I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land

by Connie Willis

Jim is in New York City at Christmastime shopping a book based on his blog—Gone for Good—premised on the fact that “being nostalgic for things that have disappeared is ridiculous.” Progress decides for people what they need and what’s obsolete. It’s that simple. Of course, not everyone agrees. After Jim bombs a contentious interview with a radio host who defends the sacred technology of the printed, tangible book, he gets caught in a rainstorm only to find himself with no place to take refuge other than a quaint, old-fashioned bookshop.

Ozymandias Books is not just any store. Jim wanders intrigued through stacks of tomes he doesn’t quite recognize the titles of, none with prices. Here he discovers a mysteriously pristine, seemingly endless wonderland of books—where even he gets nostalgic for his childhood favorite. And, yes, the overwhelmed and busy clerk showing him around says they have a copy. But it’s only after Jim leaves that he understands the true nature of Ozymandias and how tragic it is that some things may be gone forever…

From beloved, multiple-award-winning, New York Times best-selling author Connie Willis comes I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, a novella about the irreplaceable magic of books.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Novella, Books About Books, Short Stories, Adult

88 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 30, 2018

About the author

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.

She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).

She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. She also has one daughter, Cordelia.

Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students and faculty of the future University of Oxford. These pieces include her Hugo Award-winning novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog and the short story "Fire Watch," found in the short story collection of the same name.

Willis tends to the comedy of manners style of writing. Her protagonists are typically beset by single-minded people pursuing illogical agendas, such as attempting to organize a bell-ringing session in the middle of a deadly epidemic (Doomsday Book), or frustrating efforts to analyze near-death experiences by putting words in the mouths of interviewees (Passage).

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: A solid, sincere 4* of five

I encountered this tale in a Kindle-sale email and thought, "I've never heard of this one! Off I go to see..." and of course I *have* read it as I recalled as soon as I ogled the terrible cover. I bought it, it was a whoppin' 99¢ and even *I* can blow a buck, to re-experience the story.

If Jim existed in real life, and his blog...Gone For Good...was a real blog, I'd be all over it. The idea of a blog based on the argument that losing obsolescent things/processes/products is a Good Thing (in the old-fashioned Martha Stewart sense) stirs my Old Testamentness and makes me long for someone to bash into the dust with the Absolute Rightness of my refutations.

Jim is taught the error of his ways in this brief novella, and in a satisfying manner. I would sell your mother, dear reader, into a life of horrifying cruel servitude to be admitted to Ozymandias's Books. (My own mother is dead, therefore unsuited to the purpose of exchanging things of value. Otherwise, well, bye Mama.) Connie Willis has written two books I've liked, this one and Inside Job; I think she's got some good story ideas but was turned off by her too-frequently arch storytelling voice. (See To Say Nothing of the Dog for the apotheosis of this issue; I was panther-screeching outraged by the thing.)

So understand this about my four-star rating of this tale: It is like a narwhal, real but so freaky to see in actual factual reality that it could spawn myths of unicorn-mermaid hybrids.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to rate as a story as it’s really a plea to consider what happens when books are lost and ruined by fire or floods, or are not digitized but your library thinks they are and de-acquisitions books and they can no longer be found.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

It showed up in my feed from Richard, and I immediately downloaded a copy and immediately read it, because I love Connie Willis' writing that much.

Now I have to go back and see what Richard thought. It's very sad, not quite Last of the Winnebagos sad, but heading that way. There are a tremendous number of books that no one wants [right now], and I don't expect anyone to try and save everything. But today I finished a book I haven't read in 47 years, and being able to remember enough to hunt up a replacement copy is just a little bit magic. It isn't necessary to preserve all the books: just the ones anyone might ever want to take a peak at.

And yes, I am full of the irony of the Amazon Kindle system which permits me to buy a text, but to only enable me to keep a copy as long as I own a dedicated reader, and as long as Amazon is able and willing to keep giving me access to it.

Not having to store or carry hundreds of books is a boon, but it's very strange to spend money on books as ephemeral as leprechaun gold.

***

2 April 2023

I had completely forgotten this story, and then Richard's review popped up in my feed, so I had to read it again.

