Julie Morvitz

I really liked The Book of Sand. It reminded me a lot of The Zahir, because the narrator becomes obsessed with the book, just like the narrator becomes obsessed with the Zahir. The difference in these stories is that in The Zahir, the narrator couldn’t stop thinking about the Zahir even after he got rid of it, and I don’t think it ever left him. We don’t really know if the narrator is still obsessed with the book after he leaves it in the library, but it seems more like he can move on with his life, even if he can’t walk on the street where the library is. The story, like many other Borges short stories, includes the idea of the labyrinth. I liked the idea of a never ending book, but there was no way of actually reading the book. Besides it not having a beginning page or an end page, there was no consistency in the middle and none of the pages were in order. Nonetheless, I liked the story.