If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Read carefully and you'll find that you are traveling -- Calvino takes you for a ride in this one. It's fun and intellectual. And Calvino is a master at the art of telling a good story.

Italo Calvino has surpassed himself. He has taken the "relating to the character" feeling to new heights, by making everyone who picks this books up, a character of the book. He takes you to the edge around 10 odd times, in 100 beginning sof 10 unrelated stories, but holds you back from plunging into the story line. He gets you so frustrated...no thts not the word...mmm ok I will use the word, but with no negative connotation...He pulls the ground from under you with every turn of the page. A must read for anyone passionate about reading for reading's sake.

You have to read this fascinating treatise on reading and writing. I've seen others complain about the weak ending and the lack of structure, but for chrissakes, it's not a Dragonlance novel- it's avant-garde prose. But that doesn't mean it's not accessible. Unlike Andre Breton's shoelace knots of words that you have to dwell on endlessly to untie, Italo Calvino is so easy to read that the prose slips past you a little too quickly. But that doesn't mean it's not worth reading in the first place- Originally I checked this out at my college library and when I finished it, I bought a copy for myself and another copy for a friend. It's extremely hard to describe the book appropriately, but I'm hoping my enthusiasm for it will get my message across- Calvino's insights are worth the price of the book alone, and this fragmented narrative marked by stretches of crystalline, dreamlike beauty make what would normally be a dry work of literature philosophy into a vivid sensual book that I'll probably continue to re-read for the rest of my life.