The reading this week, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges was a collection made up of short stories and essays. I found there to be pros and cons to this type of reading. One on hand, I enjoyed that it could be read easily in pieces. Due to how short each writing was, you could easily pick the book up and do a bit of reading then put it down and not worry about it. On another hand, I found it made it a bit hard to stay invested in reading as there were not any long character arcs or long-term conflict to be resolved. Even though the stories were not all connected, there was underlying themes that could tie everything together.

Prior to this reading, I had not heard of Jorge Luis Borges, but after reading many of the blogposts I noticed it seemed many people had. Also, this was the only book I was able to borrow off of someone I knew. I can see why he is so well known. His work is well written, and even if I did not always understand what the stories were trying to give off, most of the works in the collection were entertaining enough to read. Many of the stories were thought provoking and different than something I had read before.

One of the writings I found especially interesting was the parable “Borges and I.” Although it was short, I found it though provoking. It felt as though “I” was feeling as though he was slowly losing himself to who he calls “Borges.” It is interesting because people will often say you can lose yourself with success, but you do not assume there would be self-awareness to go along with this. I am not sure if Borges actually felt this way about himself in real life, but it seemed as though “I” feared he would eventually have nothing self of his old self. It makes me wonder if the different sides were only meant to be noticed by “I” or if the author changed who he was based off the group he was surrounded with. It somewhat reminded me of the story of Jekyll and Hyde but obviously less extreme.

The word labyrinth seems to be used as a sort of metaphor throughout the book, I would be curious to know if it was and if so what for. Borges touches on many themes relating to infinity, life, fate, and destiny. Overall, I enjoyed the collection of stories and found them enjoyable to read. The stories provided many different emotions throughout and due to the nature of the book, what was coming next was always a surprise, which made it fun to read.

My question for this week is was this your first experience with reading a book of short stories? Did you enjoy it or not? Would you continue to do it after reading this or no?