Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read this mostly in English. I recommend reading Tlon, Herbert Quain, The Library of Babel, The Garden of Forking Paths (maybe), Funes, and The Secret Miracle. The rest I could have lived without.

1. Tlon (5 stars)- Fantasy about an alien world which is really a commentary about our own.

2. The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim- I can't even rate this one because it went completely over my head. Completely.

3. Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quijote (2 stars)- Interesting idea, but mostly hated reading this story.

4. The Circular Ruins (3.5 stars)- This is a very "La Vida es Sueno" type story. It's lovely though not earth-shattering.

5. The Babylon Lottery/ The Lottery in Babylon (3 stars)- More of the ideas of infinite choices and possibilities expressed in The Library of Babel and The Garden of Forking Paths. This is not my favorite execution of Borges's ideas about possible futures and philosophy.

6. An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (4 stars)- Another review of a fictional author's work like in "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim." I like that he got to write about super interesting plot lines without actually having to write them. Borges describes a detective story "The God of the Labyrinth" in which the solution given is wrong, but the reader can figure the real solution out from the clues. I also like the idea of "April March," a novel with nine different beginnings going backwards in time.

7. The Library of Babel- (5 stars) Amazing thought experiment/ work of philosophy. (Note: The library in The Magicians anyone?)

8. The Garden of Forking Paths (4 stars)- One of the things that is particularly interesting to me about this story is that its concept of time has been hypothesized by the multiverse theory of physics. The first person to propose information that would later lead to the multiverse theory was Erwin Schrödinger, in 1952, some years after Borges wrote this story.

9. Funes (5 stars)- Love hearing about a completely different way of perceiving, understanding, and analyzing, but in real life memory experts do employ similar tactics to Funes. See eg, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

10. The Forms of the Sword (4 stars)- An interesting story about cowardice, Christianity, and shame with a Borges ending. Though I was surprised Borges spelled out the ending so clearly even though it was already clear. He usually trusts his reader more.

11. Theme of the Traitor (3 stars) - Ha! Clever and politically astute.

12. Death and a Compass (3 stars)- Read in Spanish and in English. Erik Lönnrot tries to solve murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern. This one seems to be a favorite as it appears in all three of my Borges anthologies, but it's not one of my favorites. It's tricky and clever but I don't get much more from it.
"... la realidad no tiene la menor obligacion de ser interesante."
"... reality does not have the slightest obligation to be interesting."

13. The Secret Miracle (5 stars)- I read this in Spanish and English. It is my favorite Borges story and it has stayed with me since I first read it in maybe 1998. I love its conception of reality, time, God, purpose, and the ephemerality of our work on Earth.

14. Three Versions of Judas (2 stars) - There's not too much I can say about this one.

15. The End (2 stars)- Just sad and weird.

16. The Sect of the Phoenix (2 stars)- Another not-good one.

17. The South (3 stars)- I read this in Spanish and in English. It's sad and and a strangely normal story for Borges.

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