I've been meaning to read some Italo Calvino for a long time, but it was Ursula LeGuin's mention of Invisible Cities in The Wave in the Mind that got me off the couch. It's a brilliant, slim little volume carved into bite sized experiments in paradox worthy of Borges, Lem, and Chiang. Just the intermittent frame story itself, based on the conciet of Marco Polo regaling Kublai Khan with stories of each of the cities he might well have visited, is worth the price of admission. But beyond the sheer conceptual joy of watching a multi-headed hydra swallow each of its many tails is the beautiful craft of Calvino's writing. The cover blurb is spot on when it alludes to what is possible on the edge between poetry and prose. This is definitely on that will go on the #reread list that I have just now invented.
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