The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadaluppi (Bloomsbury, £20 in UK)

Suffering from a touch of the bimillennial blues? Why not slip between the covers of the newly-updated Dictionary of Imaginary…

Suffering from a touch of the bimillennial blues? Why not slip between the covers of the newly-updated Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadaluppi for some imaginary stimulation? Through this book you can visit some of fiction's best alternative universes. It's a guide-book for the ultimate day-dreamer. Better known places include J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, the mystical land of Shangri-La, the magical world of Harry Potter, and John Lennon's Pepperland. Other weird and wonderful destinations include the bizarre world of Capillaria, a submarine country somewhere between the US and Norway. The inhabitants are a race of blonde women, Oihas (which translates as "perfect being") who share the land with the unfortunate Bullpops - creatures shaped like male genitalia which the Oihas eat, believing them to be the source of their powers of self-propagation. (See Frigyes Karinthy's Capillaria, published in Budapest in 1921, if you have to know more). With over 200 illustrations including maps, and detailed references to where the imaginary places originally cropped up, this is the handbook for the ultimate mind-trip. Don't leave your senses without it.