If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

A great writer, but a very irritating book. Each of the stories is intriguing, resulting in a vast magnification of the problem I have with short stories. Regular short stories are too short and generally have cute endings or icky morals. In this case, there are no endings, which I suppose is on purpose, putting the reader into the novel as the readers desperate to find the endings. Calvino plays skillfully with narrative, and in fact the whole book seems to be an examination of various aspects of narrative. At first I didn't mind the second person voice -- I felt okay at being cast as the narrator's male alter ego or audience -- but when he then changed me to the female 'other reader' he's pursuing, it brought my own ego into it, and I began to resist. Then when he started describing my kitchen it was the last straw (he was wrong about everything, btw). So I didn't finish the book. But I did read the ending. It just wasn't the novel I wanted to read right now.