#if on a winter's night a traveler

[onenakedfarmer]

ITALO CALVINO If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.

[chai-n-ivy]

"Oh it's post modern!!! it's post modern" no it's frustrating and a waste of my time

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

[cormorantcolors]

A short story about stories about stories…

[ijustkindalikebooks]

The next classic I plan to read.

[figarotrilogy]

My Bungou Stray Dogs OC, Italo Calvino!

Name: Italo Calvino

Age: 20

Nationality: Italian

Occupation: member of the Agency

Abilty: "If on a winter's night a traveller" He has a magic pen (the one he's holding in the drawing), depending on what word he writes on his arm something different happens (will go into detail if this gets enough likes). When all these small powers merce together they make the enemy unconscious for a few days and will not remember about the fight.

Likes: Writing, nature, cherries, the color yellow, spending time with his friends and family

Dislikes: Letting others down, hot temperatures, seafood, snakes, fake rumors

Backstory: Italo was born in a foreign family, known for their constant presence in the agency and their strength. He grew up listening to his grandfather's heroic actions and tales, aspiring to become just like him despite his timid behavior. Italo sometimes rethinks taking this path in life, wondering if he'll be remembered or not. He likes to see the best in it though, making friends and creating a safer environment for everybody.

Reference: He's the counterpart of Italo Calvino, an italian writer from 1940-1980 circa. He's remembered for his creative works, the brand-new style used in one of his most famous novels ("If on a winter's night a traveller") and for his contribution in WWII literature ("The Path to the Net of Spiders")

Edit: he's also terribly inspired by Aziraphale from good omens because I'm fixating yeah,,

[officialannanicolesmith]

Italo Calvino is great, you guys should read some of his work if you haven’t.

[wolfpee]

"Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings."

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE A

Narrator of Greater Boston Propaganda:

major spoilers but you think he's an objective not-even-a-character narrator and then SEASONS later he turns out to be the big bad trying to push all the characters to be their self-hating worst selves and all his narration about characters being hopeless etc is just him snidely trying to push the narrative in that direction and it's very cool

Italo Calvino Propaganda:

He’s sort of an unreliable narrator but sort of too reliable? He often fails to describe the actual story in favor of talking about the mechanics of the story and the presumed thought process of the reader, augh it’s such a good book I want to eat it

[onenakedfarmer]

ITALO CALVINO If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

[aguavida]

“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, 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. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages,

the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,

the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment,

the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case,

the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,

the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,

the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified,

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.” 

If On A Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.

Italo Calvino, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler

[lisamarie-vee]

[stijlw]

currently reading if on a winter's night a traveller by italo calvino

[thescreamingwall]

Decent haul of books from Canty’s this weekend

[theunquietworld]

“There are days when everything I see seems to me charged with meaning: messages it would be difficult for me to communicate to others, define, translate into words, but which for this very reason appear to me decisive. They are announcements or presages that concern me and the world at once: for my part, not only the external events of my existence but also what happens inside, in the depths of me; and for the world, not some particular event but the general way of being of all things. You will understand therefore my difficulty in speaking about it, except by allusion.”

- Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler