We recently "incensed" John Brownlee of Table of Malcontents with our simplistic instructions for reading House of Leaves. He responded with the passion of a book lover and a description of the novel's layout, including a page scan. If you honestly need help approaching the book, see his post. We remain resolute in our position that if you can't figure out how read it without an explanation, you will have problems understanding it. Instead, might we suggest something in either a James Patterson or Sidney Sheldon?

Smooches to Ed Champion for defending us.

Let's see whose query we won't answer properly today.

Search String: book report on charlie and the chocolate factory

Do your own homework, kid.

Search String: comments about "If on a winters night a traveler"

Considering that the Book Mistress didn't make it past the first chapter of Italo Calvino's novel, which is written in the second person, before casting it aside and telling it to shut up, we have no comment.

Search String: what did brother francis eat AND "canticle for leibowitz"

Is this important to the plot of the above by Walter M. Miller, Jr.? Why would anyone need to know this? Is this a question from some kind of fact-based assignment in which a teacher naively expects to discover whether or not you did your reading? Or are you working on cookbook targeted to nomadic priests in the post-apocalyptic future?

Our wonderings aside, the best way to find out is to either actually read the book or try Google Book Search, but we'll tell you what he didn't eat:

"Yesterday. There was this lizard, Father. It had blue and yellow stripes, and such magnificent hams—thick as your thumb and plump, and I kept thinking how it would taste like chicken, roasted all brown and crisp outside, and—"

"All right," the priest interrupted. Only a hint of revulsion crossed his aged face. After all, the boy was spending a lot of time in the sun. "You took pleasure in these thoughts? You didn't try to get rid of the temptation?"

Francis reddened. "I—I tried to catch it. It got away (pp. 33-34)."

Search String: WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN A PERSON LIES ALOT

It means that person is a liar. Next?

Poor, neglected BookBlog. I'm very behind on everything, so here's something that's been on the TBL [To Blog List].

After wondering about books written in the second person, Kate of Kate's Book Blog was recommended If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. She seems to be enjoying it. Although Sarah of Fiendish Plot moderated this book for us back in May of 2004, I never made it past the first chapter.

Despite not reading it, I did participate in the discussion with one comment: "I hate this book." At the time, I couldn't expound further. Every sentence felt like torture. I simply wanted to be rid of Calvino as quickly as possible and move on to the next book since second person doesn't work for me. With first- or third-person narration, the reader is along for the ride like a fly on the wall. A casual observer, if you will. But when a book starts talking to me, I can't keep from talking back.

Like when I'm in the grocery store and the self-checkout scanner repeats, "If you are done scanning, please press 'finish and pay,'" as I fumble in my purse for a bonus card because there's no way I'm missing out on the 5-cent discount per pound of American cheese even though my eight ounces will only net me 2.5 cents and the machine's incessant nagging about pressing a button on its unsympathetic, cold screen forces me into telling it firmly, "I am trying to finish and pay, so back off," even though the rational mind knows it doesn't care about the pressure I'm feeling.

And that's another step closer to insanity.

So I didn't read If on a winter's night a traveler. But I participated in the discussion. And I'm going to add an entry to Kate's Calvino Meme.

Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages:
That would be every book in my TBR pile, which now numbers over 200. Just to name a few that happen to be near at hand, we have 10th Grade by Joseph Weisberg, The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, and The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem.

Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success:
I'm not much of a collector, so I've never found myself thinking about hard-to-find editions. However, I would love to know what my mom did with the reproduction turn-of-the-century spelling text I won at the county spelling bee. It was clad in fine-smelling leather.

Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment:
Of course, A Box of Matches and The Red and the Black, which I will finish if it kills me.

Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case:
The BookBlog Library. Although a discussion may be over, I often go back and refer to them again. I have a handful of reference books, like The Vogue Sewing Book.

Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer:
I have never understood the summer reading thing. Why put off to summer what you could start reading now?

Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves:
One of the references I like to keep handy is The Riverside Shakespeare. I wish I had The Riverside Chaucer. I used to, but I sold it with all my books when I left Chicago.

Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified:
Everyday People by Stewart O'Nan. Besides Clyde remarking on the author's name, it's been compared to Clockers by Richard Price. Both are books by white guys about black guys. I thought Clockers was only okay, but enjoyed it enough since many of the scenes took place in and around my hometown. Everyday People is set in Pittsburgh. I'm curious to see how the two compare even though the first was only okay, I know little about Pittsburgh, and I'm not a white guy writing about black guys.

By the way, the only other book I know of that's also written in the second person is Aura by Carlos Fuentes.

