albarosan's review
challenging
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
alyssayafan's review against another edition
4.0
4/5–if you had to read this for a class and didn’t like it (you probably had to read a few of the more famous ones not the whole book) give it a try. it’s much much more enjoyable to read on your own accord
zjunjunia's review against another edition
5.0
Gifted by a dear friend after meeting her for the first time in real life and bought on the Book Barge. It was shelved for too long and I can't believe I hadn't read it sooner when I finally got into it. Each story a marvel. My favourties were one which deeply used mathematical concepts of combinatronics. The levels of abstraction e.g. writing about an author who is thinking of writing a book that already exists. Not sure which ones but Borges breaks all the walls.. 3rd, 4th, 5th ad infinitum.
Highlights to come some day.
Highlights to come some day.
thewintersings's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
kingtoad's review
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
dishnu_das's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
lizmart88's review against another edition
3.0
Borges is Borges. That's all I can say. Get lost in his worlds and you will either love it or hate it.
bdesmond's review against another edition
4.0
I feel unfettered praise coming on. So first let me note that not every story in this collection garners five stars from me. Some of them are simply not for me. Some are good but not great. And still others are probably genius but I'm missing some key underlying component which would reveal the secret to me. The man is brilliant, and seemingly more well-read than God, so who can say what all I'm missing? But, I will use my review here to discuss my favorites of the bunch (all of which came from the first portion of the collection, The Garden of Forking Paths, and none of which came from the second portion, Artifices.) These are five-star stories; ones that I have been thinking about since I read them. They are: "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Babylon Lottery", and my favorite of the collection, "The Library of Babel."
These are explorations of the mind. Mirrors. Illusions. Dreams, and their dreamers. This is the universe. Chance. Fate. Infinitudes. Fractals. Time. Memory. Divinity.
A master of the short work, Borges accomplishes in ten pages what some authors struggle to broach in a thousand. You yearn for more, but the magic lies in the yearning, not in the idea of more. He is a conjuror, Borges, who understands that the question is always more intriguing than the answer, and so he delights in pulling you through each explorative permutation of the question.
Occupying the liminal space between reality and fiction, his stories are as much about what they produce in the reader as they are about what actually appears on the page; more so, even. I finished some of these stories at a loss to describe them. After "The Library of Babel", a mere eight pages, reality was momentarily an alien thing to me. The mind which produced the story seemed so conceptually alien that he felt like an ambassador from some far-flung future writing back to us through time.
I had of course heard of Borges before, but I was unaware of what to expect from his stories. As such, I was completely blown away; and more than once. His influence has clearly sent ripples through fiction, through science-fiction, through magical realism, and through many, many creations since his time. And they are fiction, yes, these stories. But often they felt more like a vehicle of exploration; linguistic, philosophical, psychological, metaphysical, religious, mathematical, of course literary. From detective stories to the universe as library, there's a little something of everything here. And I'll certainly be reading more.
These are explorations of the mind. Mirrors. Illusions. Dreams, and their dreamers. This is the universe. Chance. Fate. Infinitudes. Fractals. Time. Memory. Divinity.
A master of the short work, Borges accomplishes in ten pages what some authors struggle to broach in a thousand. You yearn for more, but the magic lies in the yearning, not in the idea of more. He is a conjuror, Borges, who understands that the question is always more intriguing than the answer, and so he delights in pulling you through each explorative permutation of the question.
Occupying the liminal space between reality and fiction, his stories are as much about what they produce in the reader as they are about what actually appears on the page; more so, even. I finished some of these stories at a loss to describe them. After "The Library of Babel", a mere eight pages, reality was momentarily an alien thing to me. The mind which produced the story seemed so conceptually alien that he felt like an ambassador from some far-flung future writing back to us through time.
I had of course heard of Borges before, but I was unaware of what to expect from his stories. As such, I was completely blown away; and more than once. His influence has clearly sent ripples through fiction, through science-fiction, through magical realism, and through many, many creations since his time. And they are fiction, yes, these stories. But often they felt more like a vehicle of exploration; linguistic, philosophical, psychological, metaphysical, religious, mathematical, of course literary. From detective stories to the universe as library, there's a little something of everything here. And I'll certainly be reading more.
lolgappa's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
kweekwegg's review against another edition
5.0
At first I was reading these stories intermittedly, but then I settled into reading it straight through. It's quite a ride, reading them one after the next. The first section feels like the experience of watching The Matrix for the first time, but with more layers of complexity. I particularly enjoy the 'mathematical' aspects of Borges storytelling -- it's hard to explain, but he manages to draw out plots from the drama of geometry and linear equations.