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Summary: For the love of reading
Review: The protagonists of this extraordinarily beguiling and inventively written book are The Reader (a man, also called You) and The Other Reader (a woman, Ludmilla) both of whom are passionate book lovers. Their common bond leads them eventually to also become passionate about each other. Both discover that the book each is reading mistakenly contains unfinished novels by different authors. Due to an alleged publishing error each novel ends abruptly._If On A Winter's Night A Traveler_ is really about the love of reading--the special relationship a reader forms with books. Every reader brings what is in himself to the book he is reading: his expectations (who the author is, what is on the book jacket), his reading style (whether he devours every book written by the author or if he is more discerning in his tastes in literature), and the books he has read previously. With wit, wisdom, and boundless imagination, Mr. Calvino brings You along on this magical journey, where paranoid plots abound to frustrate The Reader's and The Other Reader's intentions to finish the books into which they become so readily captivated. Included are a nefarious translator, possible alien beings who influence the Readers' minds while they are reading, and a censorship czar from a foreign dictatorship. All stand in the way of The Readers' finding satisfaction. Ludmilla encourages The Reader to go to the book's publishing house, but she refuses to accompany him there. To her the world is divided between readers and the authors and publishers, and she must never cross that line. "Otherwise," Ludmilla goes on to say, "the unsullied pleasure of reading ends, or at least is transformed into something else, which is not what I want." The bottom line, and Mr. Calvino makes this abundantly clear, is that were there no readers, authors and the books that they write would cease to exist. Readers could live without authors, but without readers authors would fade from existence.
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Summary: Read a novel the redefines what it means to read a novel...
Review: One of the most wonderful, imaginative, complex, and lucidbooks that I've read. Calvino takes the novel, the writer,and the reader and fashions a lush, sensual, mysterious tale around them. While I liked everything about the book, from the highly humorous and clever plot to the poem at the heart of the story, I was especially amazed by Calvino's ability to shift from one chapter to the next to a nearly completely different style of writing, as appropiate to the story's plot. Many authors have mastered their style; Calvino mastered style itself, and put it effectively to the service of his art.
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Summary: Wonderfully Original and Lots of Fun
Review: IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER is a very difficult book for me to review for two reasons: (1) I'm not a great review writer and (2) the book is just so original it's difficult to decide exactly what to say about it. First of all, I'll say that Italo Calvino is one of my favorite writers. All of his books are so original and so inventive, but this one, I think, is his very best of all and it is generally regarded as his masterpiece. IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER explores the relationship between a writer and a reader. It lets us know, that in many ways, without readers, a writer's work loses much of its meaning. In my opinion, Calvino has used this book to give us several philosophical musings on diverse subjects and these musings are, brilliantly, lacking in pretense or hubris. They sparkle, like the little gems of wisdom and truth they are and the reader delights in them rather than feeling weighed down. Even more brilliantly, Calvino has woven his musings into a sweet, little plot involving "the Reader" and "the Other Reader." I loved this story and found it very profound as well as very sweet. Calvino was a writer whose insight into human nature was razor sharp. IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER is one of the most quirky, imaginative books I've ever read. Add to that the fact that it was just plain fun and you've got a truly unbeatable combination.
Rating: 
Summary: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Review: This story commanded my attention without asking me to think. Calvino is a tease, sometimes to the point of being condescending. He addresses the reader, for the most part, casually enough that (after the initial shock), you don't realize it's being done. About 3/4 through, I got slightly annoyed, but I'm sure that that was precisely his intention. It was curiousity rather than genuine interest in the story that compelled me to keep going after the first 50 pages, and it will likely be curiousity once more that compels me to read another of his books (should it cross my path...). confidential to "required reading" reviewers: duh.
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Summary: Where to begin...or end
Review: After reading the novel "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino I wasn't sure what just happened. Now is not much different, all that I can say is that I was facinated by the sweeping journey that this narrative takes you. Never before have I felt so a part of the story before. Right from the very first paprgraph you can tell that this is not going to be a normal tale. For what it is worth, I could not help thinking that the story reminded me of an onion, and no matter how many times you think you know where the story is going, you read another page and find out how wrong you were. This is not a passive novel. To get full enjoyment out of the reading you have to emerse yourself completely. The novel revolves around the two readers of books, a man and a woman, and through them you are introduced to ten different novels. The readers never get to finish on of the novels due to different circumstances surrounding each. You as the reader try to determine why they can never find the end to the book they are trying desperately to finish. The complexities are numerous because the novel is so many stories at once, not only are you involved in the adventures of the two readers but as you read what they are reading of each new book you are intrigued with the story within the story, only to have that end at a moment of suspense. Part frustrating, part intellegent, part inventive, this novel has it all. This is not recommended for the person who wants some light reading but for the reader who wants to explore what makes them want to read and what awaits us at the end. Full of philosophical insight, Calvino marks the way for the most original novel I have read and I loved ever page. I loved the novel because I have so many questions about it. We are introduced to all these charcters involved in the reading and the counterfeiting of the books, then we learn of a suspense writer who is thinking about writing a novel about what we are reading, but then you think where does Italo Calvino fit in. I don;t want to write to much to give away any great parts but just know that if you decide to pick up this book you will not be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: NO SUBSTANCE
Review: After being bored closed to death by the first chapter Calvino manages to entrap you with the second chapter. Calvino is a brilliant story teller, but drives the final dagger into your heart with chapter 3 and the several stories following it. (...)NOT RECOMMENDED. No substance and no emotion.
