A modern classic in the metafiction genre! I read this book as Italo Calvino's meditations on the process of reading and writing. Some three-fourths of the way into the book, Calvino seems to confess how he came about writing this book in the first place. Throughout the book, he employs an imaginative and quirky story-telling style to take his readers for a ride, in more ways than one. The prose is often beautiful to the point of being poetic. Calvino shows us how he, like all authors, is really several authors rolled into one, just as every reader is also several readers at once. After a point though, I did tire of being repeatedly cheated out of any closure in the book. Also, the second person narrative style which was refreshing at first lost its charm for me midway through the book. That said, I did find the book hard to put down and enjoyed most of it. Recommended!