Currently reading and loving every minute of it! Found it a bit hard to get into but it was well worth the trouble. Find the pages very full of text however and I need to take frequent breaks, but the narrative is excellent. Can see why it is considered such a great work.

I know I am going to get slated for this but this has to be one of the most disappointing 'great' pieces of literature I have ever come across - I guess it may once more be a question of translation, and the need to consider quite actively learning to read at least a modern Spanish version. To me it's like trying to get through a long opera: I know I should be able to appreciate high art, know that it should be doing my soul some good, understand that it's a piece of nonpareil brilliance but I fail utterly to be engaged, stimulated or entertained. My apologies to all and any Spanish users of aNobii - in defence I can only say I wouldn't be surprised or shocked if any of you had the same reaction to Chaucer in translation... ( )

As you stare at the 940-page mass that is Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote, you might wonder if this Literary Classic (TM) warrants several weeks of your readerly devotion. The answer depends upon what you value in a text. If you require a story with a set group of characters who move in a straight line from plot points A to Z, then you should reconsider spending your hours on the famous "knight errant," for as he wanders into various adventures, so does Cervantes, who rarely allows a chapter to pass without another side story featuring pairs of starcrossed lovers composed unfailingly of beautiful ladies and brave but unfortunate gentlemen. However repetitive, this storytelling device highlights the surprisingly modern metafictive elements of the novel. Although Don Quixote the man lacks the capacity for honest self-examination, the text achieves another superior level of existence via its self-awareness. Beginning with an Aristotelian book burning and proceeding to warp the distinction between fiction and reality, Don Quixote the novel embodies those characteristics that we have so simply reduced to the word 'quixotic'. It is this brilliant trick, over which I suspect Cervantes is still laughing somewhere in the ethereal land of deceased authors, that delighted my twenty-first century palate. ( )

I have to admit that I had heard tremendous things about Don Quixote. I understood the idea of the book before I opened it and maybe that was part of my problem. My expectations may have been too high and this book, IMHO, fell short. I have to admit that I enjoyed the first part but when I got to Part II, that's where he lost me. Cervantes just seems to go on and on adding story after story that has nothing really to do with Quixote's quest. If I had stopped after Part I, I would have been fine with this book, but as it is it was just toooooooo longgggggg. Another disappointing classic. DARN! ( )