Well, what a blooming amazing book. If no one had told me it I was written 500 years ago I would have guessed it was written yesterday. You can see the book summary above so I won’t go on about that…i read the Edith Grossman translation
I thought this was utterly perfect. It had the sort of stories you want to hear told to you by a fireside, it had wonderful humour, the best account of friendship I have ever read, violence, adventure and winding through all that, Knight Errantry.
Although Don Quixote is said to be mad, I don’t think he is. I think Don Quixote just wants the world to be of an order of magnitude better than it is and rather than doing the 17th century equivalent of pontificating on social media, he gets up off his bottom and goes out to be the man he thinks he should be.
The two sections of the book are very different. The first has lots of stories within the main story and the adventures are a little more wacky. The second part is more controlled ..I liked both and had favourite sections in each. Chapter 20 being the one that I enjoyed the most. The humour was my cup of tea and I spent a lot of time smiling and giggling while reading or thinking about this.
The characters are just so lovable, they have become friends through my reading and I am so sad to put them back on the bookshelf for another meeting in the future.
I read this as part of the Hardcore Literature book club on YouTube and Patreon. This book club has got me reading books like this that I would never have picked up otherwise. I am indebted to it.