Done reading the massive book - 'Don Quixote' (Review in comments)

By DesertDog95

This was one of the hardest books I’ve ever tried to get through, mostly because there are a lot of little throwaway references to older Spanish stuff (and other old literature). The language is old English-ish, but once you settle in it’s not *too* bad, and it actually helps the whole vibe. Also bonus: since it’s public domain, you can grab it on Kindle and audiobooks for free, which is nice. My rough rating: 3.4* I liked the basic setup—Don Quixote reads a ton of knight stories and decides to go do it in real life, and he brings along Sancho Panza with that “maybe you’ll be governor” promise, and off they go. There’s lots of adventures, weird people they meet, and even that whole “book inside a book” thing, which is honestly where the book really shines. A lot of the funniest moments come from the constant back-and-forth between the knight and the squire. That said, if you’re not super familiar with the era or the literature, there’s a lot of filler. Like there are whole chapters that basically list and review knight books, plus Don teaching Sancho how to be a governor and stuff like that. Some of the incidents were interesting, but a few also just felt like they disappeared the second I finished them. So yeah, I’m kind of wondering if I should’ve picked a more edited version. I did enjoy it overall, but I wouldn’t tell everyone to read the entire thing straight through. It’s more like something you experience at least once—either a shorter edition or if you’ve got the time, take it slow and keep it in your “someday” pile. Story 7/10, Comedy 9/10, Characters 7/10, World 7/10, Meta 8/10. Repetitive/incoherent parts: maybe like 20%. I read the John Ormsby translation (Fingerprint Classics paperback), and I actually liked the older style English—it was kind of fun to see.