Don Quixote

Don Quixote

by
3.79 of 5 stars 3.79  ·  rating details  ·  66,860 ratings  ·  2,789 reviews
Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece. Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. You haven't experienced Don Quixote in E...more
Paperback, 940 pages
Published April 26th 2005 by Harper Perennial (first published 1605)
more details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)
filter  |  sort: default (?)  |  rating details
Alex
Well, this thing is good.

I guess the goal of reviewing something like Don Quixote is to make you less frightened of it. It's intimidating, right? It's 940 pages long and it's from 500 years ago. But Grossman's translation is modern and easy to read, and the work itself is so much fun that it ends up not being difficult at all.

Much of Book I is concerned with the story of Cardenio, which Shakespeare apparently liked so much that he wrote a now-lost play about the guy. I loved that part, but for m...more
karen
done quixote!!!
pun quixote!!
fun quixote??
none quixote...

and that's not entirely true; there are some rollicking good times in here, but the first part is so much endlessly episodic violence, and while the second half becomes calmer and more focused, it never got my imagination engaged nor my blood flowing.

in fact, although i know he really does love it, i can't help but feel that brian's recommending this to me is similar to the duke and duchess having their fun with don q. i feel like brian is...more
John Wiswell
May 11, 2013 John Wiswell rated it 3 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Classics readers, knights-fiction readers
Recommended to John by: Ted Hoagland
In short: it's a frickin' classic of world literature. Read it.

In slightly longer, but still short: an amusing and infamous first fifty pages with lots of hit-or-miss thereafter. The second half gets dreadfully stale, but has an interesting ending from a literary analysis standpoint.

In long: I'm using this review space as a journal for reading the incredible mountain of pages.

Day 1: Here goes nothing. Here come 1,000 pages of translated text.

The opening was insufferably cheeky and the origins of...more
Lyndz
So the reason I read this book I think is actually kind of fun. About 8 years ago I was at a 2nd hand store. See, I like to go to those sometimes to pick up glass flower vases to do etchings on and misc other cheap items that I can be artsy-fartsy with. Anyway, So I am at this 2nd hand store and I see this dark wooden (seemingly) hand-carved character. He is about 10-12 inches tall and he has the look of a Spanish knight of some sort. His stature is tall and lanky, with a big chip in his helmet....more
Cecily
Whatever else "Don Quixote" is, I never found it boring. Parts of it were very funny, others had wonderful similarities with Shakespeare, some bits were more serious: it's like a mini library in a single volume. Wonderful.

Overall, it has quite a shakespearean feel - more in the plotting and tales within tales (eg The Man Who was Recklessly Curious, stolen by Mozart for Cosi fan Tutte) than the language. In fact, the story of Cardenio is thought to be the basis for Shakespeare's lost play of the...more
[P]
LJ is my favourite person in the world. Let me tell you a little story about her: when we first met she casually dropped into the conversation that she believes in unicorns. Yeah, you read that right: UNICORNS. Initially I assumed that she was teasing me, but she wasn't laughing, nor smiling, and so I started to become a little concerned. “You’re joking,” I said. “I’m not,” she replied. [Quality discourse, this]. “Unicorns don’t exist.” “They do.” And so on. The thing is, I’m a very pragmatic, s...more
Bennet
My beloved 1964 Signet paperback and Walter Starkie translation, of which I was reminded by a friend's recently posted Quixote review (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... am now shelving among other brilliant voices. From Starkie's introduction:

"Out of a spirit of fin de siecle melancholy sprang Don Quixote, the first modern novel in the world created out of a life of disillusion, privation, and poverty by a maimed ex-soldier, survivor of a glorious Spanish victory, whose noble nature and g...more
Belarius
Feb 06, 2008 Belarius rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: The Literati And Pseudoliterati
I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a fan of popular fiction. I desire enjoyment from certain factors of pacing and style that the literary elite consider "common" and I, in turn, generally find "literature" to be incredibly pretentious. This has led me to hold what some might consider "uncultured" opinions about various great works.

