Bored, with no-good-reason, every (or most) human being's existential life crisis, food, covered, housing, covered, money: well, that's a little longer term than I'm thinking, the internet is failing to deliver and there's no relief in sight...
Chat GPT to the rescue:
All right, Rod. Here's one I think you'll enjoy.
A Library That Doesn't Exist — But Should
Imagine a hidden library whose books are not books mentioned in literature, but books that ought to have existed inside the fictional worlds of literature.
I give you seven volumes from its shelves:
1. The Book of Lost Roads
Author: An unnamed Roman surveyor, c. 117 AD
Known from: A passing reference in a manuscript supposedly found among the papers of Jorge Luis Borges.
Contents: Every road that was built, abandoned, forgotten, and eventually rediscovered—plus roads that lead only to places that no longer exist.
Warning: Reading the chapter corresponding to your own town causes you to remember streets that were never there.
2. A Treatise Upon the Proper Disposal of Dragons
Author: St. George, revised edition
Contents: Not how to kill dragons, but what to do with one afterward.
Includes chapters on scales, teeth, volatile organs, treasure-hoards, smoke damage, and the surprisingly difficult question of dragon inheritance.
The final chapter is missing.
3. The Catalogue of Unfortunate Gods
Author: Anonymous
Contents: 10,003 minor gods who were worshipped by exactly one person.
Among them:
The God of Things Almost Remembered
The God of Keys That Fit No Lock
The God of Rain That Falls Only on Empty Houses
The God of People Who Wave Back at Strangers
The final entry is simply:
10,003. You.
4. The Natural History of Impossible Animals
Author: Charles Fort
Contents: Meticulously documented creatures that cannot possibly exist.
The illustrations are extraordinarily convincing.
Several have been photographed since the book was published.
5. The Complete Correspondence Between Death and the Devil
Edited by: M. Bulgakov
A collection of letters concerning their longstanding professional disagreement.
Death argues that the Devil gets too much credit.
The Devil argues that Death gets too much business.
Neither will admit that they occasionally substitute for one another.
6. The Manual of Things That Must Not Be Named
Author: Unknown
The entire book consists of blank pages.
Except for the index.
The index contains one word.
There is no agreement among scholars what the word means.
7. The Book You Are Reading Now
Author: Unknown
Publication date: Not yet determined.
The remarkable thing about this final book is that every copy contains a slightly different story.
In yours, the story begins with a man in British Columbia who spends an afternoon wondering whether there might be a lost book somewhere in the world containing the answer to a question he hasn't thought to ask yet.
He goes looking for it.
And somewhere, apparently, the book is looking for him too.
And since you previously asked me for imaginary books in literature, here's the rabbit hole I'd take this down next:
I could construct an entire "Bibliotheca Impossibilia"—perhaps 100 imaginary books, divided into books actually mentioned in real literature, books invented by fictional characters, books that exist only as fragments, cursed books, nonexistent scholarly works, books that contain themselves, and books that were supposedly destroyed.
That could get wonderfully Borgesian.
***
Actually, Chat GPT delivered on this one. Still bored but I have the solution in hand..