During last month's discussion of The Ghost Writer, we couldn't help but focus on the stories within the story because they play such a large role in the progression of the overall plot. "Seraphina" and "The Revenant" are written by Viola Hatherley, an author who didn't exist until John Harwood invented her. Other past BookBlog selections also contain stories within the story. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino [May 2004] refers to novels that never were. And Cervantes' Don Quixote [November/December 2002] would have stayed home if it were not for tales of knights errant and their noble adventures.

Keeping track of virtual books requires a virtual library:

The Invisible Library - The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.

You won't get to read any of the books cataloged in The Invisible Library, but it's a fun web site nonetheless. For book geeks everywhere.

Calvino makes You, The Reader the hero of his book. In large part, the book is a love letter to readers and booklovers everywhere. But it's not uncritical -- Calvino seems to be warning of a time when readers are sheep: He talks about people who read only to confirm or amplify what they already believe, like Lotaria (and quite a few bloggers), people who read for escape, people who read to discover, people who read to be reminded, people who read to analyze, etc. Then there's the people who break books down into lists of word frequncy, those who are create computer programs to ape a bestseller's style, etc.

At the same time, he describes and dissects that various ways people read, and implies that in the end, all reading is in essense solitary -- you can be reading the same book beside your lover in a double bed, but you're still alone in your book.

Do you believe that? Or do sites like this make reading a more shared experience? And how and why do you read?

I think we've establish the book you do not want to read right now is Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler." What kind of books do you really want to read right now?

Ludmilla, the Other Reader, has very specific (and constantly changing) requirements for the kind of book she really wants to read. She doesn't concentrate on types of plots (a mystery, a western, a political thriller, a historical romance) but the sensations the writing arouses:

"The novel I would most like to read at this moment should have as its driving force only the desire to narrate, to pile stories on stories, without trying to impose a philosophy of life on you, simply allowing you to observe its own growth, like a tree, an entangling, as if of braches and leaves."

or

"I like books where all the mysteries and the anguish pass through a precise and cold mind, without shadows, like the mind of a chessplayer."

Tell me about the book you want to be reading right now -- about the plot, or the feeling you get while reading it, or the ideas you want it to uncover, or the sensations you want it to evoke. And have you ever encountered a book that does all that you require? If so, what is it? And do you require different things of different books at different times?

Oooooohkay, so the response to If on a Winter's Night hasn't been quite what I hoped. Let me ask this: How many of you read it? How many of you started and gave up? How many of you kept at it and hated every minute of it? How many, if any, liked it?

Fo those of you who hated it (cough, Marydell, cough) -- why? Did you not like the concept or the execution? The style didn't grab you? You resent being addressed as "you" when the Reader is a guy, and therefore not you?

For those who gave up -- why? Couldn't follow the story? Couldn't see the point? Couldn't care less?

For those of you (ok, apparently "for those of me") who liked it -- why? What did you like about it?

Here's what I liked -- that he managed to thread a plot through all the stopped and started stories of the books, that he had such a vast love of reading and respect for readers, and that he had a great time poking fun at the literary conventions of the day. Also, like I said, this was the first book that really engaged me in a non-linear, what-the-hell-is-going-on story, and I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for it because of that.

If you like the idea of the book, but not the execution, who do you think does it better? I agree with Diane, that Jeanette Winterson is another one who does amazing twisting things with books that you hardly knew could happen. Who else?

Hey there, and welcome to the discussion on If On A Winter's Night a Traveler... by Italo Calvino. Or is it? Maybe it's actually a totally different book by an obscure Polish author...

Let's start with something easy: What did you think of the structure of the book? Did you find the starting and stopping stories in different styles engaging? Frustrating? Fun? Pretentious? Revelatory?

When I first read this book, back in high school, it blew my mind, It was the first book that ever made me think "Whoa, you can do that with words on a page? Who knew?" I'd always thought the purpose of a book, a story, was to have a beginning, middle and end, and to take you from said beginning to said end. This was the first book that challenged that and yet kept me engaged and reading from beginning to end.

This time, since that burst of novelty has worn off, was a bit different. I still love the book, and am finding new things that I hadn't noticed before, but I'm finding the prescriptive "You, the reader, are doing this" a little too.. cutesy? Pleased with itself? Something like that.

I'm also finding myself a little annoyed at points in the "chapters" of the various books where he stops presenting the words of the books themselves and starts talking about the style of the books -- for example, in "Looks down in the gathering shadow", "I'm producing too many stories at once because I what I want is for you to feel, around the story, a saturation of other stories...." He's having all the authors break the fourth wall, pointing out in the middle of the story that it is a planned, calculated story, that everything on the page is there to manipulate you in a certain way. It keeps coming up at a point when I'm getting sucked into the story itself, and don't want to think about the style.

What did you think?