Invisible cities was too visual for me (I have a weak visual imagination, so I can't appreciate books that rely too heavily on images), but I really liked If On A Winter's Night a Traveler, and this quote reminds me that I want to read more Calvino.

Would you (or anyone else here) recommend another book of his, given those preferences/weaknesses of mine?

Italian here. I read all Calvino's novels and short-stories in high school. I would suggest The Nonexistent Knight and Cosmicomics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nonexistent_Knight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicomics

Thanks! Cosmicomics rings a bell as something I'd considered reading but never got around to, and those mini-synopses on the Wikipedia page are pretty enticing.

I have no visual imagination at all, but loved Invisible Cities. Just wanted to mention this so other non-imagers don't discard this wonderful book :)

If you're an English [native] speaker, The Baron in the Trees just received a very nice new English translation (published by Penguin on their Vintage Classics imprint in the UK). I love Calvino so much as an writer, but that's probably my favourite and the one I find I can recommend most successfully; it's imo more straightforward than his other more famous books, with less of the linguistic games.

So glad you posted this. Baron In The Trees is one of my favorite books and it has been so long since I read it. I'll be picking up that new translation.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies (Il castello dei destini incrociati), it helps having visual imagination on this too, but i think is less intensive that Invisible Cities (Città invisibili) and Marcovaldo too.

p.s. Italian here too, though i never had the chance to read much of him during highschool

Cosmicomics has long been my single favorite collection of written work. Calvino's amazing.

Yes that's the best I think, and very suitable for HN audience

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Numbers in the Dark (https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Dark-Italo-Calvino/dp/0544146...) has a wide variety of stories, it's a good starting point.

His letters. Wonderfully written, and not visual at all.

Thanks! Not something I would have naturally gravitated to, but I think I might enjoy them.

it's been a while since I read it, and it wasn't my favourite, but I believe Palomar[0] was much less visual than Invisible Cities.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Palomar

Six Memos for the Next Millennium is outstanding

This is another one that really stuck with me:

"But with all this, I would not be telling you the city's true essence; for while the description of Anastasia awakens desires one at a time only to force you to stifle them, when you are in the heart of Anastasia one morning your desires waken all at once and surround you. The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content. Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses; if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave."

Invisible cities is the only "fictional" book I've read absolutely worth using a highlighter on. It's great to read a few pages here and there

“Le città invisibili” is a multi layered book. I’ve read it hundreds of times - just contemplate the beauty of the prose, humble, innocent, yet wise and deep. In Italian is even more astonishing.