I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land

Connie Willis

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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.


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  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    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.

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  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    I love Connie Willis, but why does she hate librarians (whose work she vastly misrepresents) so much?

    There’s just not much to this story - under a hundred pages and I still felt like it needed tightening up and trimming - and what there is honestly pissed me off. I could make both sides’ arguments better, and I disagree so fundamentally, so deeply, with the moral of the story, it barely matters how good Connie Willis’s writing normally is. As both a fan and someone with archival & library science training, I’m pretty disappointed.

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