bemmesr reviewed Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Challenging
4 stars
It took me a while to get into a routine of reading this book. For a relatively new reader like me, this book was quite challenging. On most pages I needed to look up multiple words to have any hope of understanding what was going on.
I attribute this to Borges' level of precision. Because each word is so essential to the intended meaning, with little to no redundancy, misunderstanding one word in a sentence constitutes misunderstanding the sentence.
I wasn't challenged only by my small vocabulary. Many of the stories in this book demanded nearly all of my attention because their constructions were so intricate. But on each occasion where I took the time to reread a page until I felt I had a satisfactory level of understanding, I also felt that the payoff was worthwhile.
That is to say, there is a big variety in terms of accessibility. …
It took me a while to get into a routine of reading this book. For a relatively new reader like me, this book was quite challenging. On most pages I needed to look up multiple words to have any hope of understanding what was going on.
I attribute this to Borges' level of precision. Because each word is so essential to the intended meaning, with little to no redundancy, misunderstanding one word in a sentence constitutes misunderstanding the sentence.
I wasn't challenged only by my small vocabulary. Many of the stories in this book demanded nearly all of my attention because their constructions were so intricate. But on each occasion where I took the time to reread a page until I felt I had a satisfactory level of understanding, I also felt that the payoff was worthwhile.
That is to say, there is a big variety in terms of accessibility. Some of the stories are quite limpid, and yet still interesting or unexpected. But I'd have to say that most of the stories and essays in this book are challenging at least to the likes of me.
The reward to this challenge is an insight into the mind of someone who has clearly spent countless hours thinking about a variety of fundamental philosophical questions, the type of question regular people like you or me often entertain on occasion, but never put serious effort into answering. Borges' perspective on these subjects is valuable because of the endless thought he has put into them, whether you consider him as right or wrong.
