Rating: 
Summary: More Than I Expected
Review: As I have always been a huge fan of knights and chivalry, I expected to enjoy reading Don Quixote. I was ammused with the misadventures as well as the comedy of the novel. But what I enjoyed most about the novel was what I learned from it. I admired Sancho's devotion to his master dispite all their troubles and Don Quixote's look on his life. He knows who he is and who he may be if he chooses. I admire his taking his life into his own hands, even if he must be crazy to be happy.
Rating: 
Summary: Fresh, Exciting, and Funny!
Review: As this story is 400 years old, I expect this book to be dry and dull and written in difficult to understand language. I could not have been more wrong in my life! This story is totally engrossing and, more than once, will cause the reader to laugh out loud.
This is known as the world's first novel, and while reading it it was difficult to keep in mind that Cervantes did not have a blueprint to follow. Everytime I opened this book to read more, I felt like Cervantes was sitting there, spinning this tale for me. I've never been a fan of stories of knights and adventure stories, but this book kept me fully interested. I couldn't wait to finish it!
What is truly wonderful is this is a story for all ages: young, old, and everyone in between. The size of the book may intimidate some at 1,000 pages, but don't let that happen. When a reader becomes involved with Don Quioxte and Sancho Panza and all the characters they encounter, the reader simply doesn't want the story to come to an end.
In all fairness, this book was written in 2 parts. Once writing the 1st part, and seeing its popularity, Cervantes wrote part 2 just before he died. I have to admit that the 1st part is more compelling that the 2nd part, but not by a whole lot. There are adventures brought up in part 2 that one can only guess at in part 1. If one can only read some of this novel, then read part 1. But really, do yourself a favor and read the whole book. I doubt anyone would be disappointed.
I seldom re-read books, but this is one I plan on re-reading in the future. Thoroughly enjoyable!
Rating:
Summary: Greatest book ever written
Review: Don Quixote is a classic piece of literature. If someone could produce a more up to date, vernacular translation, it would rival any comedy made today. This is a story about one man caught up in so many chivalry books that he becomes insane and starts traveling through Spain acting as a heroic knight while fighting made up villains and monsters. By his side is his gullible yet loyal servant Sancho.It's nice to know that during the Renaissance period such humor existed. The first part of the book deals with him traveling throughout and mixing up inns for castles, random people as kings or knights, and a random woman as his unrequited love for which all of the world must know. It's a tragic comedy where one man's insanity and futility provide worry for a few, concern for others, and great entertainment for most of the characters. What's interesting is the "twist" in the middle that leads to the second part, where after one man wrote a book about Don Quixote's wild adventures, a rich family, upon seeing the actual man who was in the book, decide to play along in probably the cruelest hoax in history. Claiming there Duke and Duchess, and promising the most absurd things. One of which was giving Sancho an actual province to rule over. The one thing that irked me about this book was that even though it needs to be translated for English readers, no translator has yet made the book as fluid or readable as it deserves to be. All in all, it's a good book, but hopefully a general author, and not some stuffy scholar, could translate it what it should be - a really funny and tragic story.
Rating:
Summary: A comic masterpiece about truth and illusion
Review: Don Quixote is a comedy, which could only have been written by the hitherto obscure genius later in life after he had suffered injury on the battlefield and was subject to periods of harsh confinement in prison. The comedy is bittersweet about this everyman who lives strictly by a code of ancient ethical ideals that inspire him to fits of lunacy, folly and madness. Lucid, indeed inspired, when the subject is anything but knight errantry, Quixote's commitment to his ideals brings him insult, injury, poverty and ridicule. This knight is duped by his convictions into waging war on windmills, galley slaves, funeral processions, pilgrims, shepherds, herds of bulls and countless chimeras invoked in the name of love for his Dona el Toboso. This most chaste of knights cannot see the realities of human nature and worse cannot accept them. His endless brutal punishments for his idealistic blindspots plague him and his squire, Pancho Panza, wherever they aspire in the personal quest to right an injury, assist a noble cause, protect the weak and innocent, and slay evil demons of every imaginable stripe. When I first read this novel, I thought Quixote a fool who was duly punished for being so out of touch with reality. By the end of the novel I saw that Don Quixote was no less than an everyman whose noblest instincts were doomed to bring suffering upon him as he was driven to confront the baser powers of existence. What Crusader fails to risk madness in the wake of the futility of human action in a vast, overpowering and hostile universe? In Quixote and Sancho I caught a glimpse of Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot." One man's truth is another's falsehood. One man's reality is another's illusion. One man's ideal is another's folly. Yet Quixote rides out in his quests across Spain, nevertheless, without fear for the chaos he engenders nor the futility of his cause nor the danger to himself or his best friend. For his nobility Don Quixote becomes not only famous and truly beloved but also earns immortality. Read this "father of the modern novel" for its wit and genius and classical construction to understand the Quixotic ideals that stir within you and the possibilities for real victory of the human spirit.
