Fictions

Was it because Michel Houellebecq sounded a bit crap, because Aldous Huxley's the Island sounded like Californian pretension, and the Sky Burial sounded too much like the Kite Runner?

No, much simpler. Jorge Luis Borges' Fictions was the oldest and the shortest book on offer. It therefore gathered the "give us classics" vote and the "lazy" vote, and won by a landslide.

So we have a month to read it... and find our inward lives utterly changed. Amazon

Some reviewers don't rate the Hurley translation we see here, and some of the stories are available in other translations, notably by Irby.