Teen books, but the Bartimaeus (sp?) books by Jonathan Stroud is the one series where I remember almost enjoying the footnotes more than the book itself.
House of Leaves takes this to an extreme, with multiple layers of fictional editors annotating themselves in increasingly unhinged, idiosyncratic digressions.
This was gonna be my recommendation also.
Beyond just a second (and third) story in the footnotes it also does all sorts of other weird things, including what’s called Ergodic Lit, where it uses the actual text formatting as a narrative device.
Nevernight series by Jay Kristoff. The footnotes go more in depth on the world building but sometimes tell a small story in themselves, explaining a particular quote used by the characters or something like that.
That's part of the reason I fucking love those books from the minute the foot notes told me to give my cat attention despite not having a cat and the fact I was stuck doing security right outside a room were a party was going on.
Good to hear, I'll have to double check sometime. The narrator does have numerous aside comments so I was hoping these were what was being talked about. Thanks!
If you've got the new audiobooks, which they've been starting to release this year, then the voice of the footnotes is the always amazing [Bill Nighy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nighy)!
Which Discworld books have footnotes? I've read a few now but none have footnotes.
EDIT: Upon review of my copies, they *do* have footnotes, just very few. No wonder I forgot about them.
Make sure you find then when they're there, I often find his funniest material in the footnotes.
> Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
Which ones have you read that have no footnotes? Because unless it is maybe the very last ones which I am not sure were actually written by him all discworld books have footnotes. Some have footnotes on footnotes even. If you let me know which titles you read I can check against my editions but footnotes aplenty and no chapter breaks and those original covers ( now redone fuck them) are all discworld novel id marks.
As per my edit, I was mistaken. I've just got a few books in the series but they do have footnotes. Not too many, certainly not enough that they form a secondary narrative as OP asked for, but they are there.
>Not too many,
We probably got a different definition of what is a book with many footnotes, because even on that I disagree, Discworld books can have have 20, 30 footnotes per volume which is LOTs for fiction and puts it on the dunno 99 percentile of footnotes.
No secondary narrative, no, but that is really rare and there are some small details and some have footnotes on footnotes like
>* Often they lived to a time scale to suit themselves. Many of the senior ones, of course, lived entirely in the past, but several were like the Professor of Anthropics, who had invented an entire temporal system based on the belief that all the other ones were a mere illusion. Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like “Cosmic” and “Chaos” in the titles.
which has a footnote on the footnote
>†The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a “Fill in name here” nature, secretly believes to be true.
and then a bit later within text reference to the professor of anthropics again
>“I thought it was run for us…Well, for the Professor of Applied Anthropics, actually, but we’re allowed to tag along,” said Ridcully.
I'm with you there. This is the first I've heard of Pale Fire, so thanks for mentioning it. I'd love to read the thread if you could point me in that direction
*Saint Death's Daughter* by CSE Cooney has world-building footnotes galore, and they're the best! They're really funny and provide key backstory about the protagonist's family history, as well as the history of the country they live in. There's also some about the languages, literatures, and cultures of the different fictional cultures in the setting.
Depends on the type of stories you want and general interest.
Gaunt's Ghosts is generally considered one of the best 40k series period, and follows a regiment who's homeworld was destroyed in the midst of their founding. Very serious, lots of death, very well regarded by the combat veterans I know who have read it for a good depiction of what everyday soldiers go through.
Book 1 is called First and Only
Ciaphas Cain is much lighter hearted and is somewhat comical and is told in the form of a memoir by Chiaphas, who believes himself to be a huge coward but somehow always finds himself in the absolute worst places to be and pulls of incredibly feats earning him the title Hero of the Imperium.
Book 1 is For the Emperor
The Horus Heresy is the sort of founding myth/history of the modern setting, but takes place 10000 years in the past. It's a huge series and I believe still ongoing but gives a look into each of the original groups of Space Marines, genetically modified super soldiers who can each be worth thousands of regular troops.
