Rating: 
Summary: Don Quixote
Review: Considered by many to be one of the first modern novels, it is a hilarious exploration of 16th and 17th century Spain, all through the eyes of the chivalrous knight errant, Don Quixote, and his ever faithful squire, Sancho Panza.Around the age of fifty, there was a man who, after reading countless chivalric romances, decided to adopt the name of Don Quixote and explore the world, righting wrongs, rescuing maidens and slaying giants. Deluded by the grandeur of his favourite stories, Quixote sees the world differently to normal men. An inn is not an inn but a castle, a monk not a monk but a wandering vagabond to be slain, a life-worn prostitute not a whore but a beautiful princess. After a rapid series of events, Quixote returns home, battered and bruised from the fights he has lost, in his mind a glorious knight errant returning from many victories. He convinces his neighbour, Sancho Panza, of his prowess, and the two set off once more, the first adventure they experience together being the famous windmill fight - the windmill that Quixote took to be a giant. Over the next nine hundred pages or so, the relationship between Quixote and Panza develops into deep affection. The greatest pleasure is to be derived from reading their addled conversations, how they twist ordinary events into epic circumstances, and how willing Panza is to believe Quixote's exaggerations. He is promised early in the book that he will one day govern an island, and holds on to this for many months through ridiculous adventure after ridiculous adventure. Throughout, he shows an amusing level of stupidity, but also a staggering insight, seemingly able to change between the two within a sentence. And the proverbs! Don Quixote is a very intelligent man, when he is not discussing chivalry. He is able to converse at great length of all manner of subjects, and every word he says seems wise and true. But turn the conversation to being a knight, or the never-seen love of his life, Dulcinea del Toboso, and he becomes a raving mad-man, spewing forth opinions and ideas that could never be believed. He is much given to grand gestures, turning a simple apology into a two paragraph discourse, highlighting ancient instances of forgiveness and sadness. The amount of references that he crams into his speech is simply amazing, and I am thankful that my Penguin Classics translation saw fit to explain them. From the bible to Greek mythology to current day (at the time) events and people to fictional giants and sorcerers to characters from books, Quixote is willing and able to place them in his speech in a way that feels effortless. The book is in two parts, of roughly equal size, and the first is the best. In the second, the first part of the book has been published, and everyone is aware of who Quixote and Panza are. Consequently, many people take advantage of them, and it isn't so funny to see the two being ridiculed so harshly. Also, the narrator becomes a little too self-referential for my liking, a technique that wasn't present in the first book and feels awkward in the second. But the beauty of this book is in the friendship. Sancho Panza is one of the greatest characters I have ever read, I truly feel a fondness for him and wish there were a thousand more books written of him. Don Quixote is larger than life, a caricature of a caricature, and it is a delight to read his rants. There is a sense that - if Cervantes hadn't killed off Quixote at the very end of his book to prevent further stories being written - that the two men would, even know, be travelling the countryside of Spain, bickering and chatting, secure in the knowledge that Don Quixote is an amazing knight, and that Sancho Panza is his ever faithful squire.
Rating: 
Summary: Witty and Humoruous tale that will warm your heart
Review: Don Quixote is a timeless classic which revolves around the adventures or misadventures of a hopeful knight-errant in an era where chilvary no longer exist and the age of knights gone. Miguel de Cervantes was born in the middle 1500s Spain in the city of Toledo. Later in his life he served his country by participating in the military for approximately five years. On his return to Spain he was abrutly captured by a Turkish fleet. Cervantes lived in slavery for five years before his family raised enough ransom for his return. It was after his military years that Miguel de Cervantes created his most famous works, "Don Quixote". "Don Quixote" is a funny, witty story that is a joy to read. A downside is that its older writing language could make reading rather tedious at times and difficult to understand. Other then this little flaw, "Don Quixote" is a great story that needs to be told. It is amazing how Miguel de Cervantes pokes humor at the human soul with his dipiction of the irony of a knight-errant who has devoted his cause to love even though chilvary is dead and true knights gone.
