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If on a winter's night a traveler by Calvino

This book was first recommended to me by Gabi and later by Val, whereas Ortrun

said she felt somewhat unsatisfied by all these unfinished beginnings. This book does consist of some 10 short stories or, rather, ideas for stories or, to be even more precise, unfinished beginnings of said stories. That's kind of what I expected after Ortrun's comment, but I somehow thought that each beginning would point to a different variant of the same theme 'If on a winter's night a traveler'. So I was a little disappointed when all beginnings seemed completely unrelated. Actually, that's only half the truth, because there is another half to this book, connecting the unrelated beginnings. This other half consists of a complete story, a meta story, if you want, and pretty original, too. Told in the second person, the protagonist is You, the Reader, who happens to be male, but also the Other Reader, who happens to be female, and their relationship. For some reason, there is another character making an appearance, the Writer, convoluting everything even more ;) Val wanted to give this book to me as a gift together with some others when we met in August, but I didn't know and had already bought it days before. Just finished reading it last week.

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Uploaded on October 11, 2009
Taken on October 11, 2009