Which brings us to Don Quixote, which many in the literary elite consider to be the greatest novel ever written.

Did I love Don Quixote? I wouldn't go that far. Does i...more
Philip
I’d like some advice from other writers. I’ve just finished a book. It’s my fourth time through it. It might be a bit over-written, perhaps over-read. The writer found the manuscript on a stroll through a street market in Toledo, Spain. It was written in Arabic, a language of which the author only know a little, but he could see from page one that there was something special about this text. He translated it into Spanish, and then others rendered it in English. The book is a little less than fiv...more
Pollopicu
DON QUIJOTE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I began with reading the Spanish version of "Don Quijote De La Mancha".
What inspired me to do so was a vintage mint condition copy I came across and purchased at a rare book store(Book I). Not knowing anything about "Don Quixote", I was disappointed to find out there was a part II, of which I didn't own, and chances of finding the matching edition were slim to none..
Nevertheless, I was inspired to read this world-wide acclaimed classic, so I decided to p...more
C.
This is the story of Don Quixote: Alonzo Quixada, an avid reader of tales of chivalry, decides one day that it is his destiny to become a knight-errant. He finds himself a knight-like name, some armour, a horse, a name for the horse, and a lady-love, and later a squire (the wonderful Sancho Panza), and sets off to do good deeds. This makes up the entirety of the content of Cervantes' masterpiece.

To be honest, until recently I wouldn't have called this a masterpiece - in fact, the only reason I e...more
David
My final review of Book I is actually over here -
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I am leaving this "review" stand, largely because the comments attached provide a record of my Via Dolorosa through Book I over the past month. The entire "Quik Quixote", in uninterrupted form, is here -
QUIK QUIXOTE


quijote 002

When I bought the handy quadricentennial edition shown in the picture above, I was making small talk with the book store clerk about the feasibility of a foreigner making it through the enti...more
John
Whew. I did it. I'm ready to run the New York Marathon, climb Mount Everest, swim the Mekong River, and hunt the nefarious arctic narwhale, now that I've read Don Quixote in its entirety. And I am truly a better person for it.

Until now, I've only read Don Quixote in small doses, reading his battle with the windmills or his mistaking a barber's washbin for the Helmet of Mambrino out of context, either for class or in anthologies. After reading the first book in sequence, I'm ashamed of myself. Gr...more
Janet
If ever there was a case for CliffsNotes this is it. 982 pages of wandering around tilting at windmills, mistaking inns for castles AND he never gets the girl. Enough already.

The summer before my nephew's last year of high school he had to pick a novel from a list of pre-approved classics and write a critique on it. I was reading Crime and Punishment and he said the book was on his list and looked "really interesting." When I asked him why he didn't just select it, he responded, "who has that ki...more
Diane Challenor
I'm reading Don Quixote as part of my website's Reading Challenge 2013.
Now that I’ve cracked the 182 page mark, that is, I’ve reached page 182, maybe I should share my thoughts about the story. So far I think it’s a “silly” story. I should also add that I think Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is silly too. I’m not regretful that my serious reading choice for 2013 is Don Quixote. (Strange I refer to a “silly” story, a comedic story, as a serious read. It’s serious for me because it’s a st...more
Miquixote
Make sure you read this Edith Grossman version, which is vastly superior to the others.

We are Quixote

Our fantasies have collided with reality (but for us repeatedly with different fantasies), and like Quixote, our life vitality has been destroyed. Are we at the end of the novel, when we realize our lives have been a big delusion (or were they? wasn't Quixote's delusion actually his vitality?).

Now we think more responsibly (death creeps softly) and it is really hard for us to know what, if anythi...more
Nenia Campbell
Textbook-selling-back time is a glorious time in college. All those books that mocked you during exams, weighing down your backpack with disgusting smugness, and making you feel guilty for not studying enough- those bitches get reabsorbed into the book store faster than you can say, "Prepare to be assimilated."

