have a consensus in favor of inclusivity, i.e. we don't want to try to limit which fictional books ought to be listed here. However, I'm pondering the value of rating the books in some manner. For example by (1) critical to the surrounding story (2) incidental to the surrounding story (3) totally irrelevant to the surrounding story. So The Hitchhiker's Guide, or some of Borges', would be ranked 1 since the entire story is sort of built around them, while Agatha Christie's Ariadne Oliver books would be ranked 3 since it's important she's an author but the actual books aren't important per se...This could be done in a table format, for example:

Fictional Books
Book Author Ranking Appears in Created by
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy various contributors 1 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
The Affair of the Second Goldfish Ariadne Oliver 3 xx Agatha Christie
A Child's History of the Raven King John Waterbury, Lord Portishead 2 Jonathan Strange and Professor Norell Susanna Clarke

If we did this, we could then sort the books either by real-world author, as it is now, or by the fictional book's title (might be interesting), or by rank, etc. It would be a godawfully long table but it might help structure things a bit more, plus provide some information on how critical the fictional work is to its surrounding real-world work. Thoughts on this? --Bookgrrl holler/looksee 17:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Right off the bat, I can see #2 being hard to codify, and it seems to me that people are more likely to look something up by author than by other criteria. Still, I'm very much in favor of some system of including info about the fictional book's function. Rather than a numerical ranking, I'd like to see something a little more categorical that fits in with the intro, e.g. major plot element, background detail, joke title. etc. Perhaps we can think about this a big more and figure something out? Karen | Talk | contribs 01:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, let's -- I'd really like to do something to enhance the value of this. It's a fun list as it stands just as trivia, sort of; it would be better with some added analysis. I shall ponder...let me know if you come up with anything :) Bookgrrl holler/lookee here 16:36, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Real book removed

Thanks go to user 4.233.140.46 (talk · contribs), who pointed out that

Peculiarities of American Cities [...] is a genuine book by Willard Glazier, who was an American Civil War Veteran and a prolific author in the late 18th Century.
(Noted by a Bellairs reader, J. Van Brunt)

I've just removed the item from the article. The book was reprinted only last month(!): ISBN 1-4290-0453-3. Cheers, CWC(talk) 12:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Gene Wolfe

I was involved in submitting the Gene Wolfe entry to the late lamented Invisible Library. I haven't read Bibliomen myself, but I absolutely trust the people on the Urth List who compled the entries for it, so I'm sure all those titles belong here.

Don't we want to link all authors' names and everything we can?

I'm delighted that this article exists now that the Invisible Library is no more! —JerryFriedman 23:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikilinks, citations, details, and consistency

I've made a start on wikilinking real book titles, on the theory that if a fictional book is notable enough to mention, it comes from a real book notable enough to have an article. The wikilink helps to establish that we're citing the fictional titles from real books, and should inspire people to write entries on the redlinked titles. It would also be good to wikilink articles about important characters.

There's also a question of consistency, and what to do about authors with just two fictional titles. I gave L'Engle a section for her two titles, because the misc. from literature section is very long and disorganized, and we should break out anyone we can. At some point, without my noticing, someone moved her titles back into the catch-all, and deleted the info a. We should have more details on the functions of the fictional books, not fewer. I'm going to put it back, and I'd appreciate it if it were left that way, at least until we settle on a system for coding the titles in terms of importance to the real work. I may be able to find a third title for L'Engle; we'll see. Similarly, I think if a real book (or fictional author, for subheadings organized that way) has more than one fictional title, they should be broken out that way. And people should pay attention to where things are listed. I just took the Professor Challenger fictional books out of the Sherlock Holmes section...again. They are definitely not part of the Holmes canon!

On the ongoing gripes about referencing - I think we should probably add ISBN numbers for the real books recent enough to have them, publication dates, and cites for any scholarship we can find that mentions the fictional books of individual authors. I'm sure there is material for Borges, and possibly Tolkien and Vonnegut, at the very least. Speaking of Borges, his section probably needs to be organized by source, but I don't know enough about his work to do it! Karen | Talk | contribs 04:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I can tell you how your edits got reverted: this edit on 5 March by JerryFriedman. The edit summary says "fixing Gene Wolfe", and I'm not sure what he meant to do, but what he did, in fact, was revert weeks of changes to the article: dozens of additions, subtractions, and corrections--more than I care to count. I think, frankly, that the article ought to be reverted to version 112935133 although this would mean also reverting all the edits you've made in the past day. But redoing your edits would be much easier than undoing line-by-line all the damage done by Jerry's edit. --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 07:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Aha! That explains a lot! (So much for trusting too heavily to edit summaries.) Perhaps we should work from the revision you mention. My edits can be redone as needed. Karen | Talk | contribs 08:13, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
So would you like to revert? I'd go ahead and do it, but I hate to revert someone else's good edits--and I thought you might want, before a revert, to make some notes of what you'd done so far so it would be easier to duplicate after. In other words: "After you, my dear Alphonse." --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 16:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. I'm working on fixing it right now. —JerryFriedman 18:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I think it's fixed, though people who edited recently might want to check the sections they edited. I'm really sorry, and I have no idea how it happened. —JerryFriedman 19:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
It looks much better now. Thanks! We should all proofread, though, on general principle. Karen | Talk | contribs 02:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Spin-off articles?

