Inspired by the winding, cyberpunk-worthy passageways of modern-day Tokyo, these bookends invert expectations, shaped themselves like books but carved out to reveal city-based stories.

Most sculptural book-bracketing devices stand out as different from the volumes between them, but these read like novels set at either end of a shelf. Within the voids, detailed solids populate the urban landscape, from architectural elements right down to weeds and grit and grime.

Japanese designer Monde designed them as individual works but also to work in pairs, curving around and creating an implied scene. Hidden from view, this suggests thin passages behind your books — the result: a temptation to take volumes off the shelf for further exploration.

For anyone who has traveled the alleyways of Asia, from China to Japan, these will feel both dark and adventurous but perhaps also cozy and familiar at the same time. Monde also crafts other miniature urban scenes, but there is something special about these ones, sandwiched between walls that set creative limitations (but also create opportunities for cleverness.

Curling up with a glass of wine with a story has never been easier thanks to Librottiglia, a project that wraps printed pages around bottles of Italian reds and whites.

Each wine is paired with a specifically selected literary short intended to match the characteristics of the vintage with an appropriate genre and narrative. Drinkers are encouraged to pour a glass then pour over the pages of a unique tale.

Designed by Reverse Innovation for the Matteo Correggia winery in Italy, each 375-ML bottle is good for two glasses and an absorbing literary adventure. The covers in each case double as both book titles as well as wine labels and descriptions.

A piece of twine wraps the book to each bottle while the words themselves are printed on a thick paper stock to round out the stylized packaging. Stories include The Frog in the Belly, I Love You Forget Me and others by journalists, humorists and mystery writers.

“Today we read books on computers, tablets and mobile phones,” note the creators. “Why not on a bottle of wine?” they ask. “After years of discussion about analogue vs. digital, we want to propose an alternative: oenological” (meaning: related to the cultivation and study of wine).

If your mobile device runs out of batteries on the streets of Grenoble, simply find one of these machines, specify a desired duration, and receive a free printed short story to read in a park or on a train.

Deployed by the publishers of Short Édition, these automated kiosks are online 24 hours a day with a selection of 600 short stories, works selected by a community of over 140,000 subscribers. Would-be readers are directed to select the length of story they wish to read, then wait a few moments while the tale is printed.

No one is suggesting we stop traveling with our cell phones on hand, but for people who need a break from the screen or desire some alternative entertainment, this provides another option. The project creates not just printed stories but focal points for urban interaction, changing the way we think about and connect with cities and one another.

That said, the ‘stories’ component is still a critical component of this civic intervention: “Stories are an important part of our life. We need them to construct who we are as individuals. More and more people don’t take the time anymore to sit and read a book. This is a way to have a little ‘bite’ of a story, just for a couple of minutes.”

It is a fantastic endeavor and nearly finished – a movie made up of 56,800 stop-motion paintings, all presented in the style and told by the characters of the tale’s protagonist: Vincent van Gogh.

The first full-length feature of its kind, Loving Vincent uses van Gogh’s own techniques to explore the life and death of the artist, “through his paintings and by the characters that inhabit them.”

As its creators explain, “the intrigue unfolds through interviews with the characters closest to Vincent and through dramatic reconstructions of the events leading up to his death.”

This production by Breakthru Films features 120 of the artist’s paintings and draws its plot from 800 letters, using them to flesh out a deeper picture of this often-misunderstood painter whose work goes well beyond his famous works, such as Starry Night.

In van Gogh’s own words: “Well, the truth is, we cannot speak other than by our paintings” – these industrious filmmakers are taking him at his word, and animating his images and subjects to tell his story.

Breakthru was founded by Oscar award-winning animator Hugh Welchman. Fortunately the project raised sufficient funds on Kickstarter, so given how far they have come one can only hope that (unlike the life of the painter featured) this work will not end in tragedy.

Treating abandoned buildings and urban surfaces more like pages in a book than bricks to tag, this street artist brings an illustrator’s touch and storyteller’s approach to his unique graffiti.

Though based in the Netherlands, Daan Botlek frequently ranges far from Rotterdam to cities including Berlin and Bangkok, where he draws surreal scenes with imaginary characters.

Some of these creations seem to be contemplating dangerous acts, while others fight through their artificial environments or even with one another.

These much-humanized, frame-breaking figures are only one facet of his portfolio, but they uniquely bridge the gap between the artist’s experience with illustration on the one hand and street art on the other.

Aside from on-paper drawings and character creation, his other public art series include a set of white cubes, again reprising this three-dimensional approach to bring objects, in this case, off the page (or wall, as it were).