If on a winter's night a traveller - Italo Calvino

As there are hundreds of books with different contents and concepts, each blowing your mind in it's own unique way, I find it impossible to determine which book is my favourite. So far I've read many books, mainly classics, which I enjoyed very much. However, there is one book that I found particularly exceptional; Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller.

It's a story of you, Reader, who buys the book with the same title and delves into it, only to later realise it has a printing mistake and is thus unreadable. With a wish to find the book in perfect condition, you are taken to various places and faced with secrets and creative complications. After going through 10 completely different books, all faulty, you end up desperate in your local library with a list of all the books, only to find out that all the titles form the first paragraph of another book.

By leading you through all the complications and books with storylines that have as many things in common as the night has with day, Italo Calvino entertains the concept of the author's personality being untraced in his work, and simultaneously makes fun of the readers who settle with ordinary romance, detective, spy, historical novels that hold no true meaning, and are only there to be read and forgotten. Calvino was an invenive writer who managed to create literature that tickles even the deepest parts of a reader's brain, and leaves them hanging in a very pleasurable way.