I would recommend to advanced Spanish learners Lathrop's Spanish version with English footnotes. They help with the trickier and mostly uncommon words or historical context.
“Don Quixote” as a manual for living
31–40 of 89 posts
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#32Couple of other books I would recommend: Revolt of Angles, Candide, The blue peril.
No particular reason other them being obscure (on HN at least) and pretty good reads.
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#33Don Quixote in Spanish households is like Gödel, Escher, Bach for techies. You bought it when you were young, it sits proudly on your bookshelf, you talk about how meaningful it was... but you've only read a chapter or two. (c'mon, you gonna pretend you really read the entire GEB on the bookshelf behind you right now?)
I have Knuth's TACP sitting proudly on my bookshelf and ... I flipped through it a couple of times thinking, wow, I'm never going to read this am I.
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#34Don Quixote in Spanish households is like Gödel, Escher, Bach for techies. You bought it when you were young, it sits proudly on your bookshelf, you talk about how meaningful it was... but you've only read a chapter or two. (c'mon, you gonna pretend you really read the entire GEB on the bookshelf behind you right now?)
Of course! It's not like it is a long book. Now Metamagical Themas is a different story.
Metamagical Themas, a crossover of Don Quixote and GEB
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#35The only people who praise this book are literature majors. It was a disappointment from beginning to end. I couldn't understand why people thought it was so great. It didn't feel like an epic. Maybe for its time it was fun to read, but you really have to be deprived of all stimuli to enjoy it (unless you're a literature professor who has to read it). Like maybe stay in a prison cell for a few months. Then yea, it's…
So is it the 400 years of readers and literary critics who are wrong, or is it you who are wrong? Whether or not you were entertained by it is a matter of personal taste, but declaring that it’s uninteresting suggests that you only gave it a cursory reading. I would also suggest that no one uses Don Quixote as a way to exaggerate their intelligence, it was deliberately written in a way so as to be accessible to the c…
“Am I so out of touch? No, it is the 400 years of readers who are wrong.”
People may think your take is snarky but it’s very good actually. Classics become classic because they are beloved, not because “literature majors” demand it to be so. No novel has a readership outside of its own century that is not exceptional in some way. They must reach across time and into the universal heart of humanity to communicate so far beyond their own times. That’s why they’re still read. That’s why they’re classic.
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#36Don Quixote in Spanish households is like Gödel, Escher, Bach for techies. You bought it when you were young, it sits proudly on your bookshelf, you talk about how meaningful it was... but you've only read a chapter or two. (c'mon, you gonna pretend you really read the entire GEB on the bookshelf behind you right now?)
There was a "Don Quixote" class at my university in the Spanish department. I really regret not taking it because there's no way I'm going to read it in my lifetime.
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#37The entirety of https://octavian.substack.com/ is hilarious. Is it here because it was composed by AI?
Or as George Bush might have said, "Why is the Classics?"
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#38Don Quixote in Spanish households is like Gödel, Escher, Bach for techies. You bought it when you were young, it sits proudly on your bookshelf, you talk about how meaningful it was... but you've only read a chapter or two. (c'mon, you gonna pretend you really read the entire GEB on the bookshelf behind you right now?)
My copy of GEB fell apart at the spine before I managed to read the whole thing. It's an enormous book and my paperback copy just didn't make it through the trials and tribulations of the daily tram ride to university.
One day.
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#39Don Quixote in Spanish households is like Gödel, Escher, Bach for techies. You bought it when you were young, it sits proudly on your bookshelf, you talk about how meaningful it was... but you've only read a chapter or two. (c'mon, you gonna pretend you really read the entire GEB on the bookshelf behind you right now?)
Yes, in high school, over a few weeks.
Re: “Don Quixote” as a manual for living
#40Don Quixote in Spanish households is like Gödel, Escher, Bach for techies. You bought it when you were young, it sits proudly on your bookshelf, you talk about how meaningful it was... but you've only read a chapter or two. (c'mon, you gonna pretend you really read the entire GEB on the bookshelf behind you right now?)
Might be because that I read it in translation, but Don Quixote always strikes me as something quite easy to read. It’s funny, has a light-hearted tone (however deep its underlying message is), and the story is straightforward.