Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

Translated by Edith Grossman

📖 341/939

(Also, Fundamentally Yours by Nussaibah Younis: 📖 83/341 and In the Still of the Night by David L. Goleman: 📖 19/359)

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2026 is about expanding experiences in my reading life. Trying new things, new books, and new ways of reading.
For Don Quixote, it's a new way of reading. Since I am generally a fast reader, I decided to make the slow reading experience of this novel even "slower".

Don Quixote is my current "slow read".

I've decided to do something new and read the novel while listening to the audiobook at the same time.

This idea came from the book Mozart and the Fighter Pilot by Richard Restak, M.D. that I read years ago. Since then, I have wanted to try it but I usually avoid fiction audiobooks. (I like my imagination to have full control over the characters and their voices.)

This time, I decided to go for it.

And it has been fantastic. The narrator is wonderful, especially his voice for Sancho Panza which is perfect.

This approach also forces me to slow down, which feels right for a book like this. I still catch myself reading ahead sometimes, but I am getting better. Slowing down is part of the point after all.

I'm curious to see how this approach will affect my experience overall and later memory of the this novel.

Notes along the (reading) way:

This book is hilarious, kind of raunchy. I had no idea it was so funny! And sad. It's kind of sad too.

Sancho is the best.

Quotes:

All quotes come from the Edith Grossman translation Cervantes' Don Quixote.

a windmill in a field with trees and clouds in the background
Photo by Carl Tronders / Unsplash

"In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind." (p. 21)

"Don Quixote did not sleep at all that night but thought of his lady Dulcinea, in order to conform to what he had read in his books of knights spending many sleepless nights in groves and meadows..." (pp. 60-61)

"Besides, if truth be told, what I eat, even if it’s bread and onion, tastes much better to me in my corner without fancy or respectful manners, than a turkey would at other tables where I have to chew slowly, not drink too much, wipe my mouth a lot, not sneeze or cough if I feel like it, or do other things that come with solitude and freedom." (p. 76)

"I deserve to have clouds fill the fair sky of your eyes when you hear of my death, forbid it, for I want you unrepentant, without remorse, when I hand to you the ruins of my soul..." (p. 97)

"Well, like they say, you need a long time to know a person, and nothing in this life is certain." (p. 106)

"...he struggled to his feet, threw his arms around Maritornes, and the two of them began the fiercest and most laughable scuffle the world has ever seen." (pp. 114-115)

"For I must tell you, Sancho, that a mouth without molars is like a mill without a millstone, and dentation is to be valued much more than diamonds." (p. 133)

"...for hope is always born at the same time as love.." (p. 288)

"The night, as we have said, was dark,..." (p. 141)