Welcome to Litsy!

#BookMoods I loved this #600+Pages book!
@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I‘m FINALLY starting my #PicklesChallenge - and #DannyBoy is unimpressed. This is my third or fourth try with DQ, not counting my Spanish IV assignments that sparked my interest in the first place (a million years ago). I‘m hoping that reading small sections frequently, instead of diving in and trying to read straight through, will be the ticket.

Chapters 27-30 of Don Quixote were my #bookspin for May! After a two-month journey, I finally conquered this chunkster. I actually really enjoyed it. Sancho and Don Quixote are endearing (and bonkers) 😆 While there were some dense chapters that I didn't enjoy as much, I still really liked the book and am glad I read it!

My next read is Poldark (not a fan of the show tie-in cover, but it was, oddly, the only copy I could find.)

@TheAromaofBooks

To live a fool and die a sage.
#DonQuixote #MiguelDeCervantesSaavedra #lastline #closingline #book #books #bookcase #bookcases #bookcover #bookcovers #bookcoverdesign #bookcoverdesigner #bookclub #bookclubs #bookvibe #bookvibes #bookvsfilm #bookvsmovie #bookbag #bookbags #bookbinding #bookbeau #bookblog #bookblogger #bookbackpack #bookbackpacks #booknerd #booknerds #booknerdsunite #booknerdy #nerd #Classics #Fiction #Literature #Adventure 💗💗💗💗

When I sat down to keep reading Part Two of DQ, I remembered that chapters 43-49 of Part One were my April #bookspin and I never posted my review! This book is funny/odd and absolutely unlike anything I've ever read 😆 I have been enjoying it, and I'm going to feel *very* accomplished when I've finished it!

@TheAromaofBooks

Well, it's official! Don Quixote is taking over my #bookspin list for the second and final month 😂 It's worked really well to break it up into chapters, so I decided to use the same method for Part Two. Then I can finally say that I've conquered this classic!

@TheAromaofBooks

Great job sticking it out to the end, Linda! That's how we wrestle a chunkster to the ground in the Chunkster Challenge Crew. :)

#ChunksterChallenge2022
@Lcsmcat

I finally finished this year‘s #chunksterchallenge! And at times it was a slog, but I‘m glad I stuck with it. I didn‘t find it as funny as many do, but I‘m not a 3 Stooges fan, and there was a lot of that vibe. Best bits were Sancho Panza‘s proverbs and Cervantes‘ digs at other authors. @Amiable

Time for another chunkster!! Starting this beauty today with @GinaKButler .

#chunksterchallenge2022

Starting my second #chunksterchallenge2022 book today with @Kelly326

@Amiable

I can't believe it's already time for April's #bookspin list!! I'm excited to start these reads next month 😊 As always, thanks for hosting, @TheAromaofBooks

Much funnier and enjoyable than I remember it being when I read it at university 40+ years ago, which include again proves the importance of picking the right translation. This was the Edith Grossman one and it was excellent.

#chunksterchallenge

#DonQuixote #MiguelDeCervantesSaavedra #Classic #Fiction #Literature #SpanishLiterature #Adventure #HistoricalFiction #Novel #Spain #Humor #ClassicLiterature #book #books #bookart #bookartist #bookattitude #bookaholic #bookaholics #bookshelf #bookshelves #bookshelfie #bookshelfies #shelfie #shelfies #bookstack #bookstacks #stack #stacks #bookstore #bookshop #bookshopper #bookshopping #booksale #bookdesign #bookdesigner #bookdeal #bookdeals 💙💙💙

After way too much “peopling” at a retreat for our elected officials, I‘m holed up in my hotel room with TheDon. Made it to part 2! #chunksterchallenge @Amiable

This book was weirder than I expected. I had heard about the whole “tilting at windmills“ thing, so I figured the main character became disturbed throughout the story. I was surprised to learn that he was basically delusional from the start.

I read it throughout January, following Don Quixote & his squire Sancho Panza through their adventures, trials, & tribulations, & it did feel like a journey. This was unlike what I thought it would be: both more philosophical & more puerile than I expected! I laughed out loud & cringed; was bored, entertained, & edified, & was never disinterested. Can't sum it up: but if I was to try, a book about knowing oneself through conversation with others.

"Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing" #OnThisDay in 1605 the first book of Don Quixote was published. Book two came ten years later. #HistoryGetsLIT

Marcela is my favorite character so far. A very modern miss for a book so old! I like her even more than I like Sancho @batsy #chunksterchallenge2022 @Amiable

Thank you for the tag @ravenlee and sorry I'm a day late 🙂

1) My sort of tentative goals are to read more of the classics I've had on my TBR for a very long time, & to read more nonfiction. History, philosophy, etc. ALL OF THE BOOKS! Sorry, I mean tentative but realistic goals 😆

2) Patience (an eternal life lesson)

3) Reading this slowly & enjoying the humour & thinking underlying the wild misadventures.

#ThoughtfulThursday @MoonWitch94

Could this be the original cliffhanger? I‘ve finished Part 1 (at 9% according to my Kindle) of my #chunksterchallenge book. @Amiable @batsy

My January TBR includes #shakespearereadalong, #whartonbuddyread, #chunksterchallenge, #authoramonth, and #bookspin. I always bite off a lot in January. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This has started well 😅

The novel articulated for me what idealism means (basically it isn‘t grounded by hopes of achieving a better tomorrow, but is a lasting state of being):

To lead an enjoyable, worthwhile life, your goals must be loose but rooted in principle & w/o hope of consummation. Accepting other people‘s limited perception of you leads to humiliation & failure.

So basically, let your horse‘s meandering guide you & may your Dulcinea never manifest.

9 months later (tabs mark the months), we‘re finished! It‘s kinda AWEsome that a 400 y/o book can still make you LOL, & that is no small value. It is inimitable, & I‘m stuck by how pale adaptations are compared to the original. ⚔️🛡

I also found it too long and tedious at many times. So many subplots! So many “most beautiful maidens between the ages of 13-18” & their romantic drama! To read it is a sort of endurance test, but that‘s not bad.

I can‘t be sure, but Wishbone‘s episode “The Impawssible Dream” may have been my introduction to DQ. This was a fun half hour adaptation of the first part, utilizing some shortcuts made by the musical but with a much more faithful version of Sancho Panza (pictured 😆). I thought the blending of literature and a kid‘s life was well done, and such a great way to make history/literature accessible and enjoyable.

#FallTreasures I don't read many books #Over500Pages, but I loved this one!
@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Confirmed my disinterest w/the show (no fault of the theater or actors, I just don‘t “really like it”). It distills the 1st part & darkens some elements, oversimplifies others. What is done to Sancho Panza is a crime, esp here, where he‘s played as a queeny joke. Aldonza carries the emotional arc (Gisela Adisa: Wow 🤩) but despite an inspiring anthem the show is ultimately cynical: Life is so unbearable we must escape into delusion to endure.

Penultimate discussion on Don Q with Mom this afternoon (+manchego & sparkling Spanish wine). My thought: Is part 1 the more famous because the “impossible dream” is more palatable than realizing the apex of your dreams BUT it‘s all a farce and everyone‘s laughing at you behind your back? There‘s a cynicism to the second half that is more humiliating for Don Q and SP, even as they display more intelligence and wisdom than in Part 1.

Although I feel a little guilty stopping after the first third of the translation, Smollett‘s Quixote bordered on being a slog. I didn‘t want to dislike the novel before I had to chance to finish it. Granted that may still end up being the case, but I‘m hoping my experience will be different with a newer translation (starting Lathrop today). Once more to the village of La Mancha…

“…that as love in young people is, for the most part, nothing but appetite, whose only aim is pleasure; and this being enjoyed, what he seemed love, vanishes, because it cannot exceed the bounds of nature; A whereas real love is bounded by no such limits” (V1B3C11, tr. Tobias Smollett)

752 pages in…TBH, I‘m finding this journey a little tedious. Mom still enjoying it, finds it quirky, likes the jokes and wordplay. We‘ve challenged ourselves to find a reason why 100 writers voted it the best work of fiction in the world, as Grossman says in her intro.

