Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books by Reid Byers

I was low-key crushed that I could not get to the Grolier Club's exhibit of imaginary books, but fortunately the imaginary books (think books lost to time, unpublished books, books made up by authors in other stories, fake references, etc.) have now been collected in a real book.

The whole thing is the project of Reid Byers, actual bibliophile. Per the NYT: "Byers started thinking about imaginary books 15 years ago, when he was having a jib door — a door disguised as part of a wall of bookshelves — made for his private library. 'I started making a list of fake books and imaginary books,' Byers said. Soon, he decided he wouldn’t be satisfied with just a list: He wanted to find a way to display these books. Working with a team that included two bookbinders, a letterpress printer, a calligrapher and a magician, he commissioned and put together this library, sometimes using parts of existing books as the basis and sometimes starting from scratch. He worked on some books solo."

The books were made only to be looked at: "The books are not really meant to be opened and read; the text inside doesn’t generally correspond to the lost or fictional objects. 'I like to tell people that if you open one of these books, it will protect itself by turning immediately into something else,' Byers said, slyly."