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wolfgold's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
clancydavis's review against another edition
5.0
Unless you are reading the book in Spanish, I would advise reading a modern translation (year 2000 or later) of _Don Quixote_, as some the earlier translations fail to capture many of Cervantes's nuances and quips. I recommend the Rutherford translation which is used in the Penguin Classics Edition, pictured above. I'd caution against the Kindle Editions of this book, as most of them use the 1885 Ormsby translation that you can get from Project Gutenberg for free.
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
3.0
With ever-increasing sizes of bookshelves, it might be desirable to divide books into two categories - books that have a constant aesthetic pleasure to offer (which of course is subjective) and books that you want to read because of their impact on culture but probably won't enjoy it. Books like The Silence of the lambs or the Game of Thrones seems to me to fall in the second category. 'Don Quixote' is probably the best example. I don't think a lot of people will enjoy reading it.
To begin with, you need to have a very cruel sense of humor to enjoy most of what goes in the book as the Knight and his squire fall prey to accidents or, worse still, pranks of people around them humoring themselves at the expense of the two. This kind of humor at the expense of poor and naive people seems to have something medieval in it. It is quite commonly visible in medieval books like Arabian Nights, Decameron, Don Quixote, Grimm's fairy tales, etc. You see jokes made at the expense of obese, ones not gifted with the traditional definition of looks, dwarves, hunchbacks, etc if not also naive, Innocent, simpleminded people. Even 'Game of Thrones' which has a medical times like setting is full of people having this ugly sense of humor but it (the TV series at least) redeems itself by making some of the strongest characters out of its underdogs - you side with underdogs which is not case with other books, especially with Don Quixote, in it you are supposed to be laughing at Don and his squire. These days literature in West is generally more compassionate - something you could not say about most of Bollywood or Tollywood moves where there are always some sidekicks or comedians (often fat and/or naive) suffering misfortunes (including at hands of supposed good two shoes lead heroes and heroines) for 'comic' relief. Kapil Sharma's whole career seems to be built on the back of such cheap humor.
Second, the novel doesn't exactly seem to hold together in kind of symmetry I love in well-written novels. It seems like the author wrote chapter after another on the go without worrying about the overall picture he is creating and as a result an overall picture is a group of only loosely connected objects.
I did try to love this book. I mean so many writers and critics have called it the greatest book ever. I even read Nabokov's lectures on it simply in order to find a way to love it (why else would one read lectures on literature anyway?) but nothing. Aside from the importance of titular character, which I was already aware of, Nabokov had no other good reasons for why we should read it (he did object to cruel humor in it though). And even the idea of titular character which, chances are you are already aware of, is no good reason for so long a book.
Quixote's attraction lies in his ideomania which is seasoned with a great amount of idealism. Ideomania by itself is nothing awesome - terrorists, fundamentalists, serial killers, mad lovers, etc are ideomaniacs too. It is a psychological disorder for a good reason. But Nabhokov is so fundamentalist as to be without doubt:
But you combine it with a bit of idealism, and you get knights running to save damsels in distress, people dying for an abstract ideal (Bhagat Singh to quote an example) and artists wasting their lives away in creating beautiful things. Such souls see themselves mirrored in Quioxite.
And this identity in Quioxite which artists find in him - Van Gogh becomes a painter knowing that he would never be successful, Flaubert takes great pains writing a book, screaming at top of his voice words until he gets that 'exactly one right word' (and the book he writes is about an ideamaniac woman too) and so on, it is this identity that makes this crude book (Nabhokov's word) likeable to them. Ideomaniac Idealists have their own romantic notions like Quixote and like him are capable of seeing monsters in wind Mills (this alternative conception of reality gives birth to art) and so it makes sense that they should love Quioxite. Even if you are not an artist or a human rights activist or one of those fancy people, but are an ideomaniac idealist you will love Quioxite's sacrifices for his idea - against all the better sense (like all Ideomaniacs, he show the great sense in spheres other than the one of his idea). Idealism is like ideomania, romantic and foolish often at odds against the wicked, wicked world. I am not an idealist and definitely not a very good artist, so his character holds little appeal to me. Btw, much like novelists and artists, readers and art lovers are that way too ..... Wasting their lives on books, ignoring people cracking jokes on them, when they could be .... Having sex.
