I am a sucker for books that are a little more than books.
My own entries in this category
The Griffin and Sabine series by Nick Bantock…which I just found out is like 5 or 6 books and not just the two I read (“Griffin and Sabine” and “Sabine’s Notebook”) A correspondance between two artists. The letters are in handwriting not print, most are postcards with wonderful, bizarre art; some are in their envelopes and you can take them out. Like reading someone else’s mail.
“The Law of Love” by Laura Esquivel. The second book by the author of “Like Water For Chocolate” A therapist in the future seeks to be prematurely united with her soulmate with help from her guardian angel. Comes with a CD to be played at various points in thr book so you hear what the character hears and has “comic book”-like sections so you con see what she sees.
“Masquerade” by Kit Williams. My parents bought this for me when it came out in 1980. Beautiful realistic, yet fantastic paintings told a fable of a rabbit who was carrying a bejewled gift from the Moon to the Sun (or was it the other way around?) but he lost it. The interactive part was that the author had actually fashioned the bejewled rabbit and hidden it somewhere in England. The book contained the location if you could just puzzle it out.
Please share with me if you know of other books like these. I am especially hoping to find fiction illustrated with photographs. I just think that would be cool. I am mostly interested in books intended for adults, but if a children’s book falls into this category and is too wonderful or unusual to leave out, include it by all means.
Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries had a page or so in the middle with photographs that were supposed to be of the characters. It made my husband and I wonder if the book was really fiction or not. But it was just a small section.
Yes, I believe the rabbit was found rather quickly, within a year or two, though there was some mention of cheating. I can’t believe now that I haven’t sought out the answer to the puzzle.
In re the Masquerade rabbit, yes, it was found. Sorry to say, the guy who found it did so not by following the clues in the book (although at first he claimed he did), but with the help of the ex-girlfriend of the author.
With the OP’s use of “fictional” (I’m assuming he/she meant “fiction”), the only thing I could think of that applied was “A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” described in Neal Stevenson’s “Diamond Age”.
you see, the book is fictional since it only exists in another book, and it is certainly interactive…
My dad’s gf has a book that is made to look like a handwritten diary. It’s all about a little girl who sees fairies, and whenever they get near her diary, she shuts it really quickly so that they get squashed onto the page. The “diary” spans quite a few years, and you can see the girl’s handwriting get nicer as she gets older.
I think he is saying that “fictional book” implies that the book itself is fictional, not that it is a real book on a fictional subject. But I think we all know what you meant.
There were several books published in the 1930’s by Dennis Wheatley which were in the form of crime dossiers. They contained the actual “clues” from the crimes (bits of cloth, handwritten letters, receipts and so on) as well as the police reports and interviews. You were supposed to go through the clues and figure out the crime. The real solution was in a sealed envelope in the back that you were not supposed to open until you thought you had solved the mystery.
I have two of his books; Herewith the Clues and Murder off Miami, which seems to be his best known. There is a nice writeup on his work here.
There was a later printing of the books which replaced the physical clues with photographs. Not quite the same thing.
I also have a similar book based on the Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet but can’t remember who put it together right now. (The story itself is, of course, by Conan Doyle). It also has all of the physical clues in it.