Personal copy

[Alysa H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mildly entertaining novella for book lovers, but it is a little thin on ideas, in keeping with its thinness of size. Cynical man walks into mysterious book depository where they collect "at risk" books. Nearly the entire story consists of one of the employees explaining things to the man, who has snuck into the work area under false pretenses. She claims to be super busy, yet she is somehow able to spend all this time with him, and does not question his presence. Man realizes that printed books are wonderful and have value. There is a supernatural twist. That is pretty much it. Okay.

I appreciate Willis' identification of all the different ways in which books can be lost -- fire, flood, time, children, etc. -- but I was also quite viscerally offended by her assertion that librarians randomly "cull" library books without any thought to their rarity or intrinsic value beyond current popularity. First off, it's called weeding, not culling, and it is an important part of library function and maintenance, and it is never done as blindly as Willis seems to think. No librarian would toss out a rare or scarce book of any kind, and certainly not without checking for other available copies. I mean, seriously. Does Willis hate libraries or something?


** I received a Review Copy of this book via NetGalley **

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being a book lover means I also love stories about book, libraries, etc. , so this novella seemed right up that book loving alley of mine. Plus I wanted to try the author I’ve heard so much about. And 60 minutes later the verdict is…ok. A modern day fable about a modern day man, a tech committed blogger so sold on the out with the old in with the new thing that his digitally addled brain can’t compute the importance of actual physical book preservation. Lo and behold a rainy day finds him stumbling through the streets of New York City and into one of antiquarian bookstores he believes are right to go extinct. And of course Ozymandias (Look at my works ye mighty and despair. In fact, the title is from the same source, but mildly altered) Books isn’t just any old bookstore, it’s a veritable depository of treasures…or for us readers it’s a moral. So it’s a Christmas Carol style parable, the man is shown the error of his ways and his worldview is reformed. Not quite as elegant though, the moral here is very heavy handed for one thing, the writing isn’t as imaginative. Also someone fact check this thing please before it goes into publication commanding $40 for a limited print. Sleepy as I am fast approaching midnight this glaring error can’t be overlooked…The Great Fire of London took place a year later than 1665 as the book has it. Is it irony or just negligence to get such an important date wrong while proselytizing the importance of knowledge. I don’t think I’m going to invest the time to investigate other dates, for such a brief read it seems like a disproportionate investment of time. This was cute enough and it works as a cautionary tale, but then again readers everywhere already knows all this and nonreaders by definition don’t get to find out. There is a good amount of books out there in similar vein that are really terrific, this one was just enjoyable enough and refreshingly brief. Thanks Netgalley.

[The Captain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahoy there me mateys! I received this fantasy eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. So here are me honest musings . . .

The cover drew me in and three things convinced me to read this book:
1) Connie Willis wrote the doomsday book and it was seriously one of the best books I have ever read ;
2) It is a Subterranean Press book and they do great work; and
3) The story takes place in a bookstore.

I loved this quick paced novella by Connie Willis. It actually feels at first like yer reading a true-life account. Then the protagonist enters Ozymandias Books. It is no ordinary bookstore. The books seem to be shelved with no organization, there are no prices in any of the books, and the store goes on forever. As Jim enters further into the bookstore and learns more about its function, his idea of the disposability of the physical book begins to change. In an era where the e-book is a popular form, those of us readers who cling to our beloved physical copies of childhood favourites and wish we could visit the lost Library in Alexandria will highly enjoy this story of Connie Willis. She captures a moment where changing technology and nostalgia collide and makes ye think due to her masterful writing.

This be the last read in me April BookBum Club Challenge! Much thanks to the BookBum Club for giving me the incentive to finally read this wonderful “short and sweet” book (168 pgs). Day four – challenge complete! Arrrr!

So lastly . . .
Thank you Subterranean Press!

Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...

[Greg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Generally speaking, I love Connie Willis's fiction. But this is one of those big, big exceptions.

Strictly from a plotting standpoint, there's nothing positive to say about this book. The main character is simultaneously a punching bag for Willis's ideas about books in general, and so incredibly stupid that what is immediately obvious to the reader is presented as a huge revelation at the end. He's one-dimensional and oblivious, and the ideas he represents (digital works in general, as well as digitization) are presented so ham-handedly that it makes you wonder how anyone else would ever take him seriously, except that apparently people do.

That's because this is little more than a screed against ebooks, against digital preservation, and against libraries engaging in collection development. The last of the three is in many ways the worst. Willis touched on this idea in Bellwether but while it was charming and fun there, here she presents it as akin to book burning. Somewhere along the way Willis seems to have decided that libraries and archives should be synonymous, which is frankly absurd. Without the "weeding" part of collection development, there's no room for new additions. Ignoring the slightly absurd idea that removing from libraries the books that are never checked out somehow will lead to destroying them for all eternity, the lack of refreshing a collection means that library usage will drop because of the (correct) perception that there's nothing new and it's poorly maintained.

If anything, Willis (and the protagonist) miss the obvious bridge between the two viewpoints presented in this book; digital preservation can keep these books from vanishing forever. Why not join forces? But that idea is lost here, and the end result is a story that comes across as shrill and unyielding. Willis's authorial voice ultimately feels as inflexible as that of her main character.

Despite a short page count it took me three months to finish this book, because halfway through I put it down with a feeling of profound distaste. And the sad thing is as someone who's in the process of giving away a lot of books, I know what an agonizing decision each departure is. I am in many ways the target audience as there's that perpetual fear of, "if I give this away, I will never, ever be able to read it ever again." It will take, however, someone with a defter and more reasoned touch to write that story in a way that will resonate with me. This, ultimately, comes across as embarrassing at best.

The cover sure is nice, though.

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is very Connie Willis. A lot, and sadly it feels like a rehash of old themes - books being pruned Bellwether style, mentions to St Paul's cathedral, people not listening when they should or the daily routines overtaking what truly matters.

I love Connie Willis but she did this theme better in other places and this short story feels kind of like a filler dead-end.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Way back in either 1992 or 1993 I was at an American Library Association meeting. Along with the usual business meetings and demonstrations the program listed an event where Science Fiction writers would read from their books and, as I found out later, not only sign the books but give them away. I went along and happily sat there while Connie Willis, John Barnes, Lisa Mason and Gene Wolfe read from their latest books. Among the signed books I walked away with was Willis’s excellent Doomsday Book. After reading that I was an instant fan. Reading her new novella, I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land last night I was reminded of that reading. Antique Land is the story of Jim, a blogger who believes all that is shiny and new is good while all that is old and dusty and unpopular is of no worth in our high-tech society. The thrust of his blog, appropriately titled Gone for Good, is that “being nostalgic for things that have disappeared is ridiculous.”

Jim is in New York City as several publishers have expressed in publishing his blog as a book. Jim flames out in a radio interview where the host derides Jim for believing that such artifacts as the printed book should disappear and despite ebooks and Kindles that printed books form part of our heritage. Back on the street after the interview Jim ducks out of a rainstorm and into a bookstore, not a shiny and new bookstore but one of the classics with books piled everywhere, a sleeping cat and no discernible system of organization. As Jim waits out the rain he wanders the store reinforcing his anti-nostalgia views as he browses the shelves.

Jim will soon meet a woman whose views on the printed book are in precise opposition to his. He will learn of the high mortality rate for books through fires, floods, earthquakes, reader abuse, decay and a general lack of interest. Willis weaves some impressive statistics into her tale. It’s not a didactic approach, it’s wistful and sad. Through her characters she underlines the unfortunate truth that libraries are not preservation centers, all libraries have finite space and little interest in warehousing books no one seems to want to read. I still have my signed copy of The Doomsday Book and it’s excellence means it is unlikely to go out of print soon but millions of books are under threat of disappearing forever. Connie Willis’s novella is both entertaining and an excellent lesson in cultural amnesia. Gone for good as Jim would have it

[Teleseparatist · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 stars. I feel like this was a bit of a waste of Connie Willis's talent, and had all of its weaknesses and only a little of its strength. This short novella is a story of a single episode - a guy (writing a blog about how books might be a tad obsolete but who cares) wanders New York in the rain, ends up in a magical place, takes too long to realise the place is magic but is taught a valuable lesson.

There is some material to like here - the place is written with love, and the stories of forgotten and lost books give this a nostalgic atmosphere. Unfortunately, the story has little beyond the place and its ambience, and the books themselves. The character is somewhat insufferable - the story is of course about him learning his lesson, but I'm not convinced he needed to require that lesson quite so badly. And the didacticism is fairly obvious, and the ending - less than convincing or satisfactory.

I think the allusions to Connie Willis's other novels were quite pleasant though. Overall, however, if I had bought it, I don't think I would have been satisfied.

