From “The Archbishop’s Library,” by Christian Donlan, published in The New York Review of Books:
Every library is in a battle with entropy. Books are stolen, lost, and misfiled. Libraries, by their benevolent nature, want to scatter. Constancy and stability are to be found not in any one institution but in the bright human impulse behind Parker’s rules, the same one that had encouraged generations to keep this library, and so many others, intact.
From The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje (translated by David McKay):
she read a poem that said such a beautiful thing, and ever since then she’s tried to believe it, he sank into the earth like rain, the way autumn leaves decay, and in the spring, he’ll transform into flowers, but what about his bones, she says, and his nails and his teeth, and the shiny polished buttons of his uniform.
From The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst:
She’d lost her magenta freckles and the blue pigtails years ago, and she’d gained an advanced degree in library studies and a host of antisocial tendencies.
