the baron in the trees

What a fun book! I own a number of Calvino’s books. He’s generally regarded and described as a “fabulist”—which is true. But some of his books are vastly different from the others. If you want to try out some Calvino, I recommend starting with The Baron in the Trees. Or maybe The Cloven Viscount or The Non-Existent Knight before moving toward the bubblingly metaphoric Cosmicomics or even the experimental Invisible Cities. And the repetitive If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler… has pretty much baffled me. I would recommend reading that one while walking down an upward-moving escalator.