Connie Willis’ I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is either a long short story or a short novellette. As such, it is very much focused on an idea, rather than on plot or character development. The idea at the heart of this tale is the struggle to preserve books that might otherwise be lost to time, fire, flood, war, negligence, etc. This story argues that every book, no matter how silly, obsolete, and useless it might be, should never be completely lost.

At the beginning of I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, Jim is very much of the opinion that physical books don’t need saving. Sure, book stores are closing left and right, but there’s the Cloud. Books can be digitized and downloaded any time. There’s no need to worry. In fact, he opines at the beginning of the story, some book stores deserve to close because they’re not keeping up with the times. Who wants to dig through dusty old books in a smelly shop when they could just click the buy button on their device?

But then Jim wanders into what appears to be the stereotypical bookshop of his argument. Ozymandius’ (named after the Shelley poem, of course) is crammed with just the sorts of books that Jim believes no one would ever want, all buried under an inch of dirt and dust and completely unorganized. He enjoys seeing his theories confirmed until he follows a pretty blonde through the staff only door and discovers the most unique collection I’ve ever seen in fiction.

The staff area of Ozymandius’ is a labyrinth of books Jim has never heard of before. He scoffs but, when the pretty blonde, Cassandra, offers to give him a tour, he learns that these books are the last of their kind. Once, there were multiple copies of these books in stores and libraries all over the place. But time and tastes have done their work. Copies were lost or destroyed until only one remained. The staff of Ozymandius’ somehow manage to save that last copy from disaster or the landfill. Jim is desperate to know how, but that is one of the many unanswered questions that torment him after he leaves and is unable to find his way back.

As I read I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, I had a reaction that I’ve never had to a book before: I felt attacked. I’m a librarian and I have, to use the euphemism that Cassandra scorns, “de-accessioned” hundreds of books in my time. We have only so much shelf space at our library. There’s no place for books that don’t get used. That said, I truly appreciated the argument that the last copy must be preserved. I don’t want any knowledge to ever be lost and I wish that libraries and bookstores didn’t have to fight so hard to stay open. Right now, I don’t see how that’s possible unless something like Ozymandius’ magically appears to rescue us.

I recommend I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land to bibliophiles of all stripes. It doesn’t matter if you read print or electronic books. The important thing is that we all read and, thus, do our little bit to keep books and reading alive. Maybe one of us will be the one to save a last copy and keep it from being lost forever.

I received a free copy of this novellette from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It has already been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction but it will be widely released 30 April 2018.

An entertaining novella for book lovers, but it is a little thin on ideas, in keeping with its thinness of size. Cynical man walks into mysterious book depository where they collect "at risk" books. Nearly the entire story consists of one of the employees explaining things to the man, who has snuck into the work area under false pretenses. She claims to be super busy, yet she is somehow able to spend all this time with him, and does not question his presence. Man realizes that printed books are wonderful and have value. There is a supernatural twist. That is pretty much it. Okay.

I appreciate Willis' identification of all the different ways in which books can be lost -- fire, flood, time, children, etc. -- but I was also quite viscerally offended by her assertion that librarians randomly "cull" library books without any thought to their rarity or intrinsic value beyond current popularity. First off, it's called weeding, not culling, and it is an important part of library function and maintenance, and it is never done as blindly as Willis seems to think. No librarian would toss out a rare or scarce book of any kind, and certainly not without checking for other available copies. I mean, seriously. Does Willis hate libraries or something?

This book will forever have a special place in my heart because I was practically in tears by the end. Like our narrator, I kept thinking about the centuries' worth of books lost due to fire, water, time, war, accidents . . .

It's a never-ending list and the feel of clicking on a title you want and Amazon telling you it's out-of-print, not being able to find a digital copy, no sites or book retailers or warehouses able to order it - so many messages, so many fantastic works simply gone.

I could feel the desperate hope to which the narrator clung at the end of the book, that Ozymandias' was around somewhere, the panic that perhaps it was all just a too-vivid dream, the pain in your soul that screamed for there to truly be a safe haven where books and papers went so they didn't fade into obscurity.

5/5 stars! This book is astounding! Every book-lover should give it a chance.

I really enjoyed this novella by Connie Willis - largely because of the questions it raises. What if the book you discard...or the book that was lost to a disaster/war...or the book deemed no longer needed in a library...or the book that was on the shelf when a bookstore closed its doors...is the last one of its kind in existence? Remember that favorite book you had as a kid? What if it went out of print and nobody has a copy of it anywhere? We think everything is at our fingertips with the advent of the digital age...but is it really?

Fascinating premise. What makes it resonate with me even more is that I am in the midst of a move across several states and (unfortunately) have had to reduce my book collection for space consideration. After reading this novella I wish I hadn't purged a single book...

