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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
Some classics are wonderful, and some are just not for me.
The first book was alright, although the accounts of fights were a bit short. I knew about the windmills, I just had the idea that there was more behind it than what I knew. I was wrong. The book is also filled out a lot by meeting people and them telling their stories. So at points it's a bit of an inception book. The side characters were of more interest to me than the main.
Book 2 just seems to be repetative. The storyline is very light and the author ever so often reminds us that Don Quixote is mad but wise. I promised myself I would finish it, but it took some effort.
So book 1 maybe 3 starts, book 2 is a solid 1 star. Average out to an average of pretty bad.
The first book was alright, although the accounts of fights were a bit short. I knew about the windmills, I just had the idea that there was more behind it than what I knew. I was wrong. The book is also filled out a lot by meeting people and them telling their stories. So at points it's a bit of an inception book. The side characters were of more interest to me than the main.
Book 2 just seems to be repetative. The storyline is very light and the author ever so often reminds us that Don Quixote is mad but wise. I promised myself I would finish it, but it took some effort.
So book 1 maybe 3 starts, book 2 is a solid 1 star. Average out to an average of pretty bad.
Booo!
Perhaps Don Quixote is on lists of best books because it is one of the first novels dating from the early 1600s. But yikes. Apart from one superb trope (the first trope?), this is a meandering, repetitive mess that starts and finishes in the same place. 900 pages later! Save yourself.
Perhaps Don Quixote is on lists of best books because it is one of the first novels dating from the early 1600s. But yikes. Apart from one superb trope (the first trope?), this is a meandering, repetitive mess that starts and finishes in the same place. 900 pages later! Save yourself.
If I could be Don Quixote one day, I'd consider my life a success.
84th book of 2021. Artist for this review is French painter Honoré Daumier.
3.5. Don Quixote rather famously stands as the first “modern” novel, published in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second in 1615. They are very different beasts. The first part, or Book I, is perhaps the Don Quixote people think of: the thin, mad(?), Spanish man (Alonso Quixano) who decides to become a knight errant and rename himself Don Quixote. He manages to acquire a squire in the portly Sancho Panza and thus their adventures begin. Don Quixote sees inns as castles, ugly women as princesses, your everyday vagabond as some great criminal. . . He is always attempting to exact some knightly behaviour on the unsuspecting; and famously, of course, attacks windmills, claiming they are giants. On opening the novel at the beginning and starting to read I was stunned by the freshness of the prose (thanks to Grossman’s translation, whom I trust for her translations of Gabo) and the humour, which I believed to be actually humorous. The problem with the humour is though it never technically faulters, Don Quixote is almost 1000 pages long and so at times it feels as if it is the same gag running, told over and over, with slightly different twists. And besides, in the beginning we find Don Quixote’s madness humorous and by even the midway point, we start to find it endearing. I won’t go into all the possible interpretations of his madness as they are spoken about elsewhere by better speakers, but for me, Quixote’s unwavering desire to be a knight errant did strike me as being quite poignant when thought as simply as him staying true to what he believed in. At one point, after all, Don Quixote says to a man, ‘“Let me conclude by saying, Señor, that you should allow your son to walk the path to which his star calls him.”’
Book 1, for all its humour and chivalric tales of madness, was slow reading to me. Don Quixote feels long, much longer than it actually is. This derives mainly from the episodic nature of the first Book (and in part the second); it is full of stories, stories within stories, tangents, monologues. . . Minor characters appear and when asked by Don Quixote who they are and what they are doing (before he runs them through with his lance, for no good reason) they spin a long yarn about their life, their love, their failures, and all the while we know as readers that this minor character will finish his spiel, Don Quixote will realise that killing him because he is the devil or whoever else isn’t so wise and let him go, and down the same road another fellow will come along with a tale. At times it had the stop-start feeling of a short story collection. This presented a problem for me and damaged my experience of reading it. I had heard Book II is considered different and by some “better”, so that kept me reading through the longer and more uninteresting side-plots of the first Book.
