Don Quixote
James Montgomery's new translation of Don Quixote is the fourth already in the twenty-first century, and it stands with the best of them. It pays particular attention to what may be the hardest aspect of Cervantes's novel to render into English: the humorous passages, particularly those that feature a comic and original use of language. Cervantes would be proud. --Howard Mancing, Professor of Spanish, Purdue University and Vice President, Cervantes Society of America
Stats for nerds
15recommend
54mentions
49people
2010–2026years
28% recommend72% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- In a postitive way? Literature is filled with cautionary tales of people who find existential truth separate from the opinions of the world, but at a cost. Becoming a solipsist, iconoclast, nihilist....
Try Camus (Stranger), Cervantes (Don Quixote). Dostoyevsky (Notes from the Underground), Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), and there's plenty in Bronte (all of them), Blake and Hardy.
But I suspect these aren't the droids you're looking for.
- - The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) - Jose Saramago
- The War of the End of the World (1981) - Mario Vargas Llosa
Favourites among the books I’ve read lately.
Other than that, there are plenty to enjoy some serious fiction from authors such as:
- Homer (watching Troy is way too far from the book)
- Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain is top pick among his works
- Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities I think is one of the finest pieces of literature
- Albert Camus - pick any of his works, but the shortest is considered to be the finest - The Stranger (~ 80-100 pages)
- Herman Melville - Moby Dick was a wonderful journey I enjoyed thoroughly
- Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace is a book that will raise the bar for fiction, I couldn’t start a new one for a month after finishing it, tried but I was still living in the book. I remember taking a vacation at work to finish the book, couldn’t put it down. Was working as a Java dev at The Ministry of Internal Affairs, must have been 20 or 21 yrs old.
- Dostoevsky - bot reading any of the big five is a missed opportunity: The Demons (one of the finest political fiction work), Brothers Karamazov (Will drain you from emotions), Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Notes from Underground
- Oh, Cervantes - Don Quixote was the book took me 2 years and some more life experience when it started to tick in my mind the depth, importance of the book, perhaps it was 24 or 25.
- And so on, it will be useless to list them all, and many will slip from my mind :)
One important realization an decision I made at the age 18 was that I had to ask around, listen to people who know world literature inside out and follow their suggestions. The reason? At first I wanted to read everything, but pretty quickly that started to sound like a dumb idea which ignored reality and life longevity. Next decision was to read finest of the written works. And the strategy worked.
Books or authors I didn’t enjoy much?
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude - finished it this month and the story felt like the one I’ve already experienced before, emotions I’ve had. If I had read it 8-10 years ago, I would have been dazzled l, but at the age of 29, not much.
- Kafka - The Tower was an awful translation, I felt that, which isn’t authors fault. The next book went smoothly but nothing groundbreaking.
- Ishiguro - mediocre
- Turgenev - mediocre, again
- Calvino - despite my love and respect towards a very good friend, his suggestion didn’t work for me, the book felt like - the author knows too well what’s he’s writing and that’s not a good thing. At first author writes and then he reads it as a reader just to find out what he has written. Calvino and many many more know what they’re writing and hence the mediocrity. - etc.
My next friend will be Ulysses, dragged it a bit too long and finally 2022 is a good year to read it.
Software engineering takes awful a lot of time and energy that it leaves a narrow path to reading something other than technical books and documentation, but the path exists and with discipline we can still enjoy finest pieces of philosophy and literature.
P.S. Many of the printed products are marketed and sold as “books”, but book is a title ought to be earned.
- > In a world fit for cynics, you have to be ready for things to go right if you want to escape.
That is open to challenge - it might be that cynics have an advantage because they are better at biding their time until an opportunity arises. And are less likely to be demoralised because they are used to dealing with the general difficulty of it all.
It isn't like Cervantes had a fundamentally optimistic viewpoint. Don Quixote, as a great book, appeals to the views of cynics just as much as anyone else.
- A few:
"The Once and Future King", T.H. White -- best novelization of the problem of power
"Don Quixote", Miguel de Cervantes -- why stories matter
"Essence of Decision", Graham Allison -- how views of a historic episode vary with the theory you apply
"Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings", Basler/Sandburg -- The application of reason to the problems of law, morality and politics
- This a very personal opinion based on some popular classic book lists like those found on 4chan /lit/ etc. (Note: All books are new and I calculated the price from Book Depository [0], you might be able to purchase more from Better World Books [1]):
- The Holy Bible - Moby Dick by Melville - The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky - The Master And Margarita by Bulgakov - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - The Iliad by Homer - The Odyssey by Homer - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandra Dumas - The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler - The Qur'an - The Prince by Machiavelli - The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky - The Confessions by Saint Augustine - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - The Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi - The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric - Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andric - Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun - Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger - All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque - The Divine Comedy by Dante
--- This list totals out at 311.14EUR and has 23 books. [0] - https://www.bookdepository.com/ [1] - https://www.betterworldbooks.com/
