Book # 18 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Of all the books on the list, Don Quixote is the oldest. I had high expectations for it since it appears near the top of every "best of" list I've looked at. The story is pretty simple (especially for such a long book), Don Quixote is a crazy old man that is obsessed with books about knights. After reading so many books he convinces himself that he himself is a knight and roams around the Spanish countryside along with his squire Sancho Panza having delusional adventures and causing trouble for most everyone that he encounters.

To say that the book is episodic is an understatement. Every twenty or thirty pages Don Quixote and Sancho encounter a new group of people and somehow wreck havoc with them. Most of the stories are funny and entertaining, from Don Quixote attacking people that he thinks are an evil cult, to him trying to get into a fight with a lion, to Sancho finally getting a governorship of an insula...but as I got closer to the end I started wishing for some larger plot to appear and it never really did.

As with a lot of the books on the list, I had to read a translation. I read the newer translation by Edith Grossman and found it very readable and modern but it still maintains a definite sense of style which I hope is reminiscent of the actual Cervantes text. Probably what I found funniest and most interesting is that in the second half of the book (the book is divided into two parts which were published separately) the first half of the text actually exists as a book within the narrative that many of the characters are aware of and use to know the history of Don Quixote and Sancho and use it against them. What is never really explained is how the book came into existence and how someone was able to accurately record what actually happened. And oddly enough Don Quixote doesn't think it is that weird that the book exists.

I've got to give the book an A+. Both Don Quixote and Sancho are great characters and they encounter quite a few interesting people on their crazy adventure. I really like that part of it willfully isn't explained and makes no sense other than that it is funny. I'll add it to my top 50.