# Public library and other stories

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/ali-smith/public-library-and-other-stories/9780241974599

![Public library and other stories](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/ali-smith/public-library-and-other-stories_978-02-4197-459-9.jpg?v=2026-04-25%2016%3A24%3A25)

- Book: [Public library and other stories](https://www.bookquiver.com/ali-smith/public-library-and-other-stories) ([Public library and other stories.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/ali-smith/public-library-and-other-stories.md))
- Authors: [Ali Smith](https://www.bookquiver.com/ali-smith)
- Publisher: Penguin
- ISBN: 978-02-4197-459-9
- Pages: 240
- Published: 2016-05-05
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Why are books 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 are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make.