"Don Quixote and Sancho Panza"—1855
And Book II is better. The humour feels reinvigorated and there’s a new angle to the already slight meta elements of the first part: now, in Spain, in reality, there is a fraudulent Don Quixote Book II. Cervantes is returning to set the record straight, it seems. But he does so with wit and grace. The characters in the novel are also aware of a fraudulent copy (for, I forget to mention, the book is actually published within the story too, and Don Quixote becomes “famous” in his own universe). It reminded me somewhat of Byron’s poem “A Vision of Judgement” which is a satirical poetic smackdown of Robert Southey’s own “A Vision of Judgement” from the year before. Cervantes not only mocks the fraudulent copy of his work but also mocks himself and addresses errors in Book 1 (which Grossman helpfully points out at the time: the misnaming of Sancho Panza’s wife (she has about 4 different names in Book I), the inconsistencies in the plot, most notably, the discussion of the disappearance/theft of Sancho’s donkey without it occurring in the plot). Quite meta. So we then have stories within stories, stories within stories again, real stories in reality within the fictional story, etc. Book II is far more enjoyable than Book I in my opinion and almost caused me to be magnanimous and give this 4-stars but the truth is despite loving Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and all the ridiculous things they got up to, this novel is long-winded. There are pages and pages that I didn’t care for aside from the famous duo. As far as the literary world goes this is perhaps a vital read and I am glad I finally read it. Despite the seemingly subpar rating, I’ll be thinking about the pair for a long time, about them vomiting on one another, about them arguing, about Don Quixote standing up to lions, getting caught hanging from a window, the two of them being tricked more times than there are pages, about every bruised body, broken tooth, windmill/giant, love for a lady one has never met, sweeping 17th century Spain with all its bandits, priests, prostitutes, soldiers, innkeepers, dukes and duchesses. . . all its kaleidoscopic madness that has kept it surviving until today as one of the most translated book in the world. And now I can refer to something as Quixotic with good faith and intention (and good memories of the beloved and most insane sane man to live: Don Quixote).
3.5. Don Quixote rather famously stands as the first “modern” novel, published in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second in 1615. They are very different beasts. The first part, or Book I, is perhaps the Don Quixote people think of: the thin, mad(?), Spanish man (Alonso Quixano) who decides to become a knight errant and rename himself Don Quixote. He manages to acquire a squire in the portly Sancho Panza and thus their adventures begin. Don Quixote sees inns as castles, ugly women as princesses, your everyday vagabond as some great criminal. . . He is always attempting to exact some knightly behaviour on the unsuspecting; and famously, of course, attacks windmills, claiming they are giants. On opening the novel at the beginning and starting to read I was stunned by the freshness of the prose (thanks to Grossman’s translation, whom I trust for her translations of Gabo) and the humour, which I believed to be actually humorous. The problem with the humour is though it never technically faulters, Don Quixote is almost 1000 pages long and so at times it feels as if it is the same gag running, told over and over, with slightly different twists. And besides, in the beginning we find Don Quixote’s madness humorous and by even the midway point, we start to find it endearing. I won’t go into all the possible interpretations of his madness as they are spoken about elsewhere by better speakers, but for me, Quixote’s unwavering desire to be a knight errant did strike me as being quite poignant when thought as simply as him staying true to what he believed in. At one point, after all, Don Quixote says to a man, ‘“Let me conclude by saying, Señor, that you should allow your son to walk the path to which his star calls him.”’
Book 1, for all its humour and chivalric tales of madness, was slow reading to me. Don Quixote feels long, much longer than it actually is. This derives mainly from the episodic nature of the first Book (and in part the second); it is full of stories, stories within stories, tangents, monologues. . . Minor characters appear and when asked by Don Quixote who they are and what they are doing (before he runs them through with his lance, for no good reason) they spin a long yarn about their life, their love, their failures, and all the while we know as readers that this minor character will finish his spiel, Don Quixote will realise that killing him because he is the devil or whoever else isn’t so wise and let him go, and down the same road another fellow will come along with a tale. At times it had the stop-start feeling of a short story collection. This presented a problem for me and damaged my experience of reading it. I had heard Book II is considered different and by some “better”, so that kept me reading through the longer and more uninteresting side-plots of the first Book.
