I have, however, purchased three of his books in the original Italian to get myself started on reading Italian. I suspect it won't take nearly as long as French (and nowhere near as long as German) to get up to speed because it is so close to Spanish.

Out of curiosity, can you name any really big names from Italian literature and thought that I've forgotten? I realize there is probably a lot of contemporary stuff but I'm looking for classics more than anything else, and Italian just doesn't have the depth or breadth of French or German from what I can tell. Whereas in French you can name Stendhal, Hugo, Zola, Balzac, Flaubert, even Dumas right away, and in German you have Mann, Hesse, Goethe, Schiller, Kafka, and Remarque without even straining to think of all the others (and, of course, in the realm of non-fiction you have Marx, Hitler, von Clausewitz, Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche - sorry, I mention him three times due to his importance), in Italian I get such a short list:

Boccaccio, The Decameron
Dante, La Divina Commedia
Machiavelli, Il Principe
Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano
Di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo
Eco, Il Nome della Rosa, Il Pendolo di Foucault, Il Cimitero di Praga

I realize there are authors, but I either have to go way back to the Renaissance (like Petrarch, who had some poems in Italian) or end up with modern writers that I find second-rate or not worth reading for one reason or another. I just can't think of as many world-acclaimed writers from Italy. Can you?