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Title: Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, Edward De Souza, Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Perry Keenlyside ISBN: 9-6263402-2-3 Publisher: Naxos Audio Books Pub. Date: September, 1995 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 3 List Price(USD): $19.98 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.46 (85 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Marvelous book - much better than the movies and play
Comment: The play Man of La Mancha was uplifting in its way, but was also very depressing. The movie versions of Don Quixote were also downers. But the book ... this is a winner! It's beautiful. It's also really funny.
There are no major villains in the book. The rich and powerful people who mock the old man do it gently, in fun, almost lovingly. Even the man who defeats Don Quixote isn't evil - he's just trying to help. In the end, his supposed enemies are by his side, encouraging him to continue his quest.
Don Quixote is a man who actually lives out his dreams. That's one thing I'll never do. He's very brave, although that starts to slip in Part Two. He's a dear man. His squire Sancho Panza is a riot. Sometimes it's hard to tell which of the two is the star.
This book is a love story, not between Don Quixote and Dulcinea, but between him and his friend Sancho, between him and most of the characters he meets, and between Sancho and his donkey. It can also be a love story between the reader and the characters.
There are some faults. Every book is a product of its time and place, and this book was written in an offensively authoritarian and antisemitic place and time. Somehow even though Cervantes soaked up the faults of his society he still wrote a wonderful book.
Rating: 5
Summary: a multi-layered treat, and worth the time investment!
Comment: I took the time to read both volumes of Don Quixote, starting at the end of this past summer, and just finishing up in mid-November, and even better, in the New Century Library version, lovely old leather bound books with gold ribbons for markers. I didn't read it straight; it was interspersed with many other books on my stack.
Oh my. What a satisfying read. Of course you are familiar with the basic premise of this book, the mad Don Quixote tilting after windmills, his faithful squire Sancho Panza at his side and always on the lookout for a good meal. What I was not prepared for, and was totally delighted by, were the many and varied side stories, the topsy turvy relationship between madness and sanity (and who is which, anyway?), the wisdom of Sancho Panza as Governor (at long last!) of his very own island, and the surreal relationship between the narrator, the author, and the narrated.
This is a complex work, and could be discussed with many different themes in mind--idealism vs. pragmatism, honesty vs. duplicity, madness vs. sanity, the follies of the rich vs. the follies of the poor. Chivalry. Romantic love. Storytelling. Renunciation. The Quest. Devotion. Class structure. Religious persecution.
The only thing that bothered me about this book was that everybody was endlessly enchanted and ready to give the benefit of the doubt to beautiful young men and women, that beauty in this book equaled virtue and a kind heart, a small complaint indeed regarding this masterpiece.
If you've already read this book, this is just preaching to the choir. But if you're trying to decide whether or not to take the time, the answer is yes, yes and yes! You won't regret it, and your heart and soul will thank you.
Rating: 5
Summary: A comic masterpiece about truth and illusion
Comment: 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.
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Title: Don Quixote (Cliffs Notes) by Marianne Sturman ISBN: 0822004151 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 08 July, 1964 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer ISBN: 0393050947 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Leo Damrosch ISBN: 0451527321 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: Faust, Part One by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ISBN: 0486280462 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 23 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
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Title: Divine Comedy : Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso (in one volume) by Dante ISBN: 0679433139 Publisher: Everyman's Library Pub. Date: 28 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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