Rating: 
Summary: All style, no substance
Review: After I read the first 50 pages, I thought to myself that this was the most brilliant thing I had ever read. But then when I was about half way through the book, the gimmick had worn really thin and I had to struggle to finish the book upon realizing (without giving anything away) that (a) it's kind of pointless to read the titled chapters, and (b) the story told in the numbered chapters has stopped making sense.
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Summary: Creativity
Review: This book is an exercise in creativity. The format is very unconventional, but by no means overbearing. Considering that Calvino jumps from one unfinished novel to the other in the same book, you'd think there would be nagging discontinuities. However, a unifying scheme does emerge. A statement is made about the very acts of reading and writing. All in all, an excellent read.
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Summary: Innovative experiment of reader-writer relationship
Review: If, On a Winter's Night A Traveler is a rarity in fiction reading and writing in which the book boldly denounces the inveterate relationship between authorship and authority, proclaiming a revolution in which readers are to be liberated from the "tyranny of the author's single canonical meaning" and free to make their own interpretation. The Plot
A certain reader is reading a novel that breaks off into another novel and the reader seeks to investigate the origin of such unpardonable publishing mistakes. It turns out that a certain translator Ermes Marana had proposed a stratagem in which he would break off the translation at the moment of greatest suspense and would start translating another novel, inserting it into the first through some rudimentary expedient. When translating literature of a moribund language, he got confused and the texts that he had translated was from another novel by a Polish writer. Such production defect in copies on behalf of his egregious blunder repeatedly forced readers to abandon reading. Through the help the very diabolical Ermes Marana, a Japanese firm plotted to manufacture author Silas Flannery's novels by computer and contrived to produce absolutely new ones in order to invade the world market. The books were re-translated back to English and none of the critics could have distinguished which from the true Flannerys. The books were really plagiarisms from little known Japanese authors of novels that, having had no success, were sent to be pulped. The art of writing and reading what an author means for a reader to read from the writing is brought forth to the full actuality through the reader's indefatigable effort to unmask the identities of translations. Writer-Reader Relationship
The author addresses directly to the reader and shapes the story in the perspective of the reader-in other words, the author somehow deprives his authority and has to involve reader into decision-making. The book has left open to the reader who is reading the possibility of identifying himself with the reader who is read: this is why he was not given a name, which would automatically have made him the equivalent of a third person, of a character, and so he had been kept a pronoun in its abstract condition-suitable for any attribute and any action. Reading about Reading
The book begins (and subsequently throughout which) asks the reader to reflect minutely on the very activity of reading, which most of us take for granted. The book itself is also about characters (readers) practicing such reflection so raptly (and so absorbed in their books) that the world around them falls away. The novel explores the complex relationship between reading (what is being read, what the author means for reader to read...), writing (what is being written and not explicitly written...), and publishing (how translation of text might have forfeited the meaning...). Stimuli Reading
The most magnificent aspect of If, On a Winter's Night A Traveler is that the book explores the relationship between what the author has written explicitly and how what is being written down in the book stimulates, evokes, and obviates past experiences, memories, and thoughts. Reader might remember very well everything he has read, perhaps for whom each book becomes intensified with his reading of it at a given time, once and for all. As a result, reader might have preserved the books in the memory and prefers to preserve the books as objects, keeping them within proximity. Italo Calvino further explores this argument about reading a "different book" other than the one currently being read. Reader, in other words, might be reading another book besides the one before his eyes-a book that yet does to exist, but since the reader wants it, cannot fail to exist. Reading becomes some abstract idea through which reader measures himself against something else that is not present, something that belongs to the immaterial, invisible dimension, because it can only be thought, concocted, and imagined or it was once and is no longer attainable. If, On a Winter's Night challenges reader to have seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or maybe a feeling, or a question, or even just an image. The book encourages reader going off on a tangent and wandering from thought to thought, in such itinerary of reasonings that reader should feel to persue to the end. 4.5 stars. 2004 (3)
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Summary: Don't read any other reviews.
Review: The other reviews give away too much. It's probably too late; the first review you're likely to read is the editorial one which is the worst of all. It is sufficient enough to say that this book is great: it is witty, thoroughly original, easy to read, difficult to read, fun, a page-turner, a lesson on writing, an insight into the mind(s) of a writer(s), mischievious, convoluted, contrived, cohesive, natural, self-reflexive, self-conscious, and ridiculous. I read this book in Lyon, France. It's the first book I've read entirely in Lyon, France. One might think that my love of this book is partially influenced by the environment in which I read it, but in fact I was hating Lyon, France during the two days that I read this book. Now, after having finished the book, but not as a direct result of my love for the book, I love Lyon, France. This is a book I picked up from the bookshelf in my friends' apartment in Lyon, France. One of my friends' bought the other friend the book a couple years ago, and they both love it as well, although the owner of the book - not the buyer - has not yet finished it. I know I'm not talking about the content of the book, but it really doesn't matter. I guarantee to you that the content of the book is excellent. I don't mean that I guarantee it in that I'll reimburse you if you don't like it; on the contrary, what I would like to propose is that if you don't like it, you will have to pay me fifty American dollars. That will pretty much guarantee that you will like it, albeit by threat of losing fifty American dollars. Still, I believe that you will also like it because of it's own merits - as I mentioned previously, the book is witty, thoroughly original, easy to read, difficult to read, fun, a page-turner, a lesson on writing, an insight into the mind(s) of a writer(s), mischievious, convoluted, contrived, cohesive, natural, self-reflexive, self-conscious, and ridiculous. What more could you ask?
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