For the October/November session, I drew the name of Don Quixote. (See post concerning my original dismay on choosing this book.) I finished it about a week ago, listening an audiobook version supplied by Hoopla. Cervantes wrote this seminal novel, often hailed as the prototype of the novel, and probably the first European novel. It is a book that contains a quest, or rather a series of misadventures.

The central character, Alonso Quixano, of noble birth, has such a passion for chivalry and especially books about it, that it drives him mad. He adopts the name of Don Quixote and the manners and values of a knight. As he stumbles and bumbles through the countryside seeking adventures and people to help or humble and bring to justice, he and his loyal squire, Sancho Panza philosophize about life as it should be, not as it is (reality). The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a glorious quest, and ourselves as noble individuals with the highest desires of helping others.

The reader learns from Cervantes that “individuals can be right while society is wrong.” It discusses the concept of madness: “…who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams–this may be madness.” It discusses the passion and “madness” one can own for books and ideas. “There is no book so bad…that it does not have something good in it.”

Don Quixote is also supposed to be humorous, and often the character of Sancho Panza is. I found it dry, silly, and humorless by today’s standards. Perhaps readers were more easily amused than in Cervantes’ day.

I am not sorry I read the book, now I can “check off the box;” however, I would never label it a “darned good read.”