Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino translated by William Weaver
This book is unlike anything I've read and is far, far outside my comfort zone as a reader. I was given it by a friend who loves Calvino and it's not hard to see why as the book is written in beautiful prose. This is a short book that is essentially a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan describing cities that Polo has visited or Khan imagines. The cities are all fantastical and sometimes includes current technologies so the tales transcend time and place. Calvino is extremely philosophic and lyrical in his writing with the book packed with profound thought/observations. I really enjoyed the beauty of the writing and philosophy but part of me wished for a plot as nothing really changed from beginning to end. One of the things I struggle with as a reader is that I'm not particularly strong at breaking down books because as I'm breaking down each page I'm losing focus on the overall story. If this was broken down into short stories I'm sure I would be absolutely raving about how good they are but as a short novel I can't take the leap from individual pages being amazing to the book being amazing. Overall I liked the book because its strengths are really strong and I'm glad challenged myself with it.
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