Reading the Books

Tropes and genres
Related tropes/genres	Harry Potter, Breaking the Fourth Wall, metafic
Related articles on Fanlore.

Reading the Books is a trope that appears in literary fandoms, where the book characters discover and read the books. It was popularised by Harry Potter fandom.

It is a trope that is not universally loved; some readers associated Characters Reading the Books with badfic.

A less common variation on this is media characters Watching the Show or Movie.

Fan Comments

does anyone else remember that fanfiction trend where the characters in a fandom were somehow able to read the books or watch the movies about them? most of them didn’t have a plot outside of reading/watching their series and they usually were all pretty similar to each other, and they weren’t really that good, but goddamn if they weren’t addictive as hell.

Example Fanworks

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Harry Potter

• Dramatic Reading series by Srikanth1808 and White_Squirrel (2018-2022)

Percy Jackson

• Hope Is A Delicate Thing by BandKid247 and oh__peachy (2021-2024)
• Reading Percy Jackson series by Lorixjake (2020-2023)
• Baby's first exceptionally bad time by SnufflesThePig (2021-2023)

Archives & Links

• Characters Reading Harry Potter Books on Ao3
• Characters reading the Percy Jackson books on Ao3