I did wish there was more resolution in this story. There are a LOT of unanswered questions and the time in Ozymandias Books seemed to just be a list of natural and man made disasters that can befall books. I did enjoy the sprinkling of actual book-related disasters found throughout the text, but after a while it seemed like a list. I'd give this story 3 stars for the plot...4 stars for the thought-provoking subject.

Many thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

When I requested this I only knew it was by Willis, assuming it was a new novel. It's just a novella, which had already appeared late last year in Asimov's. It's okay, nothing special, certainly not worth what Subterranean is asking for a hardcover edition.

This is what Willis is justly beloved for.: the all-too-true frustrations of feckless reality; the touch of the surreal that we wish we could reclaim, but can never quite manage; the dreamlike, kafkaesque quality of needing to do something, but never quite being able to get there. And the final twist of the screw that makes us wonder if the unnamed narrator is having a breakdown--or indeed had one much earlier and this is all a schizophrenic fugue.

_Traveler_ is a novella, and a one-trick pony, but a beautiful one. We can only hope that Willis can still produce the magic of _Doomsday Book_ or _Lincoln's Dreams_ or _Passage_. Connie, we love your stories and novellas, but we _need_ another full-length novel!

This is the coolest novella that I've read in a long time! It looks at the argument between print books and digital books. Books are written every single day. Throughout history, billions of books have slipped through the cracks, lost forever due to war and disaster. What if books weren't destroyed in wars? What if books weren't destroyed in massive fires or floods? This novella looks at all of those things and more.

Imagine being able to go to a store where all of the books ever written are sitting on its shelves. Imagine seeing books written by familiar authors that you didn't know existed because they were supposedly lost in tragic events.

Jim is in New York to shop a book based on his blog–Gone for Good–premised on the fact that being nostalgic for things that have disappeared is ridiculous. Jim misses an interview with a radio personality who defends print books. It starts raining and Jim ducks into an extraordinary bookshop. Once inside he discovers a massive amount of rare books.

While this novella is short, it packs a most powerful punch. It leaves you thinking about your book collection, and those books you discarded long ago. Where are those books? What happened to the books after you sold or donated them?

Jim is a solid lead character. The supporting cast keeps the reader interested. The dialogue feels real. I can't get this book out of my head. I will be thinking about it for a long time. It's that good, guys! It's magic! The cover is dope, too!

5/5 stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, by Connie Willis (Subterranean Press). This latest novella from SFWA Grand Master Connie Willis offers a new take on the “magical bookstore” story. Who among us hasn’t dreamed of wandering the aisles of the Library of Alexandria or discovering a manuscript of Shakespeare’s lost Cardenio? Or a store where we can find books so odd, so enchanting, that we can never return unchanged to our mundane lives? (Actually, one could argue that all bookstores and libraries do this.) One of my favorites is Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, in which a boy is taken into a library and allowed to choose “his” book.
In her inimitable fashion, Willis draws us into a magical realm coexisting with the drab life of an author on a book tour in New York City. Tucked among the skyscraper office buildings, he stumbles upon a shop named, oddly, Ozymandias Books. Any student of high school English will recall the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Slowly the author is drawn into the store and its mysterious workings, discovering on its shelves more and more obscure works (including the aforementioned play attributed to Shakespeare). Even more puzzling is the way the books are arranged, not by author or subject but by the disaster that destroyed the last remaining copy…except the one he holds in his hands. (Nothing beside remains…)
I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is a delicious treat for readers and collectors, and a love song to those who treasure books.

Just okay, nothing special. The central concept — a secret bookstore dedicated to preserving the last copies of all the world’s destroyed books — was vaguely interesting, though I swear I’ve read it elsewhere.

I’d describe <i>Traveller</i> as a novella with more high concept than any concrete worldbuilding: I suppose the dream-like fuzziness of the setting and the constant litany of ways books met their fates were an intentional throwback to the titular poem, but the lack of solid answers (or heck, lack of solid <I>anything</I>; we know as little about the main character at the start as at the end) makes this a bit too artsy for me, I’m afraid.

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[Disclaimer: This eARC was provided free by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is a special edition hardcover novella by Connie Willis published by Subterranean Press. I received this ebook as an ARC from Netgalley.com for an honest review.

I hate giving Connie Willis's work a "meh" rating. Normally her work is absolutely wonderful and you can't put it down. This time the novella fell very flat. It felt much more like a rough draft that needed some buffing out and pruning. It probably would have worked much better as a short story.

To her credit though, I love the idea of a depository for books. No book shall be lost to damage or antiquity. I am a book lover myself and the story resonated with me deeply on that level. That is where the idea ends though. It is one note.

A novella about a tech savey man who wanders into the Ozymandias book store, where all lost books are saved. He has a change of heart regarding the saving of books after getting lost in the shelves but when he try's to return to the store he cannot find it. The story starts with an interesting premise but sort of veers off into "meh" territory.