"Don Quixote and Sancho Panza"—1855
And Book II is better. The humour feels reinvigorated and there’s a new angle to the already slight meta elements of the first part: now, in Spain, in reality, there is a fraudulent Don Quixote Book II. Cervantes is returning to set the record straight, it seems. But he does so with wit and grace. The characters in the novel are also aware of a fraudulent copy (for, I forget to mention, the book is actually published within the story too, and Don Quixote becomes “famous” in his own universe). It reminded me somewhat of Byron’s poem “A Vision of Judgement” which is a satirical poetic smackdown of Robert Southey’s own “A Vision of Judgement” from the year before. Cervantes not only mocks the fraudulent copy of his work but also mocks himself and addresses errors in Book 1 (which Grossman helpfully points out at the time: the misnaming of Sancho Panza’s wife (she has about 4 different names in Book I), the inconsistencies in the plot, most notably, the discussion of the disappearance/theft of Sancho’s donkey without it occurring in the plot). Quite meta. So we then have stories within stories, stories within stories again, real stories in reality within the fictional story, etc. Book II is far more enjoyable than Book I in my opinion and almost caused me to be magnanimous and give this 4-stars but the truth is despite loving Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and all the ridiculous things they got up to, this novel is long-winded. There are pages and pages that I didn’t care for aside from the famous duo. As far as the literary world goes this is perhaps a vital read and I am glad I finally read it. Despite the seemingly subpar rating, I’ll be thinking about the pair for a long time, about them vomiting on one another, about them arguing, about Don Quixote standing up to lions, getting caught hanging from a window, the two of them being tricked more times than there are pages, about every bruised body, broken tooth, windmill/giant, love for a lady one has never met, sweeping 17th century Spain with all its bandits, priests, prostitutes, soldiers, innkeepers, dukes and duchesses. . . all its kaleidoscopic madness that has kept it surviving until today as one of the most translated book in the world. And now I can refer to something as Quixotic with good faith and intention (and good memories of the beloved and most insane sane man to live: Don Quixote).
Hilarious from time to time, but overall? Well, I can say I've read it. And I finished it at the Canadian border, on my way to our flight to Spain!
This book is split into 2 parts. I really enjoyed the first part of this book. I thought the little adventures they were going through were very entertaining. However, in the second part I found Sancho Panza super annoying, and whiny, which took away from my enjoyment.
Charming condensation of the classic tale, presented with pathos by the excellent narrator Johnny Heller.
I feel like I should throw myself a party having finally finished Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote," which took me about two months to read. It was overall a worthwhile read, even though it sometimes became a bit tedious, it was mostly an interesting book.
As most people are probably aware, Don Quixote goes a bit off his rocker, becomes a knight errant and crisscrosses the countryside with his trusty squire Sancho Panza. They get into heaps of trouble while he tilts at windmills, which he believes are dragons, and pining for the love of the Dulcinea de Toboso, whom he believes is enchanted and trapped in a cave. As Don Quixote's reputation spread, people take advantage of his madness for their own amusement.
While I felt first portion of the book got a bit repetitive, Cervantes seemed to get better as he went along about putting Don Quixote in new amusing situations. This is definitely one of those classic books I'm happy to have finally read, but that I probably would never read again.
As most people are probably aware, Don Quixote goes a bit off his rocker, becomes a knight errant and crisscrosses the countryside with his trusty squire Sancho Panza. They get into heaps of trouble while he tilts at windmills, which he believes are dragons, and pining for the love of the Dulcinea de Toboso, whom he believes is enchanted and trapped in a cave. As Don Quixote's reputation spread, people take advantage of his madness for their own amusement.
While I felt first portion of the book got a bit repetitive, Cervantes seemed to get better as he went along about putting Don Quixote in new amusing situations. This is definitely one of those classic books I'm happy to have finally read, but that I probably would never read again.
A classic that should be considered a contemporary read. A study of pluralism.