I hesitate to even try to review this collection of short stories since they are, to me, short story perfection.  Really, these stories capture everything I love about the form and are a sort of dry magical realism that gives me the warm fuzzies.

My favorite story is “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” a mystery/sci-fi thing of beauty that basically brings into question the way that reality is (or isn’t) manifest and what role human consciousness plays in the creation of our reality.  If we believe something to be true, can we make it so?  There is a magic mirror, an ever-changing encyclopedia, a fantasy world somewhere in remote Asia Minor, and a linguistic/philosophical treatise, all in one relatively short piece of fiction.

This is exactly the kind of short story I would write if I were a raging, magical genius.