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A review by willowbiblio
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
2.0
"Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books."
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I was quite engaged with this book for the first 50 or so pages. I found Calvino's quips to the actual reader (not the one addressed in the framing plot of the book) to be thought-provoking. However, they soon became cumbersome and I realized this was another of those "artistic" novels that is so enraptured by itself it never actually goes anywhere or says anything truly entertaining or meaningful. I found myself skimming the last 100 pages.
I was actually really interested in the idea of 10 separate novellas connected by a main plot. Unfortunately the main plot was so unwieldly and disjointed that it became difficult to reset for each new plot. Additionally they became progressively more obsessed with women as sexual objects that appeared in each scene as compliant/malleable fixtures for the current male "protagonist".
It was just really odd and I'm glad it's over.
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I was quite engaged with this book for the first 50 or so pages. I found Calvino's quips to the actual reader (not the one addressed in the framing plot of the book) to be thought-provoking. However, they soon became cumbersome and I realized this was another of those "artistic" novels that is so enraptured by itself it never actually goes anywhere or says anything truly entertaining or meaningful. I found myself skimming the last 100 pages.
I was actually really interested in the idea of 10 separate novellas connected by a main plot. Unfortunately the main plot was so unwieldly and disjointed that it became difficult to reset for each new plot. Additionally they became progressively more obsessed with women as sexual objects that appeared in each scene as compliant/malleable fixtures for the current male "protagonist".
It was just really odd and I'm glad it's over.