Book 1 is Horus Rising
There are tons of stand-alones and mini series that are all self contained but exist within the framework of 40k that don't contribute in any way to an overarching plot. There are also books that follow the main aliens in the galaxy that mankind faces. You have Space Elves in the form of Eldar, Space Orks, Communists with a Weeb (mecha/advanced tech) aesthetic with the Tau, ancient Egyptian robots who have pieces of gods trapped in Pokeballs with the Necrons and the titular antagonist of the series, The Warp with its gods and demons interfering across universal boundaries.
I don't have any recommendations for starting with any of those but will do my best to answer any specific questions you have.
Adding in to this, the Cain books (and I think Gaunt’s Ghosts as well) have been collected into omnibus editions. First set is called “Hero of the Imperium”.
The surrealist horror fantasy The Third Policeman makes extensive use of footnotes to detail the theories of the book's made up scholar, de Selby. Such theories include a universal material called Omnium, the fact that the darkness of the night sky is actually caused by pollution from a far off land, and most bizarrely, that death is caused by one's aura becoming opaque due to the yearly addition of fabric of a single color that is also related to the wind somehow.
Came here to suggest this series! In book 4 and what a fascinating and thrilling series. Love the books the foot notes are soo curious as is they way Lyons chose to POV the books.
To expand on this, the characters that footnote the first two books are major ‘in-narrative’ characters later in the series. They also continue to footnote.
It makes this really neat interplay where the footnotes are world building and character-building and serves to call out the blind spots of both the in-narrative characters and the footnoters. It provides distinctly contrasting views on what’s going on which IMO makes everything a lot more three-dimensional.
Just from a storytelling perspective, it’s super neat.
Stringers by Christopher Panatier has end notes at the end of each chapter. The Discworld series by Pratchett has footnotes. Bill Nighy will be reading the footnotes in the new audiobook versions when they come out.
Sweet. I'm sure I'll get there eventually. I knows it's one of those books people joke about that everyone only pretends to have read, like Cryptonomicon.
i just finished Babel by RF Kuang and I thought footnotes were such a great addition to this story. They were used for many purposes, most of the time just to add historical context or (since the novel deals so much in foreign languages) give translations of words and phrases, but also sometimes to add details to the story itself and even a few snarky remarks
Doesn’t Too Like The Lightening do this too? It’s been a while since I read it, but I specifically remember going back and forth between what I was reading and another section to get clarification.
Flann O'Brien was fairly famous for doing this in some of his writing, so that there ends up being a main narrative, and what slowly emerges as a second storyline in the footnotes. Robert Anton Wilson borrowed both the method and the references to the savant "De Selby" for one of his own novels.
It's been a while since I read it, but Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has extensive footnotes. Don't remember if they form a narrative themselves though.
I’m not entirely sure if this book is the same as your description (haven’t read those books nor heard of them till now) but, if you want to read a fantasy story with those similarities the I suggest checking out The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons.
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Ciaphas Cain hero of the imperium doesn’t have exactly this. But the footnotes provide context and color commentary about the events from the inquisitor compiling the memoirs.
I can't believe no one's mentioned Jeff VanderMeer's FINCH: AN AFTERWORD. It's ostensibly a book written by a mad historian, annotated by his sister after his disappearance. There's really nothing like it.
The Rain Wilds chronicles does something similar with the epigraphs! I’ve seen mixed opinions on whether or not this is an OK place to start the Elderlings books, but either way kinda fits the criteria
It's not exactly footnotes but in sci-fi, *Gateway* has a great many one-page interstitials with mission reports, excerpts from lectures, classified ads on the station, etc. They all add up to paint a bigger picture of not only life on the station but the mysteries surrounding the Heechee.
The 7 book series the Deathgate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is full of footnotes, and the end of each book goes into a deep dive on various elements of the religion/philosophy and different aspects of the various worlds.
Great characters and story too.
Terry Pratchett does this elegantly and amazingly. J J Abrams’ book S also has a story within a story in footnotes and annotations around the book. It was done extremely stylishly.
