This year I am trying to read more deliberately whimsically.

Go ahead and giggle, I know it’s ridiculous.

Over the course of a reading lifetime, I’ve allowed some reading habits that I enjoyed to fall away, like reading with the seasons in mind.

Like resolving to read something because I saw that someone else reading it (and, wait for it, ACTUALLY reading it with them, not simply pulling it from the shelf with good intentions).

Do I even know what I mean by all this? Not really. So, if you’re confused, me too. But maybe you do know what I mean. Or maybe it’s not relatable, but perhaps you can relate to the idea of longing to return to a previous reading habit.

For now, I’m thinking of it as reading more responsively, and one way it’s playing out right now is with my rereading of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. A book I first read in 2000 (the copy pictured alongside).

Between then and now, I’ve often said I wanted to reread it. I’ve pulled it from the shelf in other winters. When Kaggsy was rereading her Calvinos, that was another nudge—she loves this book. When Vishy read it, that was another—though, he doesn’t.

Now, at last, I am rereading it, and in the winter. This morning it was -22, every surface covered with snow, and the rock doves (pigeons) were queued for the heated bath, to warm up their toes and have a drink. They are travelling in the world and I am travelling on the page.

My favourite part of this Calvino novel is the first chapter, but that’s probably easy to find (just so you know, however, there is a whole other side to IOAWNAT, so if you pick up a copy, it’s not all like this)–so I’ll share another bookish passage instead:

“Who you are, Reader, your age, your status, profession, income: that would be indiscreet to ask. It’s your business, you’re on your own. What counts is the state of your spirit now, in the privacy of your home, as you try to re-establish perfect calm in order to sink again into the book; you stretch out your legs, you draw them back, you stretch them again. But something has changed since yesterday. Your reading is no longer solitary: you think of the Other Reader, who, at the same moment, is also opening the book; and there, the novel to be read is superimposed by a possible novel to be lived, the continuation of your story with her, or better still, the beginning of a possible story. This is how you have changed since yesterday, you who insisted you preferred a book, something solid, which lies before you, easily defined, enjoyed without risks, to a real-life experience, always elusive, discontinuous, debated. Does this mean that the book has become an instrument, a channel of communication, a rendezvous? This does not mean its reading will grip you less: on the contrary, something has been added to its powers.”

Now, Other Reader, what say you? How are your stories continuing?