Q. Do mentions “in passing” of books require complete endnote citations? The author explains he is “naming them as works that exist in the world,” not “citing” them. For example, “Books in my house when I was a child included Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.” I could find nothing in CMOS about this.
A. Books that are mentioned in passing and not relied on for substantive information don’t need to be formally cited in a note or bibliography entry. We will try to make this explicit in a future edition of CMOS.