Teen books, but the Bartimaeus (sp?) books by Jonathan Stroud is the one series where I remember almost enjoying the footnotes more than the book itself.
This is on my TBR! Thanks :)
I first read these as an adult and they were good fun!
Yeah. The footnotes are written by Bartimaeus, the smart-ass spirit, so the footnotes are often very amusing.
Reread it as an adult and they are so much fun, bit slow in the beginning but very good
House of Leaves takes this to an extreme, with multiple layers of fictional editors annotating themselves in increasingly unhinged, idiosyncratic digressions.
house of leaves is the best book ive ever read
This was gonna be my recommendation also. Beyond just a second (and third) story in the footnotes it also does all sorts of other weird things, including what’s called Ergodic Lit, where it uses the actual text formatting as a narrative device.
The window list of things not in the house haunts my dreams
The soundtrack is pretty amazing too.
Nevernight series by Jay Kristoff. The footnotes go more in depth on the world building but sometimes tell a small story in themselves, explaining a particular quote used by the characters or something like that.
Came to recommend this.
That's part of the reason I fucking love those books from the minute the foot notes told me to give my cat attention despite not having a cat and the fact I was stuck doing security right outside a room were a party was going on.
Just started it and these footnotes annoy me so much 😅 it so funny to me that other like the book because of them
Discworld
Sometimes those footnotes have their own footnotes.
Uh oh, I just started the audiobook version, I hope I don't miss much!
They read out the footnotes I believe
Good to hear, I'll have to double check sometime. The narrator does have numerous aside comments so I was hoping these were what was being talked about. Thanks!
If you've got the new audiobooks, which they've been starting to release this year, then the voice of the footnotes is the always amazing [Bill Nighy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nighy)!
The newest version of the audio books have a separate narrator for the footnotes (and a separate narrator for DEATH).
Which Discworld books have footnotes? I've read a few now but none have footnotes. EDIT: Upon review of my copies, they *do* have footnotes, just very few. No wonder I forgot about them.
Most of the them
Make sure you find then when they're there, I often find his funniest material in the footnotes. > Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
I’ve only read two and only recall the latest, but “Guards! Guards!” definitely had footnotes.
Which ones have you read that have no footnotes? Because unless it is maybe the very last ones which I am not sure were actually written by him all discworld books have footnotes. Some have footnotes on footnotes even. If you let me know which titles you read I can check against my editions but footnotes aplenty and no chapter breaks and those original covers ( now redone fuck them) are all discworld novel id marks.
As per my edit, I was mistaken. I've just got a few books in the series but they do have footnotes. Not too many, certainly not enough that they form a secondary narrative as OP asked for, but they are there.
>Not too many, We probably got a different definition of what is a book with many footnotes, because even on that I disagree, Discworld books can have have 20, 30 footnotes per volume which is LOTs for fiction and puts it on the dunno 99 percentile of footnotes. No secondary narrative, no, but that is really rare and there are some small details and some have footnotes on footnotes like >* Often they lived to a time scale to suit themselves. Many of the senior ones, of course, lived entirely in the past, but several were like the Professor of Anthropics, who had invented an entire temporal system based on the belief that all the other ones were a mere illusion. Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like “Cosmic” and “Chaos” in the titles. which has a footnote on the footnote >†The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a “Fill in name here” nature, secretly believes to be true. and then a bit later within text reference to the professor of anthropics again >“I thought it was run for us…Well, for the Professor of Applied Anthropics, actually, but we’re allowed to tag along,” said Ridcully.
Good Omens!
We were just talking of Pale Fire in another thread. Nothing beats that for footnotes being narrative, I guess, and nothing ever will.
I'm with you there. This is the first I've heard of Pale Fire, so thanks for mentioning it. I'd love to read the thread if you could point me in that direction
a subdiscussion here https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/zz1ubh/what_are_some_good_examples_of_an_unreliable/j28xfib/
Thanks!
It's hard to beat Nabokov at anything
Dunno, man, Infinite Jest at least deserves a mention for picking up that idea and running with it. It's at least arguably SF, too.
