Kristin Todd

The first story, "The Zahir" seems to be about this coin that Borges himself finds.  The coin seems to be very distressing to Borges, but I didn't understand why that would be.  I thought it was very interesting that at the beginning Borges was describing the Zahir to be all these different items in different times of history in all different places.  I have concluded that the idea of whatever was engraved into that item in the certain points of time were very important to the people of that time period.  The other story, "The House of Asterion" I also thought was interesting.  It was short, so it was able to keep my attention better than any of the other stories.  The fact that Asterion was "locked" in his house, but could get out was very interesting.  I thought that it was weird that he didn't want to leave his house.  He would rather had others come to him.  There must be some reason why he doesn't leave, maybe it has to do with his mother being a queen, or it could just be some psychological problem within himself.