Summary: Alonso Quijano is a middle aged man, of around 40 years, who obsessively reads chivalric novels set in centuries earlier than his own ages, creates a disorder for himself because of how many of these novels he reads and how much he believes in them, so he ends up thinking of himself as a knight errant, whose destiny is to fight evil and conquer the heart of his beloved Dulcinea del Toboso, a totally normal girl, 20 years younger than our protagonist Don Quijote. Alongside with his servant, who he turned into his squire, Sancho Panza, they will live incredible adventures such as fighting windmills, which Don Quijote believes to be giants, or finding Merlin the wizard’s underpants, which theoretically will give the wizard’s powers to whoever wears them.
What to expect: Don Quijote de la Mancha isn’t a novel to read in one week. It is a long journey to enjoy little by little, paying attention to small details, understanding the transition and changes of the main characters, and admiring the comparison of two completely different ages which we tend to sometimes wrongly relate, which are the Middle ages and the Modern age, after the colonisation of the Americas. Don Quijote is a classic which any library worth its salt must contain.
My personal opinion: I personally enjoyed reading this particular novel, given my personal preferences. I sometimes like books more because of the implicit beauty, rather than the action which happens itself. I found this work extremely interesting regarding the change which all the main characters go through slowly throughout the novel, and how their points of view vary depending on what point of the novel you examine them. As also mentioned above, there is a beautiful contrast between our protagonist’s reality, the Middle ages, and the real world where he lives, the Modern age, which we sometimes tend to unconsciously directly relate; and this contrast is shocking at the beginning, but as the novel goes on, the understanding of this contrast allows you to admire the work even more.
Resumen: Alonso Quijano es un hombre entrado en años, rondará los 40, que lee novelas de caballerías de forma obsesiva. Hasta tal punto lleva su obsesión con las novelas que se crea a sí mismo un trastorno, que consiste en creer de sí mismo un caballero andante de reluciente armadura, que debe vagar combatiendo el mal, para así conquistar el amor de su amada, Dulcinea del Toboso, quