Living Library
Eleven original books and the zero-dependency reading engine they run on.
The short version
The reading engine is inherited between volumes: the typography and page mechanics stay fixed, and only the identity changes.
No public capture
Eleven volumes with content and engine complete, each in its own public repository. Not published to a store, so no store claim is made.
How Living Library works
A collection of original Turkish literary works — codices, a fable collection and several narrative volumes — delivered through a hand-built, dependency-free reading engine that treats the page turn, the typesetting and the reading performance as the product rather than the wrapper.
The problem
Reading applications optimise for library management. The actual experience — how a page turns, how a paragraph is set, whether the text is worth setting — is where the attention should go.
The architecture
Each volume is a self-contained build with its own Python pipeline producing the packaged reading experience. The engine is carried forward between books rather than rewritten, and has no runtime dependencies at all.
The interesting decision
Form discipline as an inheritance rule: when a new volume adopts the engine, the page mechanics, typesetting and performance characteristics are preserved deliberately, and only colour, atmosphere, cover and metadata change. The reading experience cannot regress from book to book because it is not re-implemented.
What it does now
Eleven volumes of original writing with a consistent reading experience, and a stated editorial position — a fable "leaves an observation rather than imposing a lesson".
Worth knowing
- The books are original work, not a reader for someone else’s catalogue.
- A zero-dependency reading engine — the page turn and the typesetting are the engineering, not a wrapper around a library.
- The engine is explicitly inherited between volumes, so the reading experience cannot regress.
- Editorial structure is deliberate: thematic clusters that order the work without imposing continuity.