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land by Connie Willis is about a man who gets lost in the rain and stumbles upon a place that looks like a rundown used bookstore in the middle of Manhattan. There’s a single worker at the front desk who allows him to look around. What the man soon discovers is that this isn’t an ordinary bookstore at all.

This is a novella that begs to be read in a single sitting. The plot itself is incredibly straightforward: A man explores a weird building of books. It doesn’t stray from that concept.

What I found interesting was how open-ended it was. Nothing about it is wrapped up. We meet our protagonist as he is lamenting amount the sameness of the Manhattan streets. He has just had an interview in which he argued that books weren’t dying but changing. The novella is about searching…constantly searching for things no one seems to know or have. Even in the opening, the man is searching for an umbrella that only one place is selling. Then, he searches for safety from the deluge.

The majority of the book is him spent searching the store, which is a lot bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside, going deep underground. There are books here he’s never even heard of, along with some from his childhood he’d almost forgotten about.

I liked the implication that the open ending brings: We are constantly searching for something…for that book we saw in passing at that one place that we can’t remember the name of. Was it on a .org site? What did I search for again? Did I venture into page 2 of the Google results? Maybe page 3? No, no. I think I saw it at that bookstore downtown on 4th street. Or maybe it was 17th street.

The book is subtle with its magic. At first glance, there is none. However, you might think twice while Cassie, one of the workers, brings you to the section labeled Fires.

IMATIAAL is driven by its themes of searching and loss. The writing is such that it drives the book forward; it’s a real page turner. However, I found the weakest point was with the characters themselves. They seem to be there just to fill the requirement of having them. Honestly, this is one of those rare instances I think a 2nd person POV would have enhanced the experience. The characters themselves were so backgrounded that I forgot about the majority of them, even though the novella is in first person. They weren’t poorly written; they just existed, which I found a little disappointing.

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is another book perfect for anyone looking for something simple and straightforward, yet with an under-layer of something bigger. Like the bookstore our protagonist finds himself in, there’s more to this book than meets the eye.

[I was provided an e-copy of this book from Subterranean Press via NetGalley. A limited edition version is set to be published by Subterranean Press in April 2018.]

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Connie Willis has a way of writing stories that engage us but more importantly that capture the complexity and conflict in defining moments and force us to resonate with their emotional impact. I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is a call to feel, to be moved, to understand, even to act. It’s difficult for an author to capture such depth in a short work, but Ms. Willis succeeds. This parable of Ozymandias’ Bookstore probably means most to those of us who stand astride the bridge of change in this transitional generation with one foot planted on the side of our love for physical books and the other sole braced in our acceptance of the convenient, yet vulnerable world of ebooks.

Ms. Willis is true to form. As I read Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, I heard echoes of Willis’s other works: the despair from Lincoln’s Dreams, the hurried search through the maze-like corridors of Passage, the snatch-and-grab time-traveling of To Say Nothing of the Dog, and the tongue-in-cheek wit of Bellwether and Blued Moon.

If you’ve ever searched for a favorite book from your childhood to discover it’s disappeared from the shelves of libraries and bookstores, you can really relate to this story. I know I conducted such a search and it took years of sporadic searches through Amazon, Alibris, etc., to find a stained and battered copy. There’s currently one other copy of that book for sale on Amazon at the moment. It’s never been digitized; I guess it wasn’t popular enough. It’s sad to think that there are so few copies of it out there in the world.

I'm a big fan of Connie Willis, so it's not surprising that I enjoyed this story. It's not one of my favorites, but it's a lovely story about a magical place that stores all the books that have been lost to the world throughout time. When every last copy of those books is eventually destroyed, whether through disaster, accident, willful destruction, neglect, or just a little too much love, they appear in Ozymandias Books to be catalogued.

As a book collector with a soft spot for antique books, I found this story to be a beautifully sad one. Beautiful, because it's lovely to imagine such a place exists to preserve all these lost and forgotten books. Sad, because of course, no such place exists and it's true that we do lose so many valuable books despite our attempts to archive and digitize them.

I was going to give this three stars at first since there really isn't much to it, but upped it to four since the basic concept has really stuck with me.

"Traveller" is a short novella about a tech blogger who gets lost in Manhattan one day and wanders into Ozymandias books, a repository for the last copies of books in existence. There isn't really a story here in the sense of conflict and resolution. What we do see is a narrator who finds his world view shaken by a random encounter with the reality of what time does to books. Connie Willis' writing is as engaging as always, and the image of a massive warehouse full of books that no one will ever have the chance to read again is pretty haunting.

Pick up this story if you enjoy Willis, are looking for a light quick read, and enjoy stories about libraries.