Rating:
Summary: DON'T FOOL YOURSELF
Review: DON QUIXOTE is a masterpiece and Smollet's translation is also a masterpiece--the best possible, as it reads like an original. Want DQ in modern English? Don't fool yourself--you'll never get the same feeling--DQ is even difficult for Spanish-speakers to read! The raves on the back cover are not misleads.
Rating:
Summary: Where to begin?
Review: How do I, a literary amateur, rate a book nearly 400 years old that has been acclaimed by not a few scholarly experts as the greatest novel ever written? I feel a bit like the boy who had the temerity to point out that the emperor was naked, for I have failed to award Don Quixote five stars. Judged by modern-day standards, Cervantes could be accused of sloppiness. He confuses the chronology of his own storyline in several places, though this is as charming as it is perplexing. Seeking to satirically skewer the tales of chivalrous knights-errant popular at the time, Cervantes presents us with Quixote, a loveable madman, and his squire, Sancho Panza, who fluctuates between utter naivete and admirable sagacity throughout. The pair are nothing if not endearing. Sallying forth to right wrongs, assist the down-trodden, and punish the wicked, the two find themselves in a pragmatic and cynical world, astonished and humored by the lunatic idealism of Quixote and the simpleminded fealty of his squire. Over the course of 5 weeks I read Don Quixote and the experience was varied. At times enthralled, at times merely mildly amused, I looked eagerly forward to resuming the book and, on occasion, half-heartedly attempted to avoid it. To be blunt, there is much in the book that borders on childlike innocence, but there is much as well that strikes a deep chord of love, idealism, perserverence, and grace. On the surface, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza could be regarded as fools. Beneath this foolishness, however, lie the hearts of lions and an unconquerable spirit which provide the ultimate reward to the reader. The book ends abruptly and badly. After so many adventures through so many pages it was disappointing to behold the manner in which Cervantes opted to close. However, this should by no means dissuade the potential reader. Indeed, Don Quixote, for everything wonderful contained within it, should be read by all. For those who choose to do so, the Putnam translation is outstanding and footnoted with excellent detail.
Rating:
Summary: silly, serious, funny, tragic, exciting, tedious and sad
Review: I adored this book. Very long, at times very slow, Don Quixote basically tells us that the noble delusions of a madman can create a far more satisfying example of life than the bleak, grounded and urgently seriously expectations of scholars, the religious and politically minded as well as the everyday drone who keeps a tight reign on what they will allow themselves to believe. Don Quixote himself (as so many other reviewers either trumpet and proclaim or allow themselves to admit) is a flat out wonderful creation; a man so clearly out of his mind and yet one we cannot help but root for and hope to be never disuaded from his insanity, that he becomes something of an aspiration for all of us dreamers and imaginative souls. Here is a man who believes on in good, in what is noble and decent (let us ignore the occasional lapses into seeming intolerance, taking the early 17th century into account and contrast that with both Don Quixote's treatment of the so-called scourge as well as the identity of the fictitious author of this work within the work) and in an essential love for all of humanity. None of us--and that includes no one--can ever hope to even reflect the nobility of this grand character. His truth, filled with wizards and monsters and dreams coming true, is more like a place we all wish we could be than the sad and head-wagging tragedy it might be in our own realities. This book is a thing of beauty, a hope screaming in a bottomless well of scorned dreams that make up all of our lives and to condemn such flights of fancy and such obvious ranting lunacy makes one resemble the sad, defeated figure at the end of this book. The lesson to be learned is that once we give up on our dreams, all that is left is death. Recommended very highly. The length should not intimidate or put one off as it is a quick-paced narrative filled with adventures and excitement and all told with a cool-headed satirical view. Give it a chance and do not take anything like logistical errors and clear and obvious mistakes to heart as Cervantes was wise enough to catch himself later on and comment on all the misunderstandings that any academic and humorless mind might see fit to whine about and then tell that person they are a fool because they cannot relate to the Don's point of view.
Rating:
Summary: The beauty of the Spanish
Review: If you were two pick only two books written in Spanish, one would certainly be "Don Quijote" and the second most likely would be
"Cien Años de Soledad". In the adventure of acquiring a new language, in my case the English, one uncosnciously forget about the richness of his own language. Reading this book has helped me to remind myself about the beauty of the Spanish as a literaly vehicle. Although most of the reviews here focus on the characters and the story, my own reading of Cervantes is about the writting and the beauty of the literature by itself.
