In the Stacks

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In the Stacks: Short Stories About Libraries and Librarians, ed. by Michael Cart

First, let us all repeat together the librarian mantra my co-worker and I often say: everything is better in the stacks.

I thought this was a fun idea so I picked it up, but by halfway through I was wondering what I was thinking.  I think I don't like themed collections of short stories.  Soon I was asking myself why I was even reading it.

There are several really good short stories in this book, though.  I loved the Italo Calvino story that kicks off the book.  There's an excellent Ray Bradbury piece, and a fun little murder mystery.  Of course the famous Borges story is included.

Some of the stories seemed to be really kind of a stretch, included because they weren't terrible and mentioned something about something that might be connected to a library somehow.  It's really a fairly large collection--or at least it felt that way.  I got pretty tired.


Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 4, 2014 at 4:43 AM

    :/ I always end up feeling this way about short story collections. Even if there are several good stories in it, I'm always sad there aren't MORE good stories.

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