[Joel Adamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun novelette about books, libraries and the digital age.

[MB (What she read) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a reader and believe me, I GET the longing and worries about amazing unknown books disappearing into the ether lost to time. (Alibris is great, y'all. As is Amazon. And your local independent book re-seller.)

BUT, I've spent most of my life working in libraries and have absolutely no sentimentality left about the need for your local library's (quite underfunded, btw) necessity to save, preserve, house and keep for posterity the rejects (dirty/torn/useless/mildewed/racist/sexist/cat-pee'd upon) old junky books left in Grandpa's garage that people just can't bear to toss away. Sorry, no. We can't permanently house your old junk that will never ever ever ever get loved again, let alone read. The purpose of books--particularly library books--is to be read and used. If they're not, then libraries must make the hard decisions that mean that they are stocked with books within their limited space and with their limited funding that their patrons WANT TO READ. The value of a book is that it's wanted and read.

So, this book was rather annoyingly sentimental and illogical for me. Yes, I get that it's wish-fulfillment. Wouldn't it indeed be nice if there was a wonderful magic repository that kept, repaired, and preserved every written word everywhere? Yes, it would. And that's why this book is SF/Fantasy.

...BTW, if you like this type of thing, go read Jodi Taylor's St. Mary's Chronicles series for a more in depth take on this type of fantasy. (You'll love them.) And, oh my gosh, have you tried Kage Baker's "The Company" series? If not, you are in for a treat!

As far as this one goes, I feel about it kind of the same way I feel about readers who lament the death of the paper book. Yes, it's sad, sure. But it's also about as silly to me as mourning about the loss of buggy whips. What's important is that books etc. are available TO BE READ. How they're read, and what format they're read in, and on what DOES NOT MATTER! What's important is that they are readily available in WHATEVER format the reader prefers.

So, rant over. Now you know what I think about that.

I also think this book would have been stronger if the ending was less ephemeral. I like who, what, where, and why endings. There was nothing at all conclusive about this one. I find that frustrating and I bet others will as well.

However, problems aside, this book gives us something to mull over, right? I'd be interested in your reactions/thoughts if you'd like to comment.

[Alex Sarll]

Somewhere in the unchartable depths of New York, a man stumbles into Ozymandias Books, the place the last copies of lost books go, and is stunned at the size of it all ("I had not thought that death had undone so many"). I should be an absolute sucker for a story with that premise; I love the notion of such a place existing, even in the abstract, and how much better if one could simply stumble in out of the rain? But while I have really enjoyed some of her stuff, elsewhere Connie Willis has that odd knack for writing things which get on my nerves even when I wholeheartedly agree with the premise (cf the one about how Miracle on 34th Street is much better than It's A Wonderful Life*), and for all that the emotional core of this was never going to leave me untouched, that's beset by all manner of flaws. The narrator, for one – a blogger, in town for meetings with publishers, who writes about how it's foolish to mourn lost things, because if they were needed they'd stick around, or even come back like vinyl has**. Even in an age where bad takes really can get you a book deal, he's too much of an obvious straw man, too readily undone by an encounter with a favourite childhood paperback. He's incredibly acute when his deductions need to lead him into Ozymandias' back rooms, then incredibly obtuse in his repeated failure to work out how come the books don't look puffy, or smell of smoke, as appropriate. And as for the bit where he says that it was dropping a book in the bath which made him decide to get a Kindle – really?

The recent comeback of the novella is for the most part a welcome development (even if part of the motor for that is precisely the rise of the ebook, which makes the economics on slim volumes less forbidding), but only in so far as it prevents stories which work at this length from being artificially bloated into novels. This one feels like a short story padded out with too many missed realisations, too much of a desire to check off every category in A Universal History of the Destruction of Books. It's absolutely a tragedy that so many books, however irrelevant they now seem, should be lost to fire, flood or 'de-acquisition', but capturing the scale of that loss doesn't mean you need a page-count to match where a gem-like vignette could catch the sorrow so much better.

*I had been under the impression this was another of her Christmas stories, hence saving it for December, but really there's only one blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to pin it there.
**I have no problem at all with vinyl's comeback, but it's a shame the cassette revival doesn't get a mention, because in its blindly nostalgic resurrection of a real stinker of a format, it somehow manages to disprove everyone's point.