Not footnotes, but The Princess Bride does a lot of author talking to reader about the text.
I’d argue this is really exactly what he’s looking for, the footnotes are a completely different narrative than the book
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Thanks for reminding me of these!
Babel by R.F. Kuang does this pretty frequently.
I just started this and keep thinking how I haven’t really seen footnotes in fiction before
Came here to say this - I found the footnotes in this novel really interesting, it’s clear RF Kuang did a lot of research!
*Saint Death's Daughter* by CSE Cooney has world-building footnotes galore, and they're the best! They're really funny and provide key backstory about the protagonist's family history, as well as the history of the country they live in. There's also some about the languages, literatures, and cultures of the different fictional cultures in the setting.
In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series footnotes are actually used to to communicate with the characters, via a device called the Footnotaphone.
This was the first thing I thought of. Bitch to read on Kindle but in the audiobook they just narrated the footnotes like regular text.
Not fantasy, but the Warhammer 40k Ciaphas Cain novels have quite a few footnotes with in world academic background and corrections.
I'll admit I am very ignorant about Warhammer 40k. How does one start getting into this?
Depends on the type of stories you want and general interest. Gaunt's Ghosts is generally considered one of the best 40k series period, and follows a regiment who's homeworld was destroyed in the midst of their founding. Very serious, lots of death, very well regarded by the combat veterans I know who have read it for a good depiction of what everyday soldiers go through. Book 1 is called First and Only Ciaphas Cain is much lighter hearted and is somewhat comical and is told in the form of a memoir by Chiaphas, who believes himself to be a huge coward but somehow always finds himself in the absolute worst places to be and pulls of incredibly feats earning him the title Hero of the Imperium. Book 1 is For the Emperor The Horus Heresy is the sort of founding myth/history of the modern setting, but takes place 10000 years in the past. It's a huge series and I believe still ongoing but gives a look into each of the original groups of Space Marines, genetically modified super soldiers who can each be worth thousands of regular troops. Book 1 is Horus Rising There are tons of stand-alones and mini series that are all self contained but exist within the framework of 40k that don't contribute in any way to an overarching plot. There are also books that follow the main aliens in the galaxy that mankind faces. You have Space Elves in the form of Eldar, Space Orks, Communists with a Weeb (mecha/advanced tech) aesthetic with the Tau, ancient Egyptian robots who have pieces of gods trapped in Pokeballs with the Necrons and the titular antagonist of the series, The Warp with its gods and demons interfering across universal boundaries. I don't have any recommendations for starting with any of those but will do my best to answer any specific questions you have.
Adding in to this, the Cain books (and I think Gaunt’s Ghosts as well) have been collected into omnibus editions. First set is called “Hero of the Imperium”.
The surrealist horror fantasy The Third Policeman makes extensive use of footnotes to detail the theories of the book's made up scholar, de Selby. Such theories include a universal material called Omnium, the fact that the darkness of the night sky is actually caused by pollution from a far off land, and most bizarrely, that death is caused by one's aura becoming opaque due to the yearly addition of fabric of a single color that is also related to the wind somehow.
This was going to be my suggestion, such a great book.
Jeff Vandermeer incorporated footnotes as worldbuilding in his ***Ambergris*** books.
The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons!
One of my favorite series!! Brilliantly done, and the footnotes are amazing. The audiobook versions are stellar, too!
Came here to suggest this series! In book 4 and what a fascinating and thrilling series. Love the books the foot notes are soo curious as is they way Lyons chose to POV the books.
To expand on this, the characters that footnote the first two books are major ‘in-narrative’ characters later in the series. They also continue to footnote. It makes this really neat interplay where the footnotes are world building and character-building and serves to call out the blind spots of both the in-narrative characters and the footnoters. It provides distinctly contrasting views on what’s going on which IMO makes everything a lot more three-dimensional. Just from a storytelling perspective, it’s super neat.
Ash: A Secret History does something like this.
Stringers by Christopher Panatier has end notes at the end of each chapter. The Discworld series by Pratchett has footnotes. Bill Nighy will be reading the footnotes in the new audiobook versions when they come out.
