Perhaps it was my misspent youth. Between Lois Lowry’s “Anastasia” series, which included, at the end of a every chapter, lists or excerpts from Anastasia’s project du jour; and multitudes of appendiced and gloassaried fantasy and science fiction novels, I’ve always been a sucker for those books that have a little somethin’ extra.
Are non-fiction mini-essays on the unknown world of parasites interspersed throughout the novel, such as in the vampire YA Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld? I’m so there.
Is there a list of words in the foreign language used by your otherworldly fantasy characters, such as in the NYT bestselling Tairen Soul series, by C.L. Wilson? Sign me up.
Is there an explanation for the American readers of your Australian slang, such as in the Norton Award winning trilogy Magic or Madness?, by Justine Larbalestier? Ta, mate!
Are there footnotes or appendices, real or imagined, such as those found in the works of Nabokov, David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.), or Marisha Pessl? Yummy!
Does a cast of characters appear at the beginning, as in countless Harlequin Intrigues? My own series employs this device, as the conjunction of a large cast and their use of secret codenames makes a cheat sheet come in handy.
Are there: epigraphs, “books within books,” pullquotes (cf. The Wire), or chapter titles)? Can’t go wrong by me.
I even think my weakness for epistolary novels can be attributed to this fondness for text that goes a step beyond the norm.
My love for meta-text is well-known by anyone who has read my secret society girl books. On top of the aforementioned extra-textual “extras” like the cast of characters, the story itself is chock full of goodies like lists, emails, IM conversations, letters, paper excerpts, footnotes, parenthetical asides, chapter titles, and–cherry on top–a thematic, epigraph-like confession that introduces each chapter.
Not to everyone’s taste, I suppose. (I’ve even heard that many readers don’t notice the presence of chapter titles, so inured are they to the standard 1,2,3.) But to me, whenever I find something extra in a book — even if it’s just a little block-quoted snippet of a letter from one character to another — it’s like discovering a special treasure. Straight narrative is great, don’t get me wrong (in fact, I employ it in my YA fantasy novel, Rampant), but sometimes, I like a little something extra.
What about you? Do you like those little extras? Which ones appeal to you? Which ones don’t? Do you react differently when they occur in the text and when they form part of an extra-textual glossary or appendix? Do you wish more authors included appendices or even bibliographies?
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Oh, I love the little extras. Maps, geneologies, apple pie recipies
– anything which adds to the uniqueness of the story and sets it apart from the Endless Parade of Sameness. I’m a girl who likes a buffet. 
Maps! How could I forget maps? *Love* maps.
There was a time I considered putting a floor plan of the tomb in my books. Never happened. I can’t draw.
I love quotations at the beginning of chapters, whether they are real or snippets from imaginary letters or newspaper accounts.
But those are nice-to-have’s, not have-to-have’s.
If I need a flowchart to follow relationships, I give the book a pass.
I prefer NOT to have to refer back to list of characters, etc. to be able to follow the plot. That takes me out of the action.
I love ‘em!
In my own books I have snippets of a gossip column that interplay with the text. Sadly, not everyone reads them. I had a reader email me about something in a book that she couldn’t find the original reference too (accusing me of pulling a fastone by pulling something out of nowhere). The original bit is in the gossip column, which she had skipped over.
I love the tension, the back-and-forth, the red herrings and misunderstandings you can produce/play with this way. It’s just fun.
ooh, I love them. I feel like the characters are giving me just a little bit extra. Like they put it in there themselves.
I enjoy them when they’re real, but I’ve started to take a real dislike to the phony quotes so often used as chapter headers in historical romance. They feel like a very threadbare device at this point.
I’m not sure I understand what “real” means in this context.
Funny, I am not a quote person. In fact, the thing I find really annoying are made-up quotes by fictional people at the beginning of chapters. I also don’t really go for chapter titles. I’m fine with 1, 2, 3.
Guess I’m rather dull in that regard.
I like having appendices, if there is a made up language or something. But let me know at the very beginning that such a thing exists! Nothing more annoying that muddling your way through a book only to find out when you finish there was this handy little dictionary or appendix at the end that would’ve helped me greatly.
By “real,” I mean a genuine quote said or written by an actual person.
I thought I was the only one who loved that stuff. LOL. I never used to think maps, etc. were important for the books I read. I only realized later that those little snippets help craft and visualize the larger story, even if I’m not aware I’m using it (I may pull up that map in my mind without realizing I got it from the first pages of the book).
Although I do agree with another poster that if you _require_ these to follow the story, that says something about the story.