My first quarter, I think I ended up being forced to shell out about $500 in books. My social psychology class and abnormal psychology class, both of which I actually needed, had about one...more
Tucker
As a kid did you ever dream about being a knight like the ones in the books you read? Well in Don Quixote, a delusional 50 year old man starts trying to fulfill this dream. Journeying through Spain with his squire Sancho Panza, Don Quixote finds many "adventures" that to most people wouldn't seem like adventures at all, but to Don Quixote who is thinks windmills are giants, and a flock of sheep is an army, anything is an adventure.

One very enjoyable part is that the main characters both exhibit...more
Greg
Reading Cervantes' massive 400-year-old novel may seem to be a challenge analogous to the titular errant knight's ill-advised confrontation with the windmill, however, as with Quixote's famed inanimate opponent, appearances are deceiving. Despite its age, Quixote holds up remarkably well: the characters still charm, the wit still bites and the prose feels crisp and modern – no doubt a testament to Grossman's vivacious translation. However, as purposefully written by Cervantes in the style of the...more
Nicklessagus
El primer libro es excelente, muy entretenido. Cuesta arrancar por el lenguaje (castellano antiguo) y las referencias historicas (muuuuchas notas al pie de pagina) pero una vez que agarra viaje es insuperable.

El segundo libro es muy bueno, pero no como el primero, es divertido como cervantes le pega palos a avellaneda por el quijote apocrifo y el hecho de que en esta segunda parte en el mundo del quijote se haya editado la primer parte y lo conviertan a el casi en una celebridad =)
Julie R
While this is a very, very, very long book (I believe it was originally split up into several installments many years apart)I actually enjoyed it for the most part.
It's kind of intimidating to know that this story is over 400 years old, but you sort of forget once you get into it.
Don Quixote's belief(?) that he's on an important quest is at times laugh-out-loud funny, and at times pathetically sad.
When he finds out that he is nothing but a big joke to everyone around him, the novel turns very...more
Daniel Pecheur
"'Tell us, now, who is the greater madman, he who is so because he can't help it, or he who is so of his own free will?'"
"'This is the spot, O Heavens, that I select to bewail the misfortune into which you yourselves have plunged me. This is the spot where the moisture from my eyes shall swell the waters of this little stream, and my unending sighs shall stir incessantly the leaves of these mountain trees in testimony of the pain that my tortured heart is suffering. And you, rustic gods, whoever...more
Judy
Mar 29, 2013 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to Judy by: 40
What a ride! I feel a sense of accomplishment like none other having completed this book. That is in no way a slur on this book. I have laughed outright, giggled, smirked, felt sadness at DQs death and been caught in the sense of adventure. It truly is a book for the ages. The reason it doesn't get 5 stars is because I do not plan to re-read it. Its just too long for that!

One of my favorite things about this book is looking at the impact it made on the writers who came later. I wonder if anyone...more
Pumsish
อัศจรรย์ดีที่คิดว่าหนังสือเล่มนี้เขียนขึ้นตั้งแต่สมัยพระนเรศวร

ชอบน้ำเสียงคนเขียนบรรยายเรื่องได้ตลกเสียดสีดี แต่ส่วนเนื้อเรื่องที่เกี่ยวกับความฟั่นเฟือนนี่ขำไม่ค่อยออก เพราะรู้สึกสงสารแกมสมเพชมากกว่า (เลยไม่ถึงกับชอบมากๆด้วยเหตุนี้)
มีหลายฉากที่อัศวินพเนจรผู้นี้กับผู้ช่วยของเขาประสบเคราะห์กรรมถึงขึ้นเลือดตกยางออกอันเนื่องมาจากความเสียจริต แต่คนอื่นก็ยังเห็นเป็นเรื่องขำขันได้แต่ยืนหัวเราะหรือแกล้งเล่นด้วย..นี่ก็ใจร้ายเหมือนกันนะ