I see that the article is now long enough to generate the advisory that it may be preferable to break into additional articles. Based strictly on length, I think we should have separate list articles for A. S. Byatt, Susanna Clarke, Mark Z. Danielewski, Jasper Fforde, Frank Herbert, Stephen King, Francois Rabelais, Dorothy L. Sayers, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, and Gene Wolfe. Most of these authors are important enough to establish notability for such a list, it would make this article more manageable, and the individual authors' (and novels') articles could have a See Also for the spin-offs. (It wouldn't be a bad idea to spin off Adams and Tolkien too, and perhaps a few others, because although their lists aren't terribly long, they're well-known writers whose fictional works are a significant part of their actual ones.) It's also probably time to have List of fictional books from comics as a separate article. Is that okay with everyone? Karen | Talk | contribs 06:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I kind of like having it all together, but if the article's considered too long, breaking it up the way you suggest is definitely the way to do it. —JerryFriedman 23:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Ditto JerryFriedman's sentiments. I hate to see it break up especially when there are plenty of long List articles out there, but I can see the argument. I would strongly encouraging that any authors who are split off, are still listed here with a "Main article" or "See" reference (like Terry Pratchett). --Bookgrrl holler/lookee here 22:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


OK, I have spun off the list of fictional works by Stephen King, take a look here. I'll tackle others as I have time/energy but anyone else, feel free to take on some of the suggested spinoffs. Certainly any author who has a main article and a substantial number of fictional books listed here, would be a candidate. I've also moved Susanna Clarke's multitudinous list. Note that I have used almost identical titles as well as almost identical opening paragraphs for the two articles in an attempt to fend off the inevitable comment "well if these are fiction books shouldn't they be listed on the author's page as books they've written?". Feel free to dupe it and use it for other spinoff articles :) --Bookgrrl holler/lookee here 22:37, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Typos?

Is "Wjo" (Danielewski) really "correvt", or should it be "Who"? How about "La Lorna" (Kiernan)—should that be "La Llorona"? —JerryFriedman 19:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I checked the Danielewski one, and it was indeed a typo. Trying to check the Kiernan one made me wish the titles were given. I can tell you "La Lorna" is not in Threshold, Murder of Angels, Low Red Moon, or Silk (the ones that are searchable at Amazon).
Yes, it should be "La Llorona." My mistake.--Visionthing 14:45, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
New question: The Edinburgh Review and The Gentleman's Magazine (under Suzannah Clarke) were real and highly successsful periodicals. Should they be deleted, or is the theory that the issues with articles on magic were fictional? My feeling is that they should be deleted. —JerryFriedman 22:32, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm with you on the Clarke items: The publications—as listed, with no specific issue cited—are not fictional. Ditto The Newgate Calendar and The Malefactor's Register (the latter—The Malefactor's Bloody Register, to be more precise—is just another name for the former). --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 22:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

R Fergus McGhee

I removed the section "Works invented by R Fergus McGhee" because he is apparently a teenager with a single subsidy-published book. I don't think he, or his work, is sufficiently noteworthy for inclusion on this list. --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 03:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Heh. Nice catch! Sometimes it's hard to find the bogus among the fictional :) --Bookgrrl holler/lookee here 22:03, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Alpha toc

Anyone know how to do the alphabetical TOC, that just lists A - B - C - D - E etc across the top? That might be a more useful TOC than the outsize list we currently have (though it is nice to have the author's names listed right at the top)... Thoughts? --Bookgrrl holler/lookee here 23:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Categories

FYI, for the spin off articles, I've been adding the following categories to all, with the following alphabetization parameters:

  • [[Category:Lists of fictional things|Books]]
  • [[Category:Fictional books|*List of]]
  • [[Category:Lists of books|Fictional]]

--Bookgrrl holler/lookee here 11:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Instead of these, now just use the new sub-category of all the above, Category:Lists of fictional books. - Fayenatic (talk) 17:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

TV shows

How about a section on books within TV shows (holonovels in Star Trek, etc.) Mr. Granger 00:00, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

See: List of fictional books from non-book media --ShelfSkewed Talk 00:10, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Broken References

There are two references which both have [1] next to them. Only the second one (in order on the page) is listed at the foot of the page in the reference section. I don't know how to fix this or I would have done it already 195.153.45.54 11:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect entry

The section for Anthony Powell includes "I Stopped at the Chemists" by Ada Leintwardine. This is actually not a book but a film adaptation and so doesn't belong on this page, so I've deleted it. If there is ever a page for fictional films it can go in there.Jon Rob 14:07, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

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