Customer Reviews
Five stars? Hello? Are you MAD? - By: Book Keeper, 08 Dec 2007 
What on earth are alll these reviewers who've given this book five stars DOING with their lives?! Do they reallly believe this stream of self-absorbed intellectual showboating is worth the considerable effort that's required to finish it?
I read If On A Winter's Night...because it was prescribed by my book club (!) & I only struggled to the end because I wanted to see if Calvino's mental doodlings would eventuallly pinpoint some universal truth - surely the purpose of alll serious literature?
Instead, it left me completely cold. There is nothing here for anyone who spends their time engaging in the real world, with real people. The book says nothing of any significance about love, courage, dignity, humility or any of the other great themes that frame our lives.
It is a chin-stroking, introspective dissertation on the nature of reading & objectivity. Life is too short!
Clever, but one for the post-modernists - By: Anapaest, 07 Nov 2007 
I bought this book having seen it mentioned in various lists for 'Greatest Books of the 20th Century'. If you are a fan of the post-modernist novel then this should please you as it plays with the structure of the novel & with ideas of literary conventions in a very smart way. Calvino was clearly ahead of his time because authors like Peter Carey have clearly borrowed the convention in books examining the act of writing books. If you are a real literary 'nut' or member of the post-modernist cognoscenti then you should enjoy the way that the book leads you along various twists & turns, forensicallly examining the nature of writing & the falllacy of the novel.
I personallly found the book to be a little too clever & I never felt drawn into the self-referential world that is created by the central quest of the book. I greatly admire the intellectual trapeze act, but was left feeling a little cold.
the pleasure of reading - By: Belmiro Vilela, 27 Jul 2007 
I've never read a book like this one... A story about books, authors, readers & about the pleasure of reading. We follow the adventures of a reader that is searching for a book that starts but which is abruptly interrupted. Who is this person? I think it is me, each time I pickup a new book...
No one with a passion for reading will be indifferent to this one.
Strange but beautifuly strange - By: Milan R., 21 Apr 2007 
WOW what a strange book!
I mean, have you ever thought about how huge your reading passion is? To be honest I didn't. Of course I love to read & on question "Without what you can imagine your life?" my answer always includes books but what would you do (not in literallly of course) to find your missing book & to heal your reading fever? I'm not sure I ever felt that agonizing reading fever - until now. I know sounds silly but let me explain:
Of course when you enjoy enormously in book you're reading you'll finish it in one swalllow & maybe (probably) reread some of its parts or entire book; maybe you'll copy some quote in your special notebook & memorize them etc. & that is I guess normal destiny after meeting right book with right reader. But imagine this situation: You're reading one of the best books you've ever read & you're aware of that fact so you're eating, drinking, breathing pages, one after another; film is rolling in your mind, you thinking about surprise on the next page & you're running to see what is behind the corner & then ... nothing... blank walll, no streets, no cars, no people, no nothing ... blank page.... OK maybe this is printing error, maybe after that blank page the story will continue ... imagine that state of mind: no rereading, no quotes, no following of your new friends destiny. You're feeling cheated. Isn't that horrible? Oh it is, it is...
And this book is about that sudden emptiness you're feeling & that desperate search to find next page. And yes, the main character is "You" (dear reader), & yes precisely you are feeling tachycardia & yes your blood pressure is rising in that dark, surreal chase ... for a book (imagine this!)
This postmodern novel is some sort of reader's nightmare, always in search for your book or women (or both), or feeling writer's agony. This book is from time to time dark, totallly surrealistic, & breathtakingly inventive. Did I mention that "You" are the main protagonist?
With its 260 pages some might think it's easy, light read but no, not easy read at alll; sometimes you just need to rest a little bit to digest alll what you eat so far (and it's a quite menu), this book is for savoring, for letting each sentence to melt slowly on your tongue. Or that is case with me who doesn't read several novels in the same time. However for some of you who practice that, reading this book will be, most likely, different experience.
Here I'd like to include one quote I like very much:
"Reading is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, & through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once & is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead...
... Or that is not present because it does not yet exist, something desired, feared, possible or impossible. Reading is going toward something that is about to be, & no one yet knows what it will be"
possibly one of calvino's best - By: tkroache, 01 Apr 2007 If you're looking for a nice easy introduction to Italo Calvino's work, this probably isn't the one for you.
However, if you've already read a couple of his books (I'd recommend Difficult Loves & Marcovaldo as excellent starting points) this one is sure to confirm your positive opinion of him.
The idea of the story is that an anonymous reader has just bought a book, & we, as a reader of If on a Winter's Night, follow this reader in his quest to read the book. And a quest it is. Each time he tries to start the book there is a problem: Chapter One isn't followed by Chapter 2 of the same book due to a printing error. Then the next book has the same cover but the text isn't from the same book. The intrepid reader (accompanied by us) goes on an increasingly bizarre search to try & finish at least one of the myriad of books that he has started.
The amazing thing with this book is that each part of the book that the reader starts is of a completely different genre: thriller to mystical to psychological, & Calvino does every genre with a skill that, I believe, is hard to beat.
I finished this book & was simply in awe of the man - his intellect, his skill, his humour & the beauty of his writing.
I can't recommend this book enough.