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land
by Connie Willis
M 50x66
Lou Jacobs's review
Feb 11, 2018 · edit

really liked it

Connie Willis is better known for her lenthy time-travel fantasies .. but, here she provides a novella, a marvelous re-telling of Shelley's famous poem: "Ozymandias" in the form of a modern day parable.
Our unaware protagonist Jim, is a blogger: " Gone For Good" He's come to Manhattan to meet with several publishers interested in putting his blog into book form. On the day of his arrival he is interviewed on the radio. It does not go smoothly ... he somewhat contentiously stands his ground with the host. In keeping with the tenets of his blog ... that celebrates the disappearance of outdated technologies. During the interview, when queried, he pontificates that it would be fine with him if bookstores were to die out .... "because it would mean that society didn't need them anymore, just like it stopped needing buggy whips and elevator operators, so it shed them, just like a snake sheds its skin."
After the interview he finds himself wandering in the maze of streets of Manhattan, until a sudden downpour forces him to seek shelter. He stumbles upon a nondescript storefront ... a seemingly hole-in-the-wall : "Ozymandias Bookstore" ... he wanders around and discovers a multiple floored labyrinth containing over-flowing bookcases of obscure and rare books. The all to numerous employees appear frenetically involved in managing the deluge of books entering their receiving department. Jim is astounded by the magnitude of incoming books .. and, cannot fathom the purpose of this obscure "bookstore" Before he can ask the relevant questions he receives a phone call from his agent calling him away for an urgent publisher meeting. Afterward, he frantically and unsuccessfully searches to re-find "Ozmandias" to obtain closure.
Perhaps bound books like the pharaoh Ramesses II will inevitably decline and disappear from existence? I would like to thank both NetGalley and Subterranean books for providing this marvelous uncorrected E book in exchange for an honest review.

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is a special edition hardcover novella from Connie Willis published by Subterranean Press.

I've been a fan of the author for decades, and this piece, though only 88 pages, shines with her humor, sharp wit, and style.

I was always the Luddite who swore I'd never own an e-book reader. I adore libraries full of old books. When my university medical library was moving to new digs, I rehomed literally hundreds of the deaccessioned books and felt badly that there were, sadly, thousands more which I couldn't adopt. I now own several ebook readers (a pack of Kindles and a Kobo for bathtime reading), but I still love everything about books from the smell to the tactile joy and solidity of sitting down with a book.

Neil Gaiman says it so much better than I can (that's why he's a world famous author and I'm a professional labrat bionerd):

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.

The entire essay is available here( https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming ).

Beautiful dust jacket art by Jon Foster.

I received an early e-ARC of this book and while I did find an error (Great Fire of London was in 1666, not 1665; it's pretty obviously a typo), I assume it'll be corrected before release.

Love the author, enjoyed the novella very much.

Four stars.

A blogger wanders into what he thinks is a used bookstore to get out of the rain. Turns out the building is the refuge for the very last copies of books in existence.

The passage from Ozymandias is a clue to the name of the bookstore/refuge/whatever and also a clue to what it houses, relics from ages past, books in this case.

The teaser I wrote is pretty much it. I love the idea of there being a storehouse somewhere that houses books that would otherwise be lost forever. There isn't all that much of a story, though. Guy wanders into mysterious bookshop, looks around, leaves. Overall, it was a forgettable experience. I did like the ending quite a bit, though.

Thanks to the fine folks at Subterranean Press and Netgalley for this ARC. Three stars but it's a weak three.

Being a book lover means I also love stories about book, libraries, etc. , so this novella seemed right up that book loving alley of mine. Plus I wanted to try the author I’ve heard so much about. And 60 minutes later the verdict is…ok. A modern day fable about a modern day man, a tech committed blogger so sold on the out with the old in with the new thing that his digitally addled brain can’t compute the importance of actual physical book preservation. Lo and behold a rainy day finds him stumbling through the streets of New York City and into one of antiquarian bookstores he believes are right to go extinct. And of course Ozymandias (Look at my works ye mighty and despair) Books isn’t just any old bookstore, it’s a veritable depository of treasures…or for us readers it’s a moral. So it’s a Christmas Carol style parable, the man is shown the error of his ways and his worldview is reformed. Not quite as elegant though, the moral here is very heavy handed for one thing, the writing isn’t as imaginative. Also someone fact check this thing please before it goes into publication commanding $40 for a limited print. Sleepy as I am fast approaching midnight this glaring error can’t be overlooked…The Great Fire of London took place in 1666 not 1665. I don’t think I’m going to invest the time to investigate other dates, for such a brief read it seems like a disproportionate investment of time. This was cute enough and it works as a cautionary tale, but then again readers everywhere already knows all this and nonreaders by definition don’t get to find out. There is a good amount of books out there in similar vein that are really terrific, this one was just enjoyable enough and refreshingly brief. Thanks Netgalley.