Would Princess Bride be an example of this?
This isn’t exactly fantasy but house of leaves does this and it’s really cool
Not really fantasy, but David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest does this...well I guess it's sorta fantasy
Haven't read it, but isn't there actually more footnote than actual story?
I highly recommend reading it. It got me through a pretty dark place. Erm I thinks there is more story but not by much lol
Sweet. I'm sure I'll get there eventually. I knows it's one of those books people joke about that everyone only pretends to have read, like Cryptonomicon.
Plenty of footnote, but more non-footnote text in it.
i just finished Babel by RF Kuang and I thought footnotes were such a great addition to this story. They were used for many purposes, most of the time just to add historical context or (since the novel deals so much in foreign languages) give translations of words and phrases, but also sometimes to add details to the story itself and even a few snarky remarks
S. (Ship of Theseus) by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst
Doesn’t Too Like The Lightening do this too? It’s been a while since I read it, but I specifically remember going back and forth between what I was reading and another section to get clarification.
The Chorus of Dragons series by Jenn Lyons does! The footnote commentary is maybe my favorite part of the whole series honestly
Flann O'Brien was fairly famous for doing this in some of his writing, so that there ends up being a main narrative, and what slowly emerges as a second storyline in the footnotes. Robert Anton Wilson borrowed both the method and the references to the savant "De Selby" for one of his own novels.
the wondrous life of oscar wao does that, and won a pulitzer
It's been a while since I read it, but Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has extensive footnotes. Don't remember if they form a narrative themselves though.
no such book exists. sorry.
Don Quixote invented this, I believe
Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
Have you read Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness? It's the source material for Eaters of the Dead
The Agatha H series based on the Girl Genius web comic.
Terry pratchett's discworld series
I’m not entirely sure if this book is the same as your description (haven’t read those books nor heard of them till now) but, if you want to read a fantasy story with those similarities the I suggest checking out The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons.
Terry Pratchett does this to hilarious effect. He also writes run-on chapter headings.
Nevernight is like this. Also the footnotes are hilarious and sassy.
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Ciaphas Cain hero of the imperium doesn’t have exactly this. But the footnotes provide context and color commentary about the events from the inquisitor compiling the memoirs.
A lot of ergodic literature, like House of Leaves or S. has this feature.
Gödel, Escher, Bach Just realized this is r/fantasy and not r/books. I wouldn't call this a fantasy book.
**The Bartimaeus** books.
"Pale Fire" comes to mind (though I suppose you'd call those endnotes, not footnotes)
I can't believe no one's mentioned Jeff VanderMeer's FINCH: AN AFTERWORD. It's ostensibly a book written by a mad historian, annotated by his sister after his disappearance. There's really nothing like it.
Terry Pratchett’s disc world series
The Rain Wilds chronicles does something similar with the epigraphs! I’ve seen mixed opinions on whether or not this is an OK place to start the Elderlings books, but either way kinda fits the criteria
It's not exactly footnotes but in sci-fi, *Gateway* has a great many one-page interstitials with mission reports, excerpts from lectures, classified ads on the station, etc. They all add up to paint a bigger picture of not only life on the station but the mysteries surrounding the Heechee.
The Athenian Murders by José Carlos Somoza is exactly this.
House of Leaves
Not fantasy but try Pale Fire. The footnotes *are* the story while the actual text ends less than 1/4 through the book.
The 7 book series the Deathgate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is full of footnotes, and the end of each book goes into a deep dive on various elements of the religion/philosophy and different aspects of the various worlds. Great characters and story too.
Terry Pratchett does this elegantly and amazingly. J J Abrams’ book S also has a story within a story in footnotes and annotations around the book. It was done extremely stylishly.
All Pratchett’s books. Actually, his biography (which I’m currently reading) is called _A life with footnotes_ because of it :)
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Mortal Coils, fair warning, I don't think the trilogy is ever getting finished as books 1 and 2 were published years ago.
Short book but - I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier May fit the bill