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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9809.Invisible_Cities?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Invisible Cities" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166064840m/9809.gif" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9809.Invisible_Cities?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Invisible Cities</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/155517.Italo_Calvino">Italo Calvino</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/10483439?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars Italo Calvino is one of those writers who is beloved by all of the friends whom I love most ... and whom I most want to impress.
 
 So, as is inevitably the case, I sat down to read, because just owning the book is, apparently, not enough. Nothing was osmosing, no matter how long it sat on my nightstand. So.
 
 I started reading it in a diner. I don't recommend this approach, but I think it's a testament to the book's beauty and Calvino's kind of, um, restrained giftedness that I was skimming, skimming, skimming (also not recommended) and then said, "Whoa," out loud, and flipped back to the beginning of chapter six (which starts on page 10 in my edition, just to give you an idea) and started rereading, because I had a feeling that somewhere buried in all of the chapter's sensory descriptions and flash impressions was an actual story.
 
 The closest I can come to describing Calvino to non-Calvino reading friends is that it's like reading a film.
 
 Frex: "... The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of the guttering and a cat's progress along it as he slips in the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock."
 
 Seriously. Hollywood could spend two or three hours on that paragraph, which isn't even the whole paragraph. Barely half a page, even, but that's what I love and kind of hate about Calvino: so evocative, so interesting, and you have to pay attention to catch it because you (or the story) can get washed away because the technique is so incredibly economical.
 
 Hmm. I just talked myself into giving the book another star, though, because it really is brilliant.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/147384?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

O'Donovan's review
rating:
bookshelves: re-reading

Italo Calvino is one of those writers who is beloved by all of the friends whom I love most ... and whom I most want to impress.

So, as is inevitably the case, I sat down to read, because just owning the book is, apparently, not enough. Nothing was osmosing, no matter how long it sat on my nightstand. So.

I started reading it in a diner. I don't recommend this approach, but I think it's a testament to the book's beauty and Calvino's kind of, um, restrained giftedness that I was skimming, skimming, skimming (also not recommended) and then said, "Whoa," out loud, and flipped back to the beginning of chapter six (which starts on page 10 in my edition, just to give you an idea) and started rereading, because I had a feeling that somewhere buried in all of the chapter's sensory descriptions and flash impressions was an actual story.

The closest I can come to describing Calvino to non-Calvino reading friends is that it's like reading a film.

Frex: "... The c...more Italo Calvino is one of those writers who is beloved by all of the friends whom I love most ... and whom I most want to impress.

So, as is inevitably the case, I sat down to read, because just owning the book is, apparently, not enough. Nothing was osmosing, no matter how long it sat on my nightstand. So.

I started reading it in a diner. I don't recommend this approach, but I think it's a testament to the book's beauty and Calvino's kind of, um, restrained giftedness that I was skimming, skimming, skimming (also not recommended) and then said, "Whoa," out loud, and flipped back to the beginning of chapter six (which starts on page 10 in my edition, just to give you an idea) and started rereading, because I had a feeling that somewhere buried in all of the chapter's sensory descriptions and flash impressions was an actual story.

The closest I can come to describing Calvino to non-Calvino reading friends is that it's like reading a film.

Frex: "... The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of the guttering and a cat's progress along it as he slips in the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock."

Seriously. Hollywood could spend two or three hours on that paragraph, which isn't even the whole paragraph. Barely half a page, even, but that's what I love and kind of hate about Calvino: so evocative, so interesting, and you have to pay attention to catch it because you (or the story) can get washed away because the technique is so incredibly economical.

Hmm. I just talked myself into giving the book another star, though, because it really is brilliant....less

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