books, candles and wine bottles

I read a wonderful book last winter. It has magic doors opening from our world into an underground labyrinth filled with books, candles and wine bottles (what more could you wish for?), mystery, bees, time travel, books where you read about yourself, a sea of honey ... I could go on. 

I'll just give you a few excerpts from Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea:

Zachary picks a different hall to wander down, this one has shelves carved into the stone, books piled in irregular cubbies along with teacups and bottles and stray crayons. [...] 

There are so many candles that the scent of beeswax permeates everything, soft and sweet mingling with paper and leather and stone with a hint of smoke. Who lights all of these if there's no one else here? Zachary wonders as he passes a candelabra holding more than a dozen smoldering tapers, wax dripping down over the stone that has clearly been dripped on by many, many candles before.

One door opens into a round room with intricately carved walls. A single lamp sits on the floor and as Zachary walks around it the light catches different parts of the carvings, revealing images and text but he cannot read the whole story.

 ..

Zachary picks up her glass of wine from the table and takes a sip of it. It tastes like winter sun and melting snow, bubbles bright and sharp and bursting.

 ..

He takes a book from a stack near the wall and puts it down again. He wanders down a hallway lined with curving shelves so the books surround him at all angles, like a tunnel. He cannot tell how the ones above his head manage not to fall. 

He tries opening doors. Some are locked but many open, revealing rooms filled with more books, chairs an desks and tables with bottles of ink and bottles of wine and bottles of brandy. The sheer volume of books intimidates him. He does not know how one would choose what to read.

He hears more people than he sees, footsteps and whispers close but unseen. He spots a figure in a white robe lighting candles and a woman so absorbed in the book she is reading that she does not look up as he passes.

He walks through a hall filled with paintings, all images of impossible buildings. Floating castles. Mansions melded together with ships. Cities carved into cliffs. The books around them all seem to be volumes on architecture. A corridor leads him to an amphitheater where actors appear to be rehearsing Shakespeare.