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ponch22 's review for:
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
(Seems my late night review posted in some weird section of Goodreads instead of here where every other review of mine is... Copying and pasting & editing it here now):
Bought this a year ago when I saw [a:Scott Forbes|4595289|Scott Forbes|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1295552878p2/4595289.jpg]'s favorable review and finally decided to read it after the preface of [b:Seconds: A Graphic Novel|18630542|Seconds A Graphic Novel|Bryan Lee O'Malley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399502867s/18630542.jpg|17378014] used a quote from it.
The book is trippy. I'm reminded of the Xzibit meme:
I've described this book twice to my wife, and both times I seemed to enjoy telling her about the book way more than I enjoyed reading it.
The book has a very weird structure. All the odd chapters are written in the second person, talking directly to "You" the "Reader." The opening lines are, "You are about to begin reading [a:Italo Calvino|155517|Italo Calvino|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1403100215p2/155517.jpg]'s new novel, [b:If on a Winter's Night a Traveler|374233|If on a Winter's Night a Traveler|Italo Calvino|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355316130s/374233.jpg|1116802]. Relax." The second chapter is the beginning of a new novel IOaWNaT within the actual novel IOaWNaT. But it gets cut off and chapter three returns to the second person narrative, describing how much "You" are annoyed by this printing error and how you try to find a correct copy of the book somewhere. Chapter four returns with the beginning of a different novel and the entire novel alternates back and forth between a second person narrative of you searching through libraries, book clubs, houses, and other countries and different novel beginnings.
As I described this to my wife when I was about halfway through the novel (several weeks ago), I worried aloud that perhaps Calvino was just a struggling writer who could write a lot of great beginnings, but couldn't ever finish anything, and IOaWNaT was his attempt to do something with all that work. Perhaps it's my own fault for reading a bunch of graphic novels and YA literature this year (and still only 18 books in 2014?!), but I had so much difficulty reading this. It took me three months to get through it, when almost every other book I read this year took me a week or two. Rarely did I long to pick up my Kindle, and maybe it was because my reading was so spread out, but I just didn't love this as much as most everyone else here seems to (looking at the other reviews)
I find it hard to recommend this book since I had such difficulty getting through it, but I feel like maybe I missed something since each time I described it, I really enjoyed talking about it...
Bought this a year ago when I saw [a:Scott Forbes|4595289|Scott Forbes|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1295552878p2/4595289.jpg]'s favorable review and finally decided to read it after the preface of [b:Seconds: A Graphic Novel|18630542|Seconds A Graphic Novel|Bryan Lee O'Malley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399502867s/18630542.jpg|17378014] used a quote from it.
The book is trippy. I'm reminded of the Xzibit meme:
I've described this book twice to my wife, and both times I seemed to enjoy telling her about the book way more than I enjoyed reading it.
The book has a very weird structure. All the odd chapters are written in the second person, talking directly to "You" the "Reader." The opening lines are, "You are about to begin reading [a:Italo Calvino|155517|Italo Calvino|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1403100215p2/155517.jpg]'s new novel, [b:If on a Winter's Night a Traveler|374233|If on a Winter's Night a Traveler|Italo Calvino|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355316130s/374233.jpg|1116802]. Relax." The second chapter is the beginning of a new novel IOaWNaT within the actual novel IOaWNaT. But it gets cut off and chapter three returns to the second person narrative, describing how much "You" are annoyed by this printing error and how you try to find a correct copy of the book somewhere. Chapter four returns with the beginning of a different novel and the entire novel alternates back and forth between a second person narrative of you searching through libraries, book clubs, houses, and other countries and different novel beginnings.
As I described this to my wife when I was about halfway through the novel (several weeks ago), I worried aloud that perhaps Calvino was just a struggling writer who could write a lot of great beginnings, but couldn't ever finish anything, and IOaWNaT was his attempt to do something with all that work. Perhaps it's my own fault for reading a bunch of graphic novels and YA literature this year (and still only 18 books in 2014?!), but I had so much difficulty reading this. It took me three months to get through it, when almost every other book I read this year took me a week or two. Rarely did I long to pick up my Kindle, and maybe it was because my reading was so spread out, but I just didn't love this as much as most everyone else here seems to (looking at the other reviews)
I find it hard to recommend this book since I had such difficulty getting through it, but I feel like maybe I missed something since each time I described it, I really enjoyed talking about it...