I found "Invisible Cities" more readable than "Einstein's Dream," which is to say that I read through the former, and could not get into the latter.
The other book I've read by Calvino was "The Castle of Crossed Destinies," about a bunch of travellers who, repressed by fatigue or whatever, are unable to speak, but convey their stories by dealing out cards from a Tarot deck. (Well, two decks.) It's a work of brilliance.
Huh, surprised to hear that, i thought Einstein's Dreams was pretty approachable.
I saw a staged production around here that was done by some very talented folk.
Calvino has moments of total brilliance, but the parts that aren't so brilliant end up looking a bit contrived. IMO.
(For some reason "If on a winter's night a traveler" intimidated me for many years before I finally read it.)
The other one of his I want to get is "Cosmicomics" which seems to be out of print. (Maybe I should get off my lazy butt and get back to the library, rather than buying my way into needing more and more bookshelves)
Yeah, the two books you mention are the other Calvino books I have ambition to read.
I think I should take another crack at Einstein's Dreams, and this time, not try to make it bedtime reading, which dooms so many books. It needs to be mealtime reading, which is when all my reading gets done, or else an audiobook, which I can listen to when commuting. (Currently I've got "Lonesome Dove" and "Pride and Prejudice" filling those slots. There's no commonality whatsoever between those books, so it's not confusing.
Oh, and my second sentence immediately above initially read wrong to me, because I hadn't capitalized Dreams and so it appeared I was going to psychoanalyze Einstein (which is culturally appropriate, and at the same time breathtakingly presumptuous. But it reminded me of Connie Willis's lesser-but-still-good book, "Lincoln's Dreams," even though the title is a bit of a spoiler. It's a novel about a civil-war researcher and the unusual woman he encounters, but it's loaded with novel information about the Civil War. It's also pleasantly nostalgic to me, since it made me strongly miss Virginia like nothing else.