Rating:
Summary: A CLASSIC COMEDY
Review: Don Quixote is Alonso Quixada, an aging country gentleman of some means who spends his days, as his niece describes it, "reading much and eating little." One day he impetuously decides to become a knight-errant--champion of the oppressed and savior of damsels in distress. He announces to the dismay of his household that he is now to be called Don Quixote of the Mancha and begins making preparations for a journey of great adventure. Accompanying him on his quest is Sancho Panza, a dimwitted village peasant who agrees to become Quixote's faithful squire in return for the promise of an island when their adventures are through. Together they roam the Spanish countryside in search of chivalrous deeds to perform. Early in the journey, Quixote meets a young peasant woman named Aldonca. In his imaginary world she becomes Dulcinea del Toboso, his beloved lady fair. From then on he strives to win honor in her name and become worthy of her love. The story follows the misadventures of Quixote and Panza as they encounter rogues, scholars and noblemen along the way. Among these nobles are the Duke and Duchess who entertain themselves by making sport of and mocking the two men. Throughout it all, Quixote's family and friends seek to bring him home safe and sane.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Modern Translation
Review: Everyone should read Don Quixote at least once. It is the first modern novel ever written. It is also one of the longest - although, I don't see how it could be any shorter. The novel is actually two novels stuck together. Cervantes published the first half, which became an incredible success. Years later, he published the second part which relates the third salley of the Don. The effect that this has on the book is that all the major characters in the Part II have all ready read Part I, making the book incredibly self-referential. Cervantes also has fun in mocking a spurious Part II by another author that was published at the time. I do not speak Spanish - let alone 17th Century Castilian, so I was forced to read the novel in translation. I have never read another version, but John Rutherford's Penguin Classics version was satisfactory in every way. He does his best to retain Cervantes' humor, which is the most important aspect of the novel. Also, modern audiences my benefit from translation because it puts the book into the modern language - making a four-hundred-year-old book read fresh. As for the plot, a country hidalgo named Alonzo Quixano spends his time reading chivalric romances. One day, he decides to become a knight errant named Don Quixote (Sir Thighpiece). He convinces a simple neighbor who speaks in proverbs, Sancho Panza, to come along with him to be his squire. Quixote is crazy and Sancho is a fool - except that they seem to be preternaturally sane and wise when the chips are down. If you are only familiar with Man of La Mancha, the book is drastically different. Dulcinae never actually makes an appearance. Sancho is traveling along because he has been promised the governorship of an island - and he gets it! They just spend the book wandering around and getting into adventures. Personally I prefer the second part of the novel (the first is too digressive). Allow yourself some time, and enjoy this masterpiece of Western Literature.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Modern Translation
Review: Everyone should read Don Quixote at least once. It is the first modern novel ever written. It is also one of the longest - although, I don't see how it could be any shorter. The novel is actually two novels stuck together. Cervantes published the first half, which became an incredible success. Years later, he published the second part which relates the third salley of the Don. The effect that this has on the book is that all the major characters in the Part II have all ready read Part I, making the book incredibly self-referential. Cervantes also has fun in mocking a spurious Part II by another author that was published at the time. I do not speak Spanish - let alone 17th Century Castilian, so I was forced to read the novel in translation. I have never read another version, but John Rutherford's Penguin Classics version was satisfactory in every way. He does his best to retain Cervantes' humor, which is the most important aspect of the novel. Also, modern audiences my benefit from translation because it puts the book into the modern language - making a four-hundred-year-old book read fresh. As for the plot, a country hidalgo named Alonzo Quixano spends his time reading chivalric romances. One day, he decides to become a knight errant named Don Quixote (Sir Thighpiece). He convinces a simple neighbor who speaks in proverbs, Sancho Panza, to come along with him to be his squire. Quixote is crazy and Sancho is a fool - except that they seem to be preternaturally sane and wise when the chips are down. If you are only familiar with Man of La Mancha, the book is drastically different. Dulcinae never actually makes an appearance. Sancho is traveling along because he has been promised the governorship of an island - and he gets it! They just spend the book wandering around and getting into adventures. Personally I prefer the second part of the novel (the first is too digressive). Allow yourself some time, and enjoy this masterpiece of Western Literature.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging and Entertaining
Review: For more than 400 years the character Don Quixote has been the subject of numerous paintings, sculptures, woodcuts, prints, poems, novels, plays, short-stories, films, a Broadway musical, and even children's television cartoons. Indeed this deranged yet noble "knight errant" has become one of the most recognizable literary characters of all time.