Again, so many major characters are ideomaniacs - Shakespeare is full of them whether it be Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Shylock. And there are Emma Bovary, Anna Kareina, Joker, Harley Quinn (actually most of villians in Batman) etc.
Coming back to book, the famous windmill scene is not typical examples of all the adventures. While some involve him having hallucinations, there are other times when no such thing occurs. In the second part of the first book, the reality gives into Quixote's fantasy world of knights and damsels in distress for example ... Something later disclosed to be a dishonest intrusion by the supposed 'translator' of the book. Most of the 'adventures' Quixote has in the second part are results of cheap tricks played by people around him. Also, while most of the fantasy elements are given a so-called realistic justification by the narrator or translator or author in the course of book; there is at least one incidence, the one involving Don going down a dark pit where he had adventures lasting days while only a few minutes have passed for those waiting outside for him, in which we never learn for sure from narrator whether he was hallucinating, lying or really had that adventure.
A somewhat more curious character is Sancho Panza. I love characters behaving in a contradictory manner but only when I see some deeper justification in those superficial contradictions. You never quite learn what Sancho thinks of his Master - whether he actually believes him to a true Knight, or whether he thinks of him as a fool that he saves to justify whatever compensation he might get out of it. He is an epic example of everyman having more mundane passions such as for money. Unlike Don, he is married and it seems significant that his wisdom mostly comes in common proverbs.
The relationship between Quixote and Panza is probably the most attractive thing about this book as far as concerned. Though I don't think that it is intended that way. But Quixote and Panza are like (it's probably something j read somewhere) the heart and mind of the individual respectively - not in simplistic 'feelings' versus 'rational thoughts' manner. Even the heart can be wise and even mind can be irrational, but rather in where heart is the dreaming organ (you might argue that heart is not seated dreams but then it is not seat of feelings either, it is just a blood pumping organ) and mind is the one who follows it half-heartedly often against it's common sense judgment.
To begin with, you need to have a very cruel sense of humor to enjoy most of what goes in the book as the Knight and his squire fall prey to accidents or, worse still, pranks of people around them humoring themselves at the expense of the two. This kind of humor at the expense of poor and naive people seems to have something medieval in it. It is quite commonly visible in medieval books like Arabian Nights, Decameron, Don Quixote, Grimm's fairy tales, etc. You see jokes made at the expense of obese, ones not gifted with the traditional definition of looks, dwarves, hunchbacks, etc if not also naive, Innocent, simpleminded people. Even 'Game of Thrones' which has a medical times like setting is full of people having this ugly sense of humor but it (the TV series at least) redeems itself by making some of the strongest characters out of its underdogs - you side with underdogs which is not case with other books, especially with Don Quixote, in it you are supposed to be laughing at Don and his squire. These days literature in West is generally more compassionate - something you could not say about most of Bollywood or Tollywood moves where there are always some sidekicks or comedians (often fat and/or naive) suffering misfortunes (including at hands of supposed good two shoes lead heroes and heroines) for 'comic' relief. Kapil Sharma's whole career seems to be built on the back of such cheap humor.
Second, the novel doesn't exactly seem to hold together in kind of symmetry I love in well-written novels. It seems like the author wrote chapter after another on the go without worrying about the overall picture he is creating and as a result an overall picture is a group of only loosely connected objects.
I did try to love this book. I mean so many writers and critics have called it the greatest book ever. I even read Nabokov's lectures on it simply in order to find a way to love it (why else would one read lectures on literature anyway?) but nothing. Aside from the importance of titular character, which I was already aware of, Nabokov had no other good reasons for why we should read it (he did object to cruel humor in it though). And even the idea of titular character which, chances are you are already aware of, is no good reason for so long a book.
Quixote's attraction lies in his ideomania which is seasoned with a great amount of idealism. Ideomania by itself is nothing awesome - terrorists, fundamentalists, serial killers, mad lovers, etc are ideomaniacs too. It is a psychological disorder for a good reason. But Nabhokov is so fundamentalist as to be without doubt:
"Don Quixote, it should be borne in mind, is the maker of his own glory, the only begetter of these marvels; and within his soul he carries the most dread enemy of the visionary: the snake of doubt, the coiled consciousness that his quest is an illusion. "
-Nabhokov
But you combine it with a bit of idealism, and you get knights running to save damsels in distress, people dying for an abstract ideal (Bhagat Singh to quote an example) and artists wasting their lives away in creating beautiful things. Such souls see themselves mirrored in Quioxite.
