Public library and other stories / Ali Smith.

Last -- That beautiful new build -- Good voice -- Opened by mark twain -- The beholder -- A clean, well-lighted place -- The poet -- The ideal model of society -- The human claim -- Soon to be sold -- The ex-wife -- Put a price on that -- The art of elsewhere -- On bleak house road -- After life -- Curve tracing -- The definite article -- The library sunlight -- Grass -- The marking of me -- Say I won't be there -- The infinite possibilities -- And so on.

Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us? What does the unraveling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make. Woven between the stories are conversations with writers and readers reflecting on the essential role that libraries have played in their lives. At a time when public libraries around the world face threats of cuts and closures, this collection stands as a work of literary activism.

English.