If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino

You, The Reader, are standing in a huge Waterstones in London. You're not planning to buy more books, because you still have to take a plane home, and you have limited space in you're luggage left. You're waiting for some one, and as you wait, your eyes go over a table filled with books. One of them has a title that attracts you, so you pick it up, get a seat and start reading the first few pages, just to pass the time. By the time your friend shows up, you know you won't be able to leave without the book. You end up buying it, so you can discover the tale for yourself.

 

Original Title: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore

 

This book is special in many ways. First, there are many different stories we get a look at, but we never get to see how they end, as the stories are always interrupted in one way or the other. Still, they leave you thinking you wanted to now how they continued, some more than others of course. This was the level I really liked, all the different stories and how they were connected somehow.

 

Then there is the story about The Reader & The Other Reader. Like I said before, I was impulsively bought this book, just because I thought the first few were so special and intriguing. But I have to say that at a certain point, as the story turns out to be less and less realistic, I lost a bit of interest. At that point I felt like the post-modernism was just taken one step too far. But overall, it's a very special read, I'm quite sure you won't find another book just like it.