What makes a book ergodic?

Most books ask you to start on the first page and keep going. Ergodic books ask for more. You might have to follow a trail of footnotes, decide which chapter comes next, shuffle a box of loose pages, or hold a page up to the light to read what’s printed beneath it.

The term comes from Espen J. Aarseth’s 1997 book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, from the Greek for “work” and “path.” Aarseth was mostly writing about digital texts and games, but the idea is much older than computers.

How this list works

Lists of ergodic books exist elsewhere, but they rarely say how each book asks to be read. That’s the point of this one. Every entry is described by:

• Ways of reading. The mechanics the book uses, such as footnote mazes or loose pages. See them all.
• Medium. Print, digital, or a hybrid of both.
• Whether it needs the physical object. Would an ebook or audiobook lose the effect? For a box of loose pages, yes. For a novel with an elaborate index, probably not.
• Year and original language. When it was first published and the language it was written in.

The list is curated by hand and focuses on print, where this kind of book is hardest to find.

Checked and unchecked entries

New entries start out unchecked. An editor marks an entry as checked once they’ve confirmed the publication details against a reliable source, made sure the description matches the book itself, and tested every link. Until then, the entry’s page says so.

Suggest a book

Know a book that belongs here, or spotted a mistake? Email me at my address. Tell me the title and author, and a sentence or two about what the reader has to do.

Download the list

The whole list, in alphabetical order:

• Text file: titles and authors
• Markdown file: titles and authors, formatted
• Spreadsheet (CSV, opens in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets): title, author, year, description, and ways of reading

Reusing this list

Everything on the list is dedicated to the public domain under CC0: copy it, adapt it, or build on it without asking.

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