The story is just an excuse to reinvent and define what the ideal Spanish language is. That's why when reading the book in Spanish one is more prone to forgive the excursions from the main story. This book makes worth to learn Spanish just to be able to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Much Madness is Divinest Sense
Review: O, Don Quixote de la Mancha, cream and flower of knight errantry! Your adventures and exploits are endlessly entertaining and edifying! This is a novel which can be taken at its own pace, sprawling, epic - but which most likely you will take much faster. I began reading the novel following the most recent film adaptation with John Lithgow and Bob Hoskins. I have been engrossed, enthralled, and enchanted since I picked up this antique tome. "Don Quixote" is not simply A novel - it is THE novel. In Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Cervantes gave, and continues to give two of the most beautifully rendered personalities, whom you come to know and treasure, and whose names will be "written in the book of fame for all future ages". From the Duke and Duchess to the writer-convict Gines, to Sampson Carrasco and the priest, Cervantes portrays individuals, not just character-types, from all social backgrounds and contexts, enriching further the story of the Knight of the Sad Countenance and his faithful squire. In terms of narrative, it is clear how "Don Quixote" influenced countless other works from Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" to Herman Melville's "The Confidence-Man". "Don Quixote" is very much a narrative concerned with its own existence as a text. From Cervantes continually reminding the reader of his own duty as the translator of Quixote's adventures from Benengeli, to the Don's own preoccupation in the novel's second half with an "unauthorized biography" of himself written by a hack, to the various interpolated stories throughout the novel - narrative awareness and attention to the ways in which narrative and language functions are fascinating components of this work. Perhaps the most important lessons the novel has to teach come from the mouth of the proverb-spitting Sancho Panza, whose physical presence underlines the substance of his words. Truly, Sancho is the novel's most intriguing character. His distance from, and simultaneous involvement in, Don Quixote's adventures give the novel an internal critic and observer, who pairs nicely with the external point of view provided by Cervantes. In sum, "Don Quixote" is well worth your time - with short chapters, you can read a lot at once, or take it one bit at a time. Either way, pick this novel up, and let it become part of you.
Rating:
Summary: 4 and 1/2 Stars
Review: One of the great classics of world literature, Don Quixote is very often called the greatest novel of all-time. Many also see it as the first modern novel, the precursor to all novels that have come since; some, indeed, even call it the first true novel ever written. Certainly, it is both world-famous -- almost all people, whether they've tackled this 1,000+page monster or not, seem to know about the "terrifying and never-before-heard of adventure of the windmills" -- and extremely influential upon all literature that has come since. The great Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky thought it was the best thing ever written; it was clearly one of Mark Twain's primary inspirations for Huck Finn. The book has endured and remained popular and influential for four hundred years for several reasons. For one, the character of Don Quixote himself is immortal. One of the most famous characters in all literature, he has appeared in various forms throughout the centuries -- on the page, on the stage, on the screen. Clearly a huge influence upon a multitude of subsequent literary characters, he is one of the great archetypes in literature. Also, the story itself works on several levels. On one level, it is a highly comic adventure that can be read and enjoyed by everyone; a hugely-popular both upon release and still today, this is probably the main reason why it has lasted four centuries. Even at this later date, the book contains scenes that are laugh-out-loud funny, its jokes running the gamut from the most base level of slapstick to ringing burlesque and satire. Despite the novel's length, it is a very entertaining book and rarely slow: it can actually be an exciting and fast-paced read, if one chooses to view it merely as an adventure. However, on a deeper level, the novel, fascinatingly, does several different things at once, and all very well. To begin with, it is a truly immortal satire, both on the outdated and hopelessly idealistic chivalric code itself and on the romantic books of knight-errantry that proclaimed their virtues and were extremely popular at the time Cervantes wrote this work. Wit is abundant and ever-present. As an author, Cervantes clearly had several tricks up his proverbial sleeve when writing this; he employs literary devices so charming, amusing, and inventive that they have never been equaled since. Indeed, this book was so very far ahead of its time that it makes many of the supposedly revolutionary post-modern novels seem mainstream and absolutely traditional by comparison. For, after all, this is a book about books; it is, thus, the ultimate self-reflexive text. As the introduction in this edition points out, the book actually tells two stories: that of Don Quixote, and that of the novel's composition itself. The number of self-references made in it can only be called ingenious. Several circumstances informed this. The mammoth book, as we know it today, was originally published in two halves, over a decade apart. Throughout, Cervantes constantly reminds us that the book is a book; in the second part, even the characters are aware of this, making for an intensely amusing and clever read. Also, before Cervantes published the second part, an impostor author released his own spurious sequel. Cervantes, responding in kind, changed the course of the book and wrote the apocryphal sequel into his own sequel, in addition to the first part of his own narrative! It isn't as confusing as it sounds -- indeed, it's quite delightful and inventive -- but the author himself, infamously, lost the course of his own narrative several times and lapsed into error. Of course, this, too, is noted later on in the book and commented upon as well. Literature as a whole is also commented upon. The author, in the second part, even addresses the criticisms of the first part, such as its digressions (which he defends, but stays away from in Part II) and its loose ends. The scene where the curate is selecting which books to burn and which to save is one of the most satirically-amusing ever written. The book, for all of its burlesque and even occasional lack of seriousness, also brings several important questions to light. What is reality? What makes one noble? If one does noble and brave deeds only because one is deluded, is one then noble in reality, or merely a poor farce and a walking joke? For these, and many other reasons, Don Quixote is a classic that deserves to be read by all.
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