Started Don Quixote! Dover Thrift - Smollett 1755. On C1, B2, V1. So many philosophies and avenues of translation. Rutherford, Jarvis, Starkie, Cohen, Ormsby, Montgomery, Grossman, Lathrop, Putnam, Motteux, Shelton, Raffel. I‘m sure I‘m missing some; reading Smollett now, for better or worse. I‘m starting to think every one has good and bad points. Smollett is archaic yet strangely satisfying. Your favored translation? And for what reason(s)?

Mama, don‘t let your babies grow up to be poets.

One of my favorites!

I have to admit, this one is not shaping up to be what I thought it was. The grotesque toilet humor especially surprises me. I‘ve been told that it‘s hilarious and that authors like Charles Dickens read it annually they loved it so much. I mean it‘s funny at times, but..? I understand that Cervantes is poking fun at the traditional tales of knighthood, it‘s just… interesting to see how often vomit and feces are used as punchlines.
Is it just me?😅

Anyone else watch Joe Bob Brigg‘s Last Drive In? A few weeks ago he showed El Dia de la Bestia, a Spanish horror comedy from 1995 in which a priest, in effort to save humanity from the antichrist, sets out to do as much evil as possible. He is assisted by a simple but steadfast record store employee. Joe Bob compared the pair to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza! 🗡🛡

I got to talk about Don Q with my Mom in person! It was a nice weekend in Cleveland. DQ is a light read during heavy times, but that may change. The forward by Harold Bloom refers to it often as a “dark” and hilarious but “immensely somber” book and he quotes Nabokov as saying it is “an encyclopedia of cruelty.” Whoa! Haven‘t gotten that from it yet.

We‘ve finished the 1st book of Don Quixote and gotta say...generally positive, but not overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Yes, it can be very humorous but the meandering minor stories can get tedious. It‘s surprising that the book was “finished” at this point, with the 2nd part not published until 10 years later. Why do we get the incel goatherd right at the end? And where is Dulcinea??

Collage by Joan Hall for the 1987 Book-of-the-Month Book Journal.

Mom & I are finding this tricky to discuss: it‘s mostly slapstick episodes w/o character development & the plethora of subplots & inserted novels don‘t age particularly well. It isn‘t boring but it‘s not engaging in the usual way.

I‘m having fun spotting Don Q in the wild, though, like in an episode of “The Regular Show” (pictured), or the way Joni Mitchell‘s “For Free” (covered in LDR‘s latest album) is in conversation with Don Luis‘s poem.

I've been busy. Almost 2 years post-transplant we can have pets again. Meet Dulcinea, aka Dulci. And apparently today is my 3rd Lisyversary. Time flies.

Happy were those blessed times that lacked the horrifying fury of the diabolical instruments of artillery, whose inventor, in my opinion, is in hell, receiving the reward for his accursed invention, which allows an ignoble and cowardly hand to [...] cut off and end in an instant the thoughts and life of one who deserved to enjoy many more long years.

At a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to remember, there lived a little while ago one of those gentlemen who are wont to keep a lance in the rack, an old buckler, a lean horse and a swift greyhound.
#DonQuixote #MiguelDeCervantesSaavedra #firstline #openingline #book #books #bookcover #bookcovers #bookcollection #bookcollectir #bookcase #bookcases #bookcoverdesign #bookcoverdesigner #Classics #Fiction #Literature #SpanishLiterature

[Quixote‘s] only concern was to move on, following no other path than the one chosen by Rocinante, which tended to be the one the horse could travel most easily, and always imagining that there was bound to be some extraordinary adventure waiting for him in the thickets.

For our February discussion, I picked up a Tempranillo and Manchego cheese.
What slapstick this book is turning out to be! So many vomit/poop jokes. And also some fun word play and a great speech by a shepherdess who just wants to be left alone in nature: “I am a distant fire and a far-off sword.”

Talked with my mom today about our January portion of Don Quixote. We‘re both enjoying the surprisingly contemporary humor and Mom‘s finding herself identifying with Don Q. Tonight I tried my hand at a paella and my partner and I listened to a Spanish guitar playlist on Spotify. ☺️

Well, hm. What do I do now? 🤔