It is doubtful that Miguel Cervantes would have anticipated the enduring popularity of Don Quixote -- he wrote the story primarily to lampoon the most popular form of literature in the sixteenth century, the chivalric romance, the pulp-fiction of his day. He achieves this by disposing a knight in shining armor (Don Quixote) from the pages of the chivalric romance into the everyday realities of (then) modern Spanish life. This shows how the inflated morality and accentuated idealism of the literary knight errant serve as poor examples for the everyday behavior of an average turn-of-the-seventeenth-century citizen. The story also shows how absurdly unrealistic were the romantic clichés of the chivalric epics of the day. The result is an amusing tale filled with situational comedy hatched from Don Quixote's unending delusions of grandeur.
Yet with its enduring popularity there must be something more to the story than that. So why has Don Quixote become so embedded in our cultural consciousness, and what has caused readers, writers, and artists to continually return their imaginative focus to Cervantes's story? Part of its lasting appeal it that is written so well. Most modern readers would expect stilted language and archaic structure in a four hundred year old novel. But Cervantes's easy-going prose retains its clarity and humor even through time and translation; the descriptive language is always concise and compelling; the plot is entertaining; and the characters are well developed. At times the novel slows down to a crawl when Cervantes overindulges in the occasional side-story, and overall the plot itself may seem formulaic and redundant, lacking the pacing of a well written modern or Victorian novel. On the whole, however, the novel can stand up to the best of long fiction, and it certainly outshines most literary offerings from the last half century.
The book's greatest appeal, however, are the characters themselves, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and their strange friendship that represents, perhaps, an essential duality in man, romance and realism, and the ambivalent yet beneficial symbiosis which that friendship creates. I give this book an A.
Rating:
Summary: Pleasing to one side of my brain, and insulting to the other
Review: I am not one to be inclined toward lax thinking tequniques, but I got a big smashin' kick out of this tale of ubsurdness. The whole time my brain was laughing at it and harassing his sane-but-demented mind.
Poor Rozinante! Not exactly the Bucephalus we might imagine, but I think there is something to value in the way this zealous man can be what his dreams will make him - and no one will stand in his way. I wish I could say that about himself. He is a Jonathan Seagull.
Rating: 
Summary: A Classic
Review: One of the reasons I decided to read this book was because I knew it was a classic. I had seen and heard variations and excerpts from it in different works and was curious about the actual classic itself. Honestly, when I first started reading it, I found it somewhat sluggish and repetitive. My thoughts were, ok, the gag was cute the first time, but it's growing somewhat old. It wasn't until I neared the conclusion that the message Cervantes was conveying reached me. The message I interpreted was that people have value regardless of class distinction or societal roles. While this sounds simplistic and commonplace for us in the 21st century, when one considers the time and culture in which the novel was originally produced, one realizes Cervantes was making a profound statement in an artistic, creative way. I identified with some of the characters and the situations in which they found themselves. Don Quixote helps us see that our perception largely determines what we see. His reality was based on what was happening within him.
Rating:
Summary: a must have!
Review: The book is a classic and a joy to read, everyone should read this utterly delightful book. About the translation: this is a top-flight translation for sure and since the translator is british the language does have a british flare to it at times, e.g. "bloody hell!". While I personally prefer to Raffel translation, you can't go wrong with this quality production. Buy this now!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: The phrase 'ahead of it's time' is such a cliche that I tend to avoid it all together. Unfortunately, when trying to describe Don Quixote, no better phrase comes to mind. Written in the 1500's, this book is perhaps the first modern comedy. In Don Quixote's squire, Sancho Panza, you'll find traits later used in the ingenius Dickens' character Samuel Weller (Pickwick Papers) some 300 years later. And the craft of the language used by the translator of this new edition, along with their reassuring preface, gives me the impression that very little was lost in this translation, or at least this translation loses the least of other translations. This book, which is a little over 1000 pages (though heavily laden with appendixes) is a great read, and the only complaint I have is the clumsy handling of the translator's notes. There is a lot of Latin quoting in the book, along with references to other chivalric novels, and rather than simply supplying a foot note, they've decided to place all of these in the back of the book, which add a lot of page flipping and unnecessary interruptions to your reading if you want to know and understand everything that's happening. Hopefully in the next edition of this translation, they will correct this. I gave this book 5 stars because it's such an excellent book in itself excellently translated, that I decided it more than worthy of the rating, but if the lack of foot notes bothers you, you may want to disqualify it.
|
