Well you could read the original Orlando Furioso, but it's a beast, or Ovid's Metamorphises, also a beast but what Ariosto was riffing on with Orlando Furioso, and Calvino was riffing on Ariosto. I just started Cloven Viscount tonight, the heaps of corpses on the first page might be more egregious than anything Bakker has written (though such a wry and sardonic tone to the horrors inscribed upon the page!).
The only other Calvino I've read is Invisible Cities, which you should utterly and absolutely read, it's marvelous.