I’ve been meaning to read the second half of Don Quixote, having taken a break after Part One. When I found out Emma from Words and Peace was interested too — a chapter-a-day readalong she’d been following seemed to be defunct — I offered to read along with her.
We decided to do alternating posts every couple of weeks – I will start off on March 31, after I’ve read the first ten chapters or so. Next time it will be Emma’s turn, and so on. I hope we can keep it up through all seventy-plus chapters!
If you’d like to join us, please do — or just follow along as we embark on our reading adventure.
The Emerald City Book Review Archive 
I’m so excited we are doing this together!
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Yes, I’m so glad to have company!
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It’s always fun to read along with others! I fell behind in my chapter a day readalong and then stopped reading. I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I felt I should have been. Who knows, I may try again at a later time, but, I hope you both have fun reading part 2 together! 🙂
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What BJ said!
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Thank you both, I’m looking forward to it.
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Emma informed me that you are beginning Part II at the end of the month. I’ve been slowly reading through Part I, but I will try to catch up so I can read along. This is my second read of DQ, and I admit…I haven’t been as excited about it. However, a read along keeps me accountable, so it may actually be a help.
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I was not greatly enamored of Part One, but there are some indications I may like the second half better. I also felt a readalong would help keep me on task. I hope you may join us.
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One thing to keep in mind when reading Don Quixote is that wind mills, while objects of sentimentality today, were cutting age technology when Cervantes was writing. And mechanized book printing wasn’t all that old. Thus Quixote is moving through a landscape that is rapidly changing. Some of his fantasizing can be connected to longing for world not experiencing alienation.
My father Scott Bates (a Carleton grad, by the way) has a wonderful poem about Quixote that you might like, told from the windmill’s point of view. Sancho Panza stands in for dull, prosaic reality:
Let this be my hour
Sancho Panza: the wind is up
my arms are aching for your flour
My battle never has been won
since chivalry’s finest flower
withered in your sun
O gaseous ball: my knight
is gone to the asylum and no one comes
Sancho Panza come and fight
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Yes, there is the sense of a world that is changing; Don Quixote wants to preserve the magic that is being lost, yet things are all out of joint and he can’t find a way to fit in. What is real, what is true? There’s lots to ponder there and I often found the book amazingly modern. The interpolated romances threw me off, though. I wonder if this will happen less in Part II.
Love the poem, thank you for sharing!
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What a great way to tackle a book like this. You have a schedule, a reading buddy, and a forum. Good luck!
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Sounds like a plan, right?
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Ooooh how exciting! I read Don Quixote for the first time myself a little while ago (I’ll be posting a single comprehensive review soon), and I think this is EXACTLY the right way to approach it. It’s a book to be sipped like wine, not gulped like beer (to borrow a line from a film, can’t remember which one off the top of my head, but I can’t think of any better way to describe it). Really looking forward to seeing how you get on with it! ❤️
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I’m glad you think it’s a good idea too. So far it’s going well!
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Another great idea for a readalong. I read it for a Renaissance lit class long ago in the Signet translated by I don’t know who, and have hankered to read the Edith Grossman. Such a charming, delightful book. (Again, everybody knows I don’t do readalongs, but I gave this new book to my husband a few years ago and have meant to reread it myself.)
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I like the Grossman translation, though I don’t have anything to compare it to (I don’t remember the translation I read in high school at all). Hope you get to it sooner or later.
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