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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

10. Don Quixote

Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes  

First of all, to save yourself embarrassment it is pronounced "key-oh-tee."  I had someone ask me what I thought of Don "quiz-ox" and they sounded like a freaking moron.  
I practically did a dance when I read this.  It was wonderful.  So many different characters drifted through this book and I became attached to all of them.  I felt like something had been taken away from me when I finished.  It was very sad. 
RATING: ***** 

8 comments:

Diana said...

I am eager to read this book---as soon as I finish my current book, the last Spenser novel by Robert Parker, I will read this. It is waiting for me on my desk.

Amanda said...

I have never read Spenser but I do know that Don Quixote might be one of my favorite books so get cracking!

Anonymous said...

I thought it was charming!

Amanda said...

Me too!

TSorensen said...

Loved it as well. Best book on the List so far. It is indeed sad to finish it.
Favorite joke: Quixote pleading Sancho to get on with his self-lashing. Priceless.

Amanda said...

I'm farther now, but still might be the best book on The List so far. I have a print of Picasso's Don Quixote hanging above my bookshelves, as a shrine.

Dessie said...

Spent some time typing up a reply to this yesterday but then lost the text while attempting to make sure it got my name right. It's too frustrating to retype straightaway, so let's try to summon up the energy again 24hrs later...

OK, reading this at the moment and it's what brought me over here from the movies blog. I'm about halfway through the first nbook (does The List exhort you to read the sequel?)

It's enjoyable enough as it goes along. Am I going to find that it's a metaphor for organised religion? But other than that it has no purpose or direction. Few of his little adventures last more than ten pages and several just half that. Unless I'm going to reach the end and discover a surprising twist that ingeniously pulls together all the different strands into a single conclusion (which I know won't happen) then I do find myself glancing at the calendar wondering when I might be finished and ready to move on to the next book on the shelf.

A friend said he read half of it and really enjoyed it but then never got around to reading the rest. Not a judgement, just that these things happen. But that sort of sums it up for me; there's nothing that impels the reader to pick it up again to find out how the gripping plot line develops next.

I read Robinson Crusoe a couple of months ago (see comments there also). Another book which uses most of the fingers on your hand to count how many hundreds of years old it is. In both cases I had the overwhelming impression that the author had little idea where it was going to go when he first put quill to paper and then just continued writing until he'd run out of ideas / it looked like enough to keep the publisher happy / it was time for dinner. Was this common of books at the time?

Amanda said...

I enjoyed the episodic nature of the book, but I could see why it would come across aimless.

I think in certain instances, they are being paid by the word. But I think in general, writing is just really fucking hard.