[Daniela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un nouvelle increíble de Connie Willis que tiene ciertas remembranzas a "Mendel el de los libros" de Stefan Zweig.
Demuestra el amor de Willis por los libros, pero también su preocupación por la desaparición física de ellos, sin que nos demos cuenta a veces y otras sucediendo de manera repentina, pero ambas catastróficas para nuestra historia como especie:

"... Todo lo que dije acerca de que solo permitimos que desaparezcan las cosas que no necesitamos fue una mentira gigantesca. No hay toma de decisiones en el proceso. Todo es completamente accidental: una conflagracion aquí, un cachorro al que le están saliendo los dientes allá, cañerías con fugas y guerras y mantequilla de maní y ratones de bibliotecas y quema y sacrifico de libros o quedarse afuera bajo la lluvia [...] Y ni siquiera sabemos que se han ido. Al menos cuando ardió la Biblioteca de Alejandría, lo supimos. Aquí, está sucediendo frente a nuestros propios ojos, y ni siquiera podemos verlo... "

[Kaia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did Connie Willis get a bee in her bonnet about library weeding policies and write a novella about it? Joking, obviously, as the book deals with book loss much more broadly, but she is clearly not happy that libraries get rid of books.

[Joshua (ithildins) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the book again, and I must say I still got emotional at the end of the story when our protagonist realises just what he stumbled onto and how wrong he was to dismiss the physical book's necessity for archival purposes.

I will say this, though: for a book warning society/readers not to count on the "Cloud" to save every published work, the fact that a hardback from Amazon costs $100 is pretty hypocritical :D

----

This book will forever have a special place in my heart because I was practically in tears by the end. Like our narrator, I kept thinking about the centuries' worth of books lost due to fire, water, time, war, accidents . . .

It's a never-ending list and the feel of clicking on a title you want and Amazon telling you it's out-of-print, not being able to find a digital copy, no sites or book retailers or warehouses able to order it - so many messages, so many fantastic works simply gone.

I could feel the desperate hope to which the narrator clung at the end of the book, that Ozymandias' was around somewhere, the panic that perhaps it was all just a too-vivid dream, the pain in your soul that screamed for there to truly be a safe haven where books and papers went so they didn't fade into obscurity.

5/5 stars! This book is astounding! Every book-lover should give it a chance.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't really a story as much as it was a diatribe about the loss of physical books in the modern era. And frankly I can't whole heartedly agree with the diatribe. As much as I like physical books, this is rather alarmist about how books get lost, especially when library's end up getting blamed.

There are many points that bugged me, but one I'll address mostly because it stands for how poorly the points were thought out. This book complains about digitized copies of books being innaccurate while ignoring that the same is true of print books. For instance, each time a new edition of Lord of the Rings came out, Tolkien sent in notes to correct the errors in the last edition. While those errors were corrected, new ones cropped up.

[Alyssa (HeartwyldsLibrary) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I DNFd this book after 50 pages. It was just names of books, names of libraries and stores over and over again that I started skipping paragraphs. The idea of a bookstore saving endangered books was interesting but it was completely overshadow by the fact that it was just names and places and other information about how books were destroyed over and over again. There was an employee who was kept saying how busy they were but apparently had time to give a tour and point out, oh you guessed it places and events. It was just boring and I couldn’t bring myself to finish it even though it is so short.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I was a bit disappointed with the writing style, I did enjoy the story and it was an interesting concept. I do feel like this was a premise that could easily be expanded into something longer - if done cautiously.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not up to her usual fabulous standard at all.

[Karyn Silverman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this when it came out and apparently never logged it, but it made me MAD and was very very wrong about libraries.

[Dawn-Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever though about what happens to something when it’s the last of its kind? It’s an interesting question raised by this novella.

Protagonist Jim is shopping around a book (based on his blog) that argues the disappearance of things is good because progress deems it necessary and there’s no reason to be nostalgic over anything. After bombing a radio interview trying to argue that tangible print books are becoming unnecessary, he’s caught in a rainstorm and takes shelter in an old used bookstore. But there’s more to the shop than meets the eye.

When he discovers a secret door that leads to a seemingly unending library of books he’s never heard of categorized by means of disposal (like fire, flood, marker damage, store closing), he begins to recognize the importance of remembering that which has been lost. It’s not until leaving the shop that he slowly begins to realize it wasn’t simply a repository for obscure titles – it was a graveyard for books that are no longer in existence. And, of course, when he tries to find the bookstore again, it isn’t there.

