In the Stacks

Contributions from such major figures as Borges, Cheever, Alice Munro and Ray Bradbury carry the day in In the Stacks: Short Stories about Libraries and Librarians, assembled by former librarian Michael Cart (My Father's Scar). Borges's well-known ""The Library of Babel"" is the best of the bunch, with its thought-provoking musings on the possibilities of an ""infinite"" library. Cheever chips in with a noteworthy contribution in ""The Trouble of Marcie Flint,"" a typical exploration of infidelity and the dark side of suburbia. A handful of the remaining stories are pedantic, underdeveloped or ill-conceived, but there's more than enough wheat among the chaff to make this an intriguing collection.