Two more reading lists by Borges: "The Library of Babel" and "A Personal Library" [0].
Expansion on "The Library of Babel" [1]
"A Personal Library" is one of my favorite books list. Here's Borges own introduction:
> Over time, one's memory forms a disparate library, made of books or pages whose reading was a pleasure and which one would like to share. The texts of that personal library are not necessarily famous. The reason is clear. The professors, who are the ones who dispense fame, are interested less in beauty than in literature's dates and changes, and in the prolix analysis of books that have been written for that analysis, not for the joy of the reader.
> This series is intended to bring such pleasure. I will not select titles according to my literary habits, or a certain tradition, or a certain school or nation or era. I once said, "Others brag of the books they've managed to write; I brag of the books I've managed to read." I don't know if I am a good writer, but I think I am an excellent reader, or in any case, a sensitive and grateful one. I would like this library to be as diverse as the unsatisfied curiosity that has led me, and continues to lead me, in my exploration of so many languages and literatures. I know that the novel is no less artificial than the allegory or the opera, but I will include novels because they too have entered into my life. This series of heterogenous books is, I repeat, a library of preferences.
> Maria Kodama and I have wandered the globe of land and sea. We have visited Texas and Japan, Geneva, Thebes, and now, to gather the texts that are essential to us, we have traveled through the corridors and palaces of memory, as St. Augustine wrote.
> A book is a thing among things, a volume lost among the volumes that populate the indifferent universe, until it meets its reader, the person destined for its symbols. What then occurs is that singular emotion called beauty, that lovely mystery which neither psychology nor criticism can describe. "The rose has no why," said Angelus Silesius; centuries later, Whistler declared, "Art happens."
> I hope that you will be the reader these books await.
Expansion on "The Library of Babel" [1]
"A Personal Library" is one of my favorite books list. Here's Borges own introduction:
> Over time, one's memory forms a disparate library, made of books or pages whose reading was a pleasure and which one would like to share. The texts of that personal library are not necessarily famous. The reason is clear. The professors, who are the ones who dispense fame, are interested less in beauty than in literature's dates and changes, and in the prolix analysis of books that have been written for that analysis, not for the joy of the reader.
> This series is intended to bring such pleasure. I will not select titles according to my literary habits, or a certain tradition, or a certain school or nation or era. I once said, "Others brag of the books they've managed to write; I brag of the books I've managed to read." I don't know if I am a good writer, but I think I am an excellent reader, or in any case, a sensitive and grateful one. I would like this library to be as diverse as the unsatisfied curiosity that has led me, and continues to lead me, in my exploration of so many languages and literatures. I know that the novel is no less artificial than the allegory or the opera, but I will include novels because they too have entered into my life. This series of heterogenous books is, I repeat, a library of preferences.
> Maria Kodama and I have wandered the globe of land and sea. We have visited Texas and Japan, Geneva, Thebes, and now, to gather the texts that are essential to us, we have traveled through the corridors and palaces of memory, as St. Augustine wrote.
> A book is a thing among things, a volume lost among the volumes that populate the indifferent universe, until it meets its reader, the person destined for its symbols. What then occurs is that singular emotion called beauty, that lovely mystery which neither psychology nor criticism can describe. "The rose has no why," said Angelus Silesius; centuries later, Whistler declared, "Art happens."
> I hope that you will be the reader these books await.
[0] http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtborges.html [1] https://therumpus.net/2009/08/06/searching-the-library-of-ba...