- Anathem has a distributed network of libraries of most knowledge with an interesting time-limited distirbution scheme.
- Snow Crash has A Librarian -- and also a hypercard knowledge system.
- If On A Winter's Night, A Traveller by Italo Calvino features books and libraries prominently. They're not exactly magical, but they're not...not magical, either.
edit: it's not a novel, but the library in the sands in Avatar is another fine example of this trope.
Discworld definitely, though none of the books focus really specifically on the library, the whole concept of L-Space and the related plots are wonderful.
"instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the (“neo-realistic”) novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic."
oh, hell. Sandman. Dream of the endless has a library full of all the books their author's didnt' write. Like Marlowe's "The Merrie Comedy of the Redemption of Dr. Faustus", or Wodehouses' "Psmith and Jeeves".
- Discworld is an obvious thing here.
- Anathem has a distributed network of libraries of most knowledge with an interesting time-limited distirbution scheme.
- Snow Crash has A Librarian -- and also a hypercard knowledge system.
- If On A Winter's Night, A Traveller by Italo Calvino features books and libraries prominently. They're not exactly magical, but they're not...not magical, either.
edit: it's not a novel, but the library in the sands in Avatar is another fine example of this trope.