أكو كتب دسمة من تقراها تاخذ عقلك وفكرك كله ومتنطيك مجال..
واكو كتب خفيفة تقراها لو متقراها ما راح يصير عندك فرق ..
واكو كتب نكدر نسميها "عصرونية" .. اللي هيه الكتب اللي تقراها بين ما تقره كتاب ثاني هيجي بس حتى تغيرلك الجو.

وكتاب "المكتبة" لزوران زيفكوفيج من هذا النوع الأخير بالضبط ..
احداث كلها من عالم الخيال بس بنفس الوكت مرتبطة بأحداث حقيقية تصير ويانه بعالم الكتب .. ( )

Amazing collection of six short stories all metafictionally linked (via the 6th story) and all about libraries (and books, bibliophiles, etc.).

I found this book via my Amazon Kindle and its preview/sample; I'm glad I picked this up in hardcopy, as this will be reread many times. If I had to use analogies, I'd say this author's Borges mixed with a dash of Charles de Lint.

If you're anything of a book collector and don't mind a touch of magic in your reading, you'll love this book.

Now to see what other English-translation books I can get to read immediately from this great Serbian/Yugoslav author who's on my list of authors to read as much as possible.... ( )

New books keep arriving, and you can't bear to get rid of a single old one. And so, slowly and imperceptibly, the volumes crowd out everything before them. Like glaciers.

It is no secret that wife has reservations about my bibliomania, the consequences of filling our house with tomes until, inevitably, it collapses under the weight.

So she fears.

She mentioned often while we were abroad how piles sprouted and exponentially grew, how archipelagos became mountain ranges. I am guilty, I remain an addict.

The premise behind this book excited me. Živković avoided my expectations and made this universal. It could be nearly anywhere. The Belgrade of his experience is revealed in only the slimmest of detail. More problematic, was that each of the six section never mention a single author. What unfolds is a Borgesian procedural about the universe as a library. It wasn't satisfying, just a bland summoning to something greater.
( )

What would you do if you took a book off the shelf, read it, and then replaced it on the shelf only to find that after a few minutes of sitting in your chair or writing at your desk that the book had somehow reappeared by your side?
If you were a reader like the anonymous narrator of The Library you would not be surprised; not that your active mind would not be filled with questions about what is happening. As he says in the second of the six stories that comprise this small but eventful and exciting collection:
"I, however, wasn't surprised at all. I didn't let any of these annoying questions upset me. Long ago, I realized that the world is full of inexplicable wonders. It's no use even trying to explain them." (p 18)
Do not think that he takes the inexplicable lying down. No, he attempts to deal with the issues he faces, all dealing with books, and his experiences are alternately hilarious and horrifying; especially the "Infernal Library", a story that takes him . . . well you know where.
His world does not include the book that jumps off the shelf described above (that is from my own imagination), but he does have a mailbox in which the library volume entitled simply "World Literature" appears and reappears for what may seems like an infinite number of times. The narrator takes this in stride, always remembering to keep his mailbox neat and clean.

Zoran Zivkovic has six tales for the bibliophile that bring the reader in to a twenty-first century Kafkaesque world. Whether dealing with an on-line "virtual library" of everything he, the narrator, had written and would (perhaps) ever write, or trying to comprehend what kind of a library exists only at night inside a locked library. The challenge for the reader is to get beyond the apparent absurdity of the situations and discover the deeper questions that each eerie episode raises. It is only by trying to understand what each of these stories mean for both narrator and reader that you will be able to enjoy the further surprise and delight in store for you as you attempt to make your way through to the final story.

Having finished reading this I found myself with the feeling that I would never forget the libraries created by Zoran Zivkovic in this extraordinary collection. But just in case I do there is always the chance the book will miraculously appear beside me silently enticing me with its simple presence. ( )

Think Rod Sterling's "Night Gallery" centered on books. An intriguing collection of short tales (I was able to read it easily on one plane trip) that, through bizarre and wonderful tales, underscores some of the odder relationships we have with our books. ( )