Traveller is a really engaging read with a surprising amount of suspense for the type of story it’s telling – definitely a recommendation for anyone who loves books in general. And, as it’s a novella, it’s a quick read too. But it does raise questions about leaving the tangible behind for convenience and what else we lose along the way.

[Deanna Madden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me say first off that I am a Connie Willis fan. My enthusiasm dates back to when I read my first Connie Willis book, Doomsday Book. After that, I sought out as many of her novels as I could find. As her writing has evolved, so have the books she writes. Her later books have veered away from the darkness of Doomsday Book and more toward the humor of novels like the recent “Crosstalk.”

The novella “I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land” (title taken from the Shelley poem “Ozymandias”) is a meditation on the mutability of books. A young man visiting New York at Christmas to meet with a publisher regarding his book based on his blog about letting old books die gets a sort of lesson (like Scrooge?) in the value of old and forgotten books when he takes shelter from the rain in an old bookstore and discovers an enormous underground repository of all the books that have been destroyed, catalogued by how they were destroyed.

It’s hard to know how to rate a book like this. Do I mark it down for being very short? That hardly seems fair. For being a one-incident plot-line? For not having more characters? It is what it is—short, a brilliant flash from the mind of the inimitable Connie Willis. And I completely agree with her. Even libraries cull their collections. Books are dying all around us every day.

[Terri London Mabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Willis but if you set out to create a parody of her style, this would be it.

- communication problems
- near misses
- lists, lists and more lists
- some interesting history
- an idea thoughtfully explored -- except this time it wasn't

Usually her books also contain a thoughtful treatment of an idea, but I don't know what she was going for here. A nuanced exploration of the transience of knowledge-holding objects could have been interesting. There is something touching / nostalgic about "Hey remember that one childhood book that we loved and can't remember what it was called and will probably never see it again cause it just wasn't popular enough to endure?" I've absolutely gone on futile google hunts for such books. I'm not mad that I can't find them, or upset at the idea that they may no longer exist--entropy happens to everything, there's nothing special or sacred about books. But a story about a guy being confronted with this idea, remembering That Childhood Book etc. could have been really special and I would have connected with it.

This just felt like: How dare libraries cull books. Hopefully her opinion is better thought out IRL, but if so she didn't did it any service with this story.

I will add that her last novel (Roswell) really got beyond the Willis tricks (miscommunication, missed connections) THANK GOD so I will still always check out what she does.

[MD · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m sure I’d have liked this book better if I could have heard Connie read it. I could almost hear it in my head - the excitement and incredulity that are such a part of her in-person storytelling. But on the written page it felt too long.

The title is a slightly changed version of the first line of a Shelly poem about how men believe what they see around them will last forever. I know that my local library’s de-acquisitioned books are sent off to be scanned. I don’t know whether all actually *are* scanned or how it’s decided which are. Or for how long the scan will be accessible. But also, how often anyone may care.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim truly believes that obsolescence is not necessarily a bad thing. Things should be allowed to die out as part of the natural order. But when he discovers a strange book shop or repository called 'Ozymandias' on the streets of Manhattan, it fundamentally alters his understanding of the world.

Willis' short story is strange and compelling. Her description of the space of 'Ozymandias' feels intriguing and real. The price tag on the Kindle edition should dock a star for such a short story, but I won't be that petty....

[Adam Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started out strong with the usual wit of Willis. Also was full of the historical references that she likes to add. However, the story loses its charm when the main character attempts to locate the book repository a second time. In that section, it's a bit long-winded. Also, the ending offers no surprises. Over all, though, it's not bad and certainly has the Connie Willis flavor.

[Rt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anti-book (that is, physical object) blogger encounters a library that archives the last copy of every book it can. Something something memory human striving something—Willis hasn’t been working for me for a while, and this didn’t change the pattern.

[amma.keep.reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave a Twilight Zone/ Black Mirror type version of a bibliophile's nightmare come true. It also renewed my appreciation for hardcopy print books. I really believe they will stand the test of time.

[Nancy S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this until I got to the ending. The message is clear, and meaningful to me, but I detest books that leave me confused at the end. I assume it’s part of the message, but it isn’t necessary.