The infamous "Fictions" of Borges was my main read of this summer, and I savored every single story for as long as possible. Even with that, I felt a slight disappointment with the end of the book, as I simply did not want it to end. Borges' stories have everything that I love in literature: they are short, packed with riddles, hidden messages, and philosophical ideas that make you think about the world differently. At no point in the book could I guess what would happen next; the labyrinth of intertextual references, connections, and literary puzzles that Borges created is a true masterpiece itself. "Fictions" is one of the books, after finishing which, I felt that I learned insanely much about philosophy, metaphysics, and religion than about the plot of the stories themselves. With all of that, none of his stories feel like boring or pretentious lectures, and the way Borges mixes his ideas with plot (or its absence) is genuinely one of the most genial things I've ever read in literature. It is still a mystery for me how I, a metafictional literature enthusiast, did not read Borges before, preferring to stick to the prose of Cortázar, Calvino, or Vila-Matas, but now I can say that I have finally discovered a whole treasure trove of literary devices and concepts that find their reflections in so many postmodernist writers of the 20th century.