ไม่เคยอ่านนิยายอัศวินซะด้วยไม่งั้นอาจขำกว่านี้(นี่ก็พอเข้าใจว่ากำลังประ...more
Julia Boechat Machado
Quando eu era criança, não gostava de ler versões adaptadas, porque a gente perde muito da história com elas. Mas eu li o Dom Quixote das Crianças, do Monteiro Lobato, e provavelmente já conhecia algo da história antes mesmo disso. Da primeira vez que li a obra integral, eu me lembrava sempre da Emília, que resolveu [sic] ser louca também e acabou trancafiada em uma gaiola, antes que Dona Benta a libertasse.
E descobri que Dom Quixote é profundo, enternecedor, engraçado. Claro que não pretendo co...more
Derrick
This is one of the best books I've ever read in my life, as it should be. Smollet's translation, though I obviously have not read the Spanish, truly does seem to capture the rambunctious feel and intent of Cervantes. My own writing has improved immensely just from reading this book, as well my vocabulary. Never have I learned so much from something that, while reading it, seemed a simple joy. When I finished the book, I felt an actual sense of loss. I've dealt with that loss in a very ironic man...more
Tal
I spent entirely too much time reading this book to essay what it is that catapults this behemoth into my favorite novels. This has partially to do with the fact that so much has already been said that it feels a bit silly to say anything else. If you need an argument as to why you should read it, you can always Google it.

Otherwise, I guess what kinda clotheslined me about this was how much I came to detest Sancho Panza. Granted, his foolishness and simplicity are so well-captured that he's alwa...more
Steve
A classic in every sense of the word.

Called “the Spanish Bible”, the story of the Man from La Mancha (1605) and the Return of the Man from La Mancha (1615) is one of the most famous literary works in the world and rightfully so. Here, the two works are placed in a single volume and, as translated by Edith Grossman, the characters come crazily alive.

In the first book, we are introduced to Alonso Quixano, an intelligent man who spends too much time reading chivalric novels and romantic tales. One...more
Jessica
Oct 08, 2007 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: knights errant; the sorrowful-faced
I really regret leaving my edition of this book on the curb when I moved out of that Brooklyn apartment. I was like, "Oh, super translation and lovely red cover, but it's really heavy and it's not like I'm gonna need to reread *Don Quixote* any time soon..... I need to quit being such a materialistic packrat!" Actually, I tossed tons of great stuff during that move, but this is the book I've regretted the most.

I DREAMT about this book on Saturday night. I had this really stressful dream where I...more
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 99 100 next »
topics  posts  views  last activity   
/lit/ Revival of ...: Don Quixote Week 1 44 68 Apr 04, 2013 11:24am  
You'll love this ...: Don Quixote 34 24 Mar 13, 2013 12:35am  
/lit/ Revival of ...: Don Quixote Schedule 32 49 Feb 03, 2013 09:28am  
EL UNIVERSO LITERARIO DE "LOS SIMPSON" 2 20 Jan 25, 2013 02:54pm  
Don Quixote: The American Evangelical Christian? 39 87 Jan 13, 2013 07:54am  
Don Quixote (Paperback)
Don Quijote de La Mancha (Hardcover)
Don Quixote (Paperback)
Don Quixote (Paperback)
Don Quixote (Paperback)

4037220
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus Don Quixote is often considered the first modern novel.

It is assumed that Miguel de Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares. His father was Rodrigo de Cervantes, a surgeon of cordoban descent. Little is known of his mother Leonor de Cortinas, except that she was a native of Arganda del Rey.

In 1569, Cervantes...more
More about Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra...
Don Quijote De La Mancha (I) (Coleccion Lecturas Clasicas Graduadas) Don Quixote de La Mancha, Vol 2 Exemplary Stories (Oxford World's Classics) El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha, 13 (Literatura) Don Quixote: Abridged Edition

Share This Book

Your website
50 trivia questions
5 quizzes
More quizzes & trivia...
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” 2,839 people liked it
“All I know is that while I’m asleep, I’m never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories — and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weight and balance that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level. There’s only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I’ve ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there’s very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse” 134 people liked it
More quotes…