Books spotted in Books

I hear that there are quite a few to be seen in The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Herodotus' Histories are mentioned in American Gods.
That's the first books-in-books reference I can think of off the top of my head...You really do have to love a book where the protagonist goes to a used book sale.

Le Grand Meaulnes is mentioned to be stolen by Sal Paradise in On the Road.

I recall that The Tale of the BodyThief by Anne Rice refers to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

For lots of other examples, see the Books in Books (not Books ~on~ Books) Group.

Practical Cats, seen in the book Cat, You Better Come Home.

I'm listening to The Book Jumper. Amy, Betsy and Will come from two Scottish families who can enter books and interact with the characters. It's a bit disjointed, but the most fun is accomplished in the margins between stories.

So far, they've visited The Jungle Book, Sherlock Holmes, The Little Match Girl, and Oliver Twist.

Miss Smith and the Haunted Library shows each child clutching a wonderful classic book as they file out of the public library after listening to stories read by librarian, Virginia Creeper.

Several are copies from the Charles Scribner's Sons set of classics, which I happen to own.

The Boy's King Arthur and The Black Arrow are clearest.



Other books pictured are The World of Pooh, Ziggy Stardust, Otto of the Silver Hand and Skags the Milk Horse.

The members of the senior citizens book discussion club waiting to enter the library are all carrying Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Mentioned with disdain in Wet Magic:

Eric, or Little by Little
Elsie, or Like a Little Candle
Brave Bessie
Ingenious Isabel

“They had been a great bother to carry, and they were impossible to read.”

Megan Malone, in Death of an Irish Mummy, is reading a fantasy book about a shaman in Seattle, an obvious reference to The Walker Papers series.

Katharine Mary Briggs's Dictionary of British Folk-Tales and Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas are both mentioned in Revenant as Typewriter by Penelope Lively.

The narrator of Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk is envious of the protagonist of The Haunted and the Haunters because "He at least had his servant with him. He had fuel and a light, and above all, he could get away when he wanted to".

>9 2wonderY: Stalky, M'Turk, and Beetle, in Stalky & Co, are most definitely not fans of Eric, or Little by Little and St Winifred's, also by Farrar.

"It was a maiden aunt of Stalky who sent him both books, with the inscription, “To dearest Artie, on his sixteenth birthday ”; it was McTurk who ordered their hypothecation ; and it was Beetle, returned from Bideford, who flung them on the window-sill of Number Five study with news that Bastable would advance but ninepence on the two; “Eric, or Little by Little,” being almost as great a drug as “St. Winifred’s.” “An’ I don’t think much of your aunt. We’re nearly out of cartridges, too — Artie, dear."

"we ain't goin' to have any beastly Erickin"

In Biggles Flies Again, our hero maroons a Russian spy on Tumb Island, close to the Strait of Hormuz. He leaves supplies for three weeks, and arranges that a passing sloop will pick him up then.

With the provisions he leaves a book, in case time hangs heavily on the Russian. It is Three Weeks.