Although I have read many of the stories comprised in this book many times over the last few years, I only just recently finished the last few I had never gotten to. What can I say about Borges that doesn’t go without saying? He’s brilliant; each of his stories is a universe unto itself. For me, this book is overall a labyrinth of entertaining and incredibly thought-provoking mind games. Borges has his obsessions that slip into plot and text continuously: the infinite, identity, reality, and metaphysics in general. For years I have been wanting to do an in-depth study on him and his work in terms of science fiction for one of my English classes, but I have yet to get around to that. Someday I should--he is the ultimate fantasist, but his style is wholly alien to that which is generally associated with sf and fantasy. I am not going to ramble, and I’m not even going to attempt to describe these stories, because I know I would find it impossible to do so in any kind of accurate or worthy way. What I will say is that this is one of my favorite books, I will go back to it time and time again, and although I don’t necessarily think Borges is for everyone, those that have the time and interest to work through him (he can be difficult) should go to a library and get this book now.

Dare I say that I was slightly disappointed by this collection, after the revelation of Ficciones last year? It seems heretical to say it, but this is the situation I find myself in.

I think one of the key issues is that Labyrinths is a selection of Borges' works, by a number of translators. As a result, it somehow lost some of the intensity of the coherent collection. With the density of Borges' prose even a unified collection like Ficciones can be overwhelming, but at least has threads holding the disparate stories together. Clearly all Borges' fiction has recurring themes, but I found this selection less intellectually and emotionally satisfying than my previous read.

Nonetheless, Borges is an undoubted genius in my eyes, and while I would personally recommend reading one of his personal selections first, this is a well-respected collection and translation which has introduced many a reader to the delights of his work. ( )

Enjoy Borges: A nice light book for travel if you do not need all his works in one volume.

The sorts of bizarre little stories I'd rejoice over if I found them in isolation, but all of them together was a bit much. Very intellectual, rational, a lot of work to read. Puzzle-box stories. Not just puzzles-- the puzzle-box idea conjures up something of the very abstract, esoteric flavour: pure intellect.I didn't quite solve the puzzles, though, at least I think I'm missing things. The first story, for example, with its initial discursion on stories hiding another layer of reality underneath them, perceptible to a very few readers: was it such a story itself? And yet its nature would seem to preclude another reality discernible by contradictions, as it is about the reinventing of the world into one of pure intellect that is contradictory to everything in this reality.That story took me incredibly long to read, almost an hour for 20 pages. I noticed a woman beside me on the bus glancing at its pages, with the made-up-latin story name at the top, and it occurred to me to wonder if she thought it was fiction or non-fiction I was reading.Other things: what was the rite practised by the followers of the Phoenix, the one that needs no description? And should I have been able to figure out what the 20-word sentence of brother Jerome was, that was quoted and caused his downfall and yet was not itself quoted in the story, at least not that I could find? I feel a desire to inventory all the sentences in that story that contain exactly 20 words, and compare their meanings.While puzzling through one other story, I found myself reading sentences backwards in hopes that they would mean better that way, although if there were such hidden messages, they were probably lost in translation. It is appropriate that I started reading the book one fourth in, proceeded to past the two-thirds mark, then returned to the introduction, the beginning and finally the end. ( )

The Modern Library edition of this book has a woodcut by Stephen Alcorn on the dustjacket depicting a labyrinth whose walls consist of upended, open books. A figure in fedora and overcoat (Borges or the reader?) stands in the foreground. The strikes me as a pretty accurate visualization of this enjoyable collection of stories and essays arising out of bits of philosophy, mythology and literature. ( )