As you can see, this book begins as a second-person narrative, in a way much more obvious than the approach Calvino uses in Invisible Cities. This is an unusual narrative technique, one you may not have encountered outside of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. How does the choice of second-person narrative affect your experience of the novel? Consider that this particular you in the book is a specific character. One might think that Calvino’s approach of creating a you who has identifiable attributes — obviously different from our own — would bother us. How does he get us to accept it?
Because this is a book addressed to a Reader, we should not be surprised to discover that it is largely about reading and the relationship between the reader and the text. What does Calvino have to say about reading that you find particularly interesting or surprising? By the third chapter, Calvino is clearly having fun contrasting the different types of reading done by readers and done by academics. How does that contrast reflect your own experience as a student?
Of course, in between the narrative of the Reader and the Other Reader, Calvino also gives us these fragmentary stories with titles. Feel free to discuss any of them that you find particularly appealing. Alternatively, how do you feel every time one breaks off, and you realize that it will never continue? (Spoiler alert: you never get to find out what happens in any of them.) Why would Calvino do this to us?