More fun than I expected but somewhat unsatisfying.

http://livredor.livejournal.com/187408.html

This is the first book I’ve read by Italo Calvino. He’s an extraordinarily talented writer. If on a winter’s night a traveler is one of the most unique books that I’ve read in quite a while, because in it Calvino makes you, the reader, the main character of his book. In traveler Calvino narrates to you your own journey through a world of books that begin but never get past the opening chapter, leaving you in suspense about the problems the characters find themselves in that may, for all you know, never be resolved.

One of my favorite passages in traveler, found in the book’s opening chapter, describes a walk through a bookstore in search of the latest novel by Italo Calvino. As you, the reader and the protagonist, are walking through the bookstore, Calvino describes how you encounter, among other things, the:
Books You Haven’t Read;
Books You Needn’t Read;
Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading;
Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered;
Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They Come Out In Paperback;
Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages;
Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case;
and many other species of books. Calvino could be describing me every time I walk into a bookstore or library – and in fact he is, because I, and every other reader of traveler along with me, am the novel’s protagonist.

In traveler, while spinning the complex overarching plot with ten interwoven unique subplots, Calvino comments on writing, time, death, technology, and countless other subjects in brief philosophical musings and paragraphs rich in symbolism. Calvino’s talent as a writer shines through the whole novel. He is, for good reason, one of the most prominent Italian writers of the twentieth century.

Highly recommended.

Supposedly I read this for a philosophy and literature class three years ago, but I never was able properly to enjoy it. Ergo, I’m starting it again.

On loan from SH. Not bad so far.

Should I start reading this, even though I haven’t finished Sunday Jews? This could be my train book and Sunday Jews, hefty tome that it is, could be my bed book…sounds like a plan.

Reading about reading about reading. Readers and Other Readers, reading each others’ lives into their own. How much of life and literature is text and intent, how much projection and abstraction? The lines begin to blur by the time you get through this one… and that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. Not for everyone, but if you’re into experimental narrative, by all means.

On hold, since I stupidly lent it to a friend before I finished it.

“The novel I would most like to read at this moment,” Ludmilla explains, “should have at its driving force only the desire to narrate, to pile stories upon stories, without trying to impose a philosophy of life on you, simply allowing you to observe its own growth, like a tree, an entangling, as if of branches and leaves…”

It’s just beautiful language, within a completely unique storytelling style.

This book is on hold for a while because I leant it to somebody before I’d finished reading it, since I was also reading several other things and I don’t know, I’m stupid.