Rating: 
Summary: Terrible
Review: Well, to be honest the only reason that I purchased this book in the first place was for a class that I was taken so I know that this review will be very biased. First of all, I found Calvino's writing style to be very hard to follow. This book did not keep my attention at all and I did not even finish it.
Rating: 
Summary: absolute magic. in words, form and ideas.
Review: calvino is a true fable spinner, and if on a winter's night a traveller is the greatest testimony to his extraordinary skill and ability. sheer delight in form and the reader is constantly left wondering about the power of the book. it transcends at various times from being a novel that you read into a novel that you inhabit and very often into a novel that you are writing. clearly this is calvino's greatest triumph. it is hard to explain how he makes this happen but he gives the impression that he is sharing a specific secret with you and that it was written especially for you.this novel, is in many ways a collection of the beginnings of eight different novels, which are woven into one and no not because calvino did it. but because you wanted it to be that way. if that did not make sense to you, but intrigues you then venture into calvino's world to discover what he does the reader. a puppet in the puppeteer's hands.
Rating: 
Summary: On the subject of bad books...
Review: I am reading this book right now for a class, and it is just plain and simple a terrible book. Calvino takes an extremely patronizing tone throughout and expects you to follow him into his aimless gab and gibberish of a "novel". It completely lacks a plot or thorough characterizations and yet expects you to connect with the people that come and go about you. I understand that his purpose is to iterate the joys and difficulties of reading, yet it completely misfires. It does not attempt to connect with the reader, instead it only lectures to you, and therefore makes it completely devoid of use. It was an utter waste of my time when I could have been reading Dostoyevsky.
Rating:
Summary: Inventive, entertaining and highly rewarding
Review: This was the first book that I read by Calvino. I started it with high expectations because people in the know put him somewhere between the omnipotent Jorge Luis Borges and Queneau's OULIPO movement, both high on my fav list. I greatly enjoyed this book, it is witty and entertaining, expertly constructed and jam-packed with spiritual and intellectual nourishment, without ever getting overbearing. After finishing the novel and allowing a weekend to let it crystallize out in my mind, it is hard to suppress my awe for this book. Building a novel out of 10 more or less unconnected first chapters of different novels interlaced with commentaries that provide the novel's main story line is one thing. To infuse the work with both philosophical and poetic musing on many aspects of reading and to lesser extent writing and still keep everything together and progress logically and coherently, is quite another. It is striking to realize that the 10 seemingly unconnected stories, that each reflect a stage of the old "guy meets gal" story, indeed form a tight unity. While one could state that Borges is like the literary equivalent of Bach, painstakingly building dense literary inventions, Calvino, in this book, struck me as the novelist counterpart of Claude Debussy, when he wrote his piano etudes. In both the genre of piano studies and novels one could think that everything has been said and done, until the unlimited inventiveness of the likes of Calvino show that there are still an endless number of new directions to be explored. While reading this book and "getting" at least a part of it's contents provided me with a rigorous mental exercise, I would do it an injustice without mentioning how entertaining and humorous it is. The satiric takes on plagiarism, formulaic "button" pushing writing and on pre-tested computer generated novels are both funny and on the money. Some of the stories are truly funny and I think that the "gingko leave" story would make for a great Saturday Night Live " skit, if it weren't for it's adult content. This book is a literary equivalent of M.C. Esscher's drawing of an art gallery where visitors are looking at a painting, that they themselves are part of. I think anybody with a love of reading should get their hands on this book, yet advise people who only read a few pages to refrain from writing reviews, since it would really take someone of Calvino's stature to pull of such an act successfully.
Rating: 
Summary: Cute experiment; not much else.
Review: When I started reading this book, I was really grooving on it at first, due to the sheer novelty factor. It seemed--and still does seem--an intriguing idea, and I felt that it could really be something special if done correctly. However, as I got farther and farther, my enthusiasm faded, and I'm left feeling that the novel was, in the end, about the sum of its parts. The manner in which Calvino starts, gets the reader deeply involved in, and then abandons ten consecutive novels within the main text is certainly impressive, but it begs the question: why? What is the purpose of this little experiment? Yes, it no doubt replicates the feelings of frustration and annoyance experienced by "you" in the novel, but there doesn't seem to be any compensating factor that would make up for having said frustration and annoyance visited upon oneself. Maybe it's meant as some big post-modern joke that I'm just not getting, but I for one fail to see the point. The "you" sections aren't much better. They start off interestingly enough--thanks in great part to the aforementioned novelty factor, no doubt--but the more surreal and implausible they become, the less interesting they get. It's not the surreality and implausibility that I dislike per se (both of these are perfectly honorable storytelling techniques); it's more the fact that they're executed in a largely uninvolving way, in spite of a few funny moments--e.g., the rival university language departments and the discussion of how governments ban books. Also, I have a very difficult time seeing how anyone could possibly find the barely-there romance between "you" and Ludmilla at all affecting; I find the amazon review's charterizing the novel as "deeply romantic" to be baffling. Yes, there is some very good writing on display here, and there are some profound insights into the nature of reading, but I'm sorry to say that these alone, without a much stronger framework than the one in evidence here, do not a great novel make.
Rating:
Summary: awful
Review: I didn't make it very far, about 60 pages and that was enough, the author just seems rude and pretentious, telling the reader what the reader will feel while reading the book. I understand from perusing the other reviews here (even the good ones) that there is no real story, that this book is actually about the telling of stories and readers reactions and does not have an end.
I suggest reading some of the sample pages before you buy this one.
Rating:
Summary: Looking for a novel to read? Go look somewhere else.
Review: The rule is that the writer should never talk to the reader ... Italo Calvino does not only do so, he does so all the time. This is not a good read. It is a very frustrating read. Browse a little more and find yourself something else to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it for the intervals
Review: Since the book has been well-reviewed here by people more capable than I am, I would simply like to say that I think it is worth reading for Calvino's thoughts on reading and books. Frankly I found most of the incomplete novels rather boring, and looked forward to the intervals in which Calvino talks to the reader. He described many emotions that people who are devoted to reading will be very familiar with.
Rating:
Summary: My you are clever, Mr. Calvino
Review: Reading If On A Winter's Night A Traveler is like being tethered to a pole while a dog runs circles around you, pausing occasionally to pant, stick out it's tongue and slobber on the ground.
Rating:
Summary: Very different
Review: I sat down and started to read this book and couldn't stop. It is so different from everything else. It is as if the book has a life of its own. There is no story, yet there is a very alive story line, it becomes your story. You join the reader and the author on the search for truth, gripping you to keep going. But take caution not anyone can read this, you have to keep an open mind, accept the fact that there is no absolute finale. Each time you reach a climax you loose it again. It teaches you how to read in a new light. Enjoy it as you would enjoy a beautiful sunset
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