Guess what? I’ve written a book about What Remains of Edith Finch!

Buy it here.

Now, on to the real reason you clicked to this page…

Have you found yourself asking these questions while playing What Remains of Edith Finch?

• Are those books actually real books?
• What are the titles of those books?
• Seriously, how many cookbooks does one family need?

I have. So, I decided to find the answers (at least to the first two questions).

If you found this page via a search for information about the books found in the video game What Remains of Edith Finch, welcome. I, too, was on such a hunt. Finding nothing else online, I decided to start my own list. I hope you find this information helpful.

If you know of a book not in this list, let me know via Twitter.

Clicking a link below will take you to the Amazon listing. Purchasing the book (or anything during the session) gives me a few cents.

FAQ About this List of Books and the Game, What Remains of Edith Finch

Are the books in the game actual books?

Many of them are real. Many of them are not. The fiction titles tend to be more likely real than the non-fiction titles. The cookbooks, text books, and historical non-fiction titles are mostly fake and are therefore used for world-building to make the lives of the Finches more believable. For example, Sam’s upstairs room is filled with books about photography and war, two subjects that define his character. The fiction titles also provide world-building references, but serve more as Easter eggs to showcase the development team’s literary inspirations. Creative Director Ian Dallas has spoken often of the game’s literary roots, citing writers like Jorge Luis Borges, H.P Lovecraft, Edgar Alan Poe, and Gabriel García Márquez (including in my own interview with him at the Masters of Unlocking Podcast).

How many books are featured in the game?

I’ve personally counted 247 unique titles. However, the game contains many more books in total. Each unique title is cloned many times in order to populate the shelves fully. The game easily contains multiple thousands of individual book assets. I asked Ian Dallas about the varying spine widths for the same book (notoriously huge Infinite Jest, for example, often appears as a book no wider than a pencil). He cited technical and time limitations that prevented the game developers from accurate representing book girth.

Is this list of books 100% accurate?

No. Not only is my list surely lacking some unique titles, it’s also likely not assigning authors 100% accurately. The sometimes low resolution of the text on the book assets coupled with the dim lighting means that I had to assume book titles sometimes. If the book title isn’t accurate, then any hope for assigning an author (in the case that the book is real) is lost. Additionally, some titles are shared across multiple real-life books. For example, there are many real-world books titled “The Fortress.” Rather than consider one version as the version intended by Giant Sparrow, I instead opted to assign no author.

Is What Remains of Edith Finch based on a true story?

No.