And this identity in Quioxite which artists find in him - Van Gogh becomes a painter knowing that he would never be successful, Flaubert takes great pains writing a book, screaming at top of his voice words until he gets that 'exactly one right word' (and the book he writes is about an ideamaniac woman too) and so on, it is this identity that makes this crude book (Nabhokov's word) likeable to them. Ideomaniac Idealists have their own romantic notions like Quixote and like him are capable of seeing monsters in wind Mills (this alternative conception of reality gives birth to art) and so it makes sense that they should love Quioxite. Even if you are not an artist or a human rights activist or one of those fancy people, but are an ideomaniac idealist you will love Quioxite's sacrifices for his idea - against all the better sense (like all Ideomaniacs, he show the great sense in spheres other than the one of his idea). Idealism is like ideomania, romantic and foolish often at odds against the wicked, wicked world. I am not an idealist and definitely not a very good artist, so his character holds little appeal to me. Btw, much like novelists and artists, readers and art lovers are that way too ..... Wasting their lives on books, ignoring people cracking jokes on them, when they could be .... Having sex.
"Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind."
Again, so many major characters are ideomaniacs - Shakespeare is full of them whether it be Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Shylock. And there are Emma Bovary, Anna Kareina, Joker, Harley Quinn (actually most of villians in Batman) etc.
Coming back to book, the famous windmill scene is not typical examples of all the adventures. While some involve him having hallucinations, there are other times when no such thing occurs. In the second part of the first book, the reality gives into Quixote's fantasy world of knights and damsels in distress for example ... Something later disclosed to be a dishonest intrusion by the supposed 'translator' of the book. Most of the 'adventures' Quixote has in the second part are results of cheap tricks played by people around him. Also, while most of the fantasy elements are given a so-called realistic justification by the narrator or translator or author in the course of book; there is at least one incidence, the one involving Don going down a dark pit where he had adventures lasting days while only a few minutes have passed for those waiting outside for him, in which we never learn for sure from narrator whether he was hallucinating, lying or really had that adventure.
A somewhat more curious character is Sancho Panza. I love characters behaving in a contradictory manner but only when I see some deeper justification in those superficial contradictions. You never quite learn what Sancho thinks of his Master - whether he actually believes him to a true Knight, or whether he thinks of him as a fool that he saves to justify whatever compensation he might get out of it. He is an epic example of everyman having more mundane passions such as for money. Unlike Don, he is married and it seems significant that his wisdom mostly comes in common proverbs.
The relationship between Quixote and Panza is probably the most attractive thing about this book as far as concerned. Though I don't think that it is intended that way. But Quixote and Panza are like (it's probably something j read somewhere) the heart and mind of the individual respectively - not in simplistic 'feelings' versus 'rational thoughts' manner. Even the heart can be wise and even mind can be irrational, but rather in where heart is the dreaming organ (you might argue that heart is not seated dreams but then it is not seat of feelings either, it is just a blood pumping organ) and mind is the one who follows it half-heartedly often against it's common sense judgment.
jojodoug55's review against another edition
1.0
I understand why its highly praised, but its genius is overshadowed by its lack of editing. It is far too long and repetitive.
bookbadass6969's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
andresvk's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The classic novel. For a book that's over 400 years old and has such a large cultural footprint, I have to say that the read was pleasantly full of surprises. Everything you've heard of is in the first few chapters, and the rest goes in directions I would never expect.
The first book was a little hard to finish with all the sub-storylines, but the second is one of the best things I've ever read. It really affected and put into perspective my senses of history and of literary creativity, by making me realize that all the modern cleverness and self-awareness that we're so proud of isn't that new after all.
The first book was a little hard to finish with all the sub-storylines, but the second is one of the best things I've ever read. It really affected and put into perspective my senses of history and of literary creativity, by making me realize that all the modern cleverness and self-awareness that we're so proud of isn't that new after all.
couuboy's review against another edition
5.0
Every single chapter we get a new “fairest, peerless, and prettiest lady in all the world” and most of the “handsome and attractive” men turn out to be girls in disguise. Great book, all things considered.
rcaohn's review against another edition
5.0
Pongo esta vaina así porque si no no me van a contar las páginas este año. Esclavo de la tiranía de Goodreads
malaw's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
siavosh's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5