This is only the second novel I've read of Calvino's, the first being If on a winter's night a traveler. Something about Calvino's prose cuts to my core. His work is not the most digestible, and I oft find myself re-reading a section, dissecting the combination of words I have never seen before. How Calvino writes is how I'd hope to one day be able to find the balance between focal points and floweriness in my writing. He etches his thoughts in novel ways, always observing. It may be tempting to categorize his work as pretentious truisms if it weren't for the fact that his writing is not declarative. It is conversational. It's like each point is not a point but a prompt, inviting the reader to reflect on their own experiences. This short novel is a mosaic of takes on cities, cities that are imagined and yet perhaps not too far off from reality (if one cares to indulge in surrealism). It's at this point in my reviews that I tend to like to insert quotes, but I have too many tabs and annotations to pick ones that are representative of the work, since each micro-chapter is but a window in a building entirely made up of windows, and what you see through one is not exactly what you'd see through another, though they are very much part of the same structure. Still, I'll humbly try: