Author: Miguel de Cervantes
Genre: Classic
Pages (words): 992 (415,800)
Readability: 15.8
Rating (out of 5 stars): **1/2
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: Don Quixote is a Spanish gentleman who reads too many books of chivalry and goes mad in a very peculiar way: he keeps full use of his sense except when it comes to topics of knighthood. He becomes so befuddled that he soon believes himself to be a knight, and decides to sally forth in search of adventure as knight errant. His madness and courage mixed together lead him on a series of adventures which are to be at once laughed at and admired.
Thoughts: I've always thought that I should read Don Quixote some day, and I don't regret reading it, but it was a major the summer project. There were many parts of this book that I genuinely enjoyed, but 29 CDs is just too long for this story. In fact, my main complaint is that it isn't so much a story as a series of adventures that are only loosely connected, making the book really drag on. Why is it that so many old classics are much too long for their plotlines? (I'm thinking of think Les Miserables and Moby Dick, for example) Is it that our attention spans have gotten shorter, or that they were just overly verbose? Anyway, there is so much rambling that I would often find myself daydreaming as Don Quixote pontificated on the merits of courage or whatever. However, there are a lot of redeeming factors that make the book worth reading if you have a high tolerance for long, rambling books. Much of the book was genuinely funny (the inspiration for Monty Python?), it made a lot of good points, and I enjoyed the characters of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza immensely. My main takeaway is this: Valor and action will get you a long way in this life, even if you are a little mad.
Disclaimer: None.
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