Welcome to Litsy!

14 Jan-2 Mar 25
Finally finished! I remember enjoying this book at uni, but re-reading in anticipation of Polly studying it for IB LIT has been tedious. Perhaps it was because the structure was no longer novel? Or maybe it is a book that needs to be studied and discussed rather than read for pleasure? I may need to do some additional reading to appreciate it whilst it is still close to mind because as the moment it just seems contrived.

#weirdwords #weirdwordwednesday I read a great article this week titled “Italo Calvino's 14 Definitions of What Makes a Classic” and when I googled the highlighted word most of the results linked back to the article I‘d started from. Apparently Calvino uses it in the tagged book too. It never shows up in a dictionary but the consensus seems to be that he‘s Anglicized the Italian verb for to pulverize (I don‘t speak Italian).👇🏼

Here's my #December #Bookspin /#Bookspinbingo list! ❄️
@TheAromaofBooks

This also gives me some options for the prompts of the December #winter #Pokémon #GottaCatch'emAll challenge created by @PuddleJumper 😊
Super excited for December and lots of cozy reading while it's raining or snowing outside!

This is a wild ride!!!!

Group C- Y‘all, I‘m having a tough time narrowing it down. Let me know what you prefer.

#coldweatherreads

It has taken 25 years + to finally reread this book and it was well worth the wait. It is amazing how a book can get you thinking and inspire you to approach the big questions with humour and humanity. This is that type of book.

This book was one I had read way back in 1988. I loved it! I promised myself that if ever I had a life changing event, I would use it as an anchor to stabilize me (if you know the book you see the irony). With time and life changing events passing I came to fear that I may have put this book too high on a pedestal. With a triple bypass looming it came off the shelf. Pleased to say both bypass and book are standing the test of time admirably.

So this is a buddy read pick with a co-worker. Know nothing about it except that she was excited to read it. Decided to start reading it in a new independent coffee shop that opened in the town next to mine. Liking both so far.

“To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in any place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and the when in which you vanished.“

#SundaySentence

@TheAromaofBooks' March #Bookspin numbers are drawn! I'm excited about my picks and I have a great feeling about this month's board. Time to get reading!

This modern classic is a postmodern puzzle following “you,” the Reader, and the Other Reader (an attractive woman) on a quest to find a full story, each time finding a book incomplete or misprinted, and thus over and over getting hooked by a series of incipits (openings of texts). A kaleidoscopic examination of reading and writing and storytelling ensues—and a book I found clever, amusing, and frustrating (1970s gender & sexuality) at times.

Such good fun and never takes itself too seriously.

📚 If on a Winter‘s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
✒️ John Irving
🎞 Inside Man
🎤 The Ink Spots
🎼 “I Want to Break Free,” by Queen, “I‘ll Be Your Mirror,” and “I‘m Waiting for the Man,” by The Velvet Underground, “I‘m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” by Fats Waller, “I‘m So Tired,” by The Beatles, “Illegal Smile,” by John Prine #manicmonday #letteri @CBee

I fell utterly in love with this book! I was instantly charmed when I started reading. The spiral of texts takes us down a delightful rabbit hole! Calvino explores the multitude of ways that readers interact with stories and books. He starts with the physicality of books and obtaining them and moves on to how we process stories. He goes on to address the impact of author origin and history, the fluidity and evolution of languages, ⬇️

A wonderful book, very off the wall but enjoyable none the less. Speaks to the heart of a bookworm‘s soul.

I read this with a Goodreads group and loved it! Other members found it difficult or not to their tastes, so it definitely doesn‘t work for everyone. The writing is exquisite, but the format is more nontraditional and experimental. I‘m adding it to my favorites shelf!
#QotD

“I would like to be able to write a book that is only an incipit, that maintains for its whole duration the potentiality of the beginning, the expectation still not focused on an object. But how could such a book be constructed? Would it break off after the first paragraph? Would the preliminaries be prolonged indefinitely? Would it set the beginning of one tale inside another, as in the Arabian Nights?” (173). So glad he figured it out! 😁

“ . . . the signs of that invisible movement that reading is, the flow of gaze and breath, but, even more, the journey of the words through the person, their course or their arrest, their spurts, delays, pauses, the attention concentrating or straying, the returns, that journey that seems uniform and on the contrary is always shifting and uneven” (165). So many quotable lines in this book!! ❤️❤️

It‘s clever, it‘s interesting, it‘s masterfully written… but I kept falling asleep. If On A Winter‘s Night A Traveler is the most soporific novel I‘ve picked up since The Golden Bowl. It‘s like, I could appreciate that the writing craft was excellent, but I couldn‘t ignore that the reading experience was so-so (at best). Full review: https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/if-on-a-winters-night-a-traveler-italo-calv...

“Reading,” he says, “is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and 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 and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead . . . “ (70).

