This book is touted as being a "book for book lovers," so I was very excited to finally dive into it. The deconstructionist, post-modernist premise of the book is interesting enough: it contains the beginnings of ten separate novels, which are all abruptly interrupted at a moment of suspense; these novels are interspersed with the story of the Reader and the Other Reader, who are on a joint mission to find the remainder of each of the novels and to uncover a plot as to why unfinished books are being circulated. 
 I wasn't as frustrated by the interrupted novels as I thought I would be, even though, I, as the Reader, would also like to finish all of them, and I did enjoy the story of the two readers. The writing style is intellectual without being too challenging or dense, and I certainly encountered some beautiful passages. Unfortunately, though, I just didn't love this book. It fell very flat of my expectations. 
 The word pretentious is not one that I like to use often, but it definitely comes to mind as I reflect on this book. The construction seemed a bit gimmicky--like Calvino himself was in a writing slump and so he slammed all of his unfinished novels together and said, "BAM! Intellectualism! Post-modernism! Yeah!" Also, the narrative is quite sexist. The sections with The Reader are written in the second person, who is undoubtably assumed to be male (except for one brief moment). The female characters are underdeveloped and act as objects of desire for the male characters more than anything else. I can usually swallow sexist, misogynistic or male-centric literature when given a historical or societal reference point that supports these attitudes, but this book is way too sexist to have been published in the 1970s. Not only did I feel like Calvino couldn't dream up a female character with any redeeming qualities, but I also felt like he couldn't fathom that a woman would ever read or understand his oh-so-innovative novel. 
 Overall, props to this book for making me think about author/reader, reader/literature, literature/society and reader/reader relationships. I would've given this 4 stars if Calvino had trusted me, as a female, to understand his precious book with his complex themes, but he didn't, and I can't get over it.