Why are books, in all their forms, so very powerful? What do the books we've read over our lives--our own personal libraries--make of us? What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith's new collection, The Library and Other Stories, are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us, friends for life; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser, and ageless all at once; how they coax us endlessly to unexpected blossom; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make.