This book includes short stories and essays selected from other Borges works.

I read this work because it is included in the Fadiman and Major "Lifetime Reading Plan" (4th edition). It is my first Borges reading, and my 76th completed selection from the Plan.

While reading the short stories, I found it necessary to pause at the end of each story and just let the story sink in. Much of Borges work is about metaphysical and philosophical concepts, such as time, perception, the infinite, and recursive / recurring events.

I found the short stories to be challenging but rewarding reading. Many of the short stories have allusions to other Borges short stories, and to works by other authors, so in some stories it helped me to do a little research after I finished the story, to feel I understood the story.

The essays and parables included in Labyrinths were easier to read than I expected, and clearer than I expected. They are positioned at the end of the book, so my expectations were based on the preceding short stories which are not transparent.

The book is both a selection of material from other Borges works, so one has to trust the editor, and translated from spanish, so one has to trust the translator.

The vocabulary of the translation is challenging in some places. My favorite phrase, from the story "The Immortal" is "Intolerably, I dreamt of an exiguous and nitid labyrinth". Having a dictionary (and maybe Google) handy was a requirement throughout Labyrinths, but this particular phrase retained its mystery for me even with Webster's help.

Another collection of Borges is also on the Lifetime Reading Plan: Dreamtigers. Based on Labyrinth, with heavy allusions to the mysticism of both dreams and tigers, I look forward to reading Dreamtigers. ( )

Deeply philosophical and unlike anything you have ever read. Every word in this collection of short stories has meaning. ( )

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.