Just started reading this and am already delighted with Calvino‘s fantastic description of a reader‘s foray into a bookstore. The reader is forced to navigate through the book displays as though they were opposing forces. “ . . . you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven‘t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you.” Too true, and too funny!! ❤️❤️

Character limit here, so I wrote a longer review on goodreads which I'll link below if you're curious BUT in short: I like the idea, I like the theme, but I don't think I liked the actual story or Calvino's writing style. Maybe skip this book & listen to SYGNYL: A General Mystification instead (which is what my bookmark is from 👀) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3899661623

Just posted episode 46 on March our bookclub selection, Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. It's enjoyable if you're into postmodern meta fiction and books about reading books and half finished stories. I liked it, Peter liked it less and I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks. We have a fun conversation about it though. Enjoy!

https://open.spotify.com/show/6A6hXZ7eaOG7BtHOSJpCTI

I can recognise that it is something of a tour-de-force and I know it is loved by many but, although it has made me more aware at least for the moment of how I read, ultimately this book didn't really do it for me. It probably deserves a pick as an accomplishment but my own reaction is a so-so

An essential clause in any pre-nup

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino‘s new novel, If on a winter‘s night a traveler. Relax.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

"...then from the very first page you realize that the novel you are holding has nothing to do with the one you were reading yesterday."

1. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (WEIRD)
2. The newest Susanna Clark book...forgetting the name?!
3. None right now! But I need to order my next bookclub book soon.

@rachelsbrittain #weekendreads @Blueberry

New episode just posted! We choose a book from this stack of four and discuss many interesting things, literature, Kubrick, Orson Welles, stuff like that. Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/show/6A6hXZ7eaOG7BtHOSJpCTI?si=dMxV1X1IQQGA8gN8eHI1Ug

This is the coolest book. It inspired the SYGNYL podcast, from the creator of AMC's Dispatches from Elsewhere. (I interviewed him on my podcast!) It has 2nd person POV!!!!!!
Not done reading it yet, but it's so cool. I've not read anything else with the same structure.

Five years ago today I was in Omaha enjoying lunch at M‘s Pub and looking through the book shown as I had just bought it at an used bookstore in Old Market, when the restaurant‘s gas line was ruptured and blew. While I was not physically injured, I was mentally affected and even today have lingering trauma from that experience. Today I will be spending focusing on my mental health and self care.

Blimey, three chapters in and I'm feeling slightly unacademic and in need of more education! It's intriguing but needs a lot of concentration 📖📖😊🙄

⭐️⭐️
Man, this book was hard to get through. I really liked the idea behind this book, and I thought the first few chapters were brilliant, but after the amazing beginning things just got so painfully dull. All the interrupting stories felt so similar, and I didn‘t really care for most of them, and the main story wasn‘t very interesting either. There were things to appreciate in this book, but I found it hard to focus on them and really most of ⬇️

1. If on a Winter‘s Night a Traveller and Song for the Unraveling of the World
2. A Time to Kill (Ecclesiastes 3:3)
3. “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino‘s new novel, If on a winter‘s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade.”
#weekendreads

1. If on a Winter‘s Night a Traveller, Call Me Zelda, and Flowers for Algernon
2. Dune
3. If on a Winter‘s Night a Traveller
#weekendreads

I've taken a short break from contemporary literature to read this unique, authentic and reference novel written in the 1970s - a vast reflection on the possibilities of literature, several literary genres brought together and explored in a single novel

This is my house and this is my book, but it is not my cat.

🤣

1. If on a Winter‘s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino and Dune by Frank Herbert
2. The Martian by Andy Weir
3. Rabbits for Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum

#weekendreads

What a rollercoaster of a ride, this one! Imagine you (the reader in this novel) open a book, but never get to its ending. Then you try to find the proper copy of that book, but turns out it's a different book altogether, which is held in suspension as well, and so it goes on. It's a novel about the reader's quest to find the complete copies of the book(s), but ending up encountering ten thrilling, atmospheric, philosophical stories;

First time reading Calvino, and wow, i am transported. This has got a quirky concept (nothing like i have read before), and add to it, absolutely gorgeous writing. What's also interesting is how one as a reader is addressed, with all their reader/reading behaviour/characteristics displayed to them.

"The pleasures derived from the use of a paper knife are tactile, auditory, visual, and especially mental."

I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it—I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don‘t judge me—I have a lot of books. Join the fun if you want. This is day 10! #bookstoread #tbrpile

Wow, what a book. Haven‘t read anything like it. It‘s perfect for breaking up the rhythm and infusing a little (or a lot) of wonder to your reading experience. Unique, very unique.

I love this page — sorry if it‘s hard to read but it‘s 💯

Reading this is like walking through a labyrinth and finding a different story each time you turn the path (chapter). I liked the concept, and this novel, but I feel I must re-read in order to fully appreciate its intricacies. Not soon, though. My favorite part is the first chapter describing choosing and buying a book in a bookstore (I‘ll share a quote next post).

#1001Books

I need to get through my physical #1001Books TBRs. I have a lot of those. I‘ve decided if they don‘t hook me by page 50, I‘ll mark them read, but with a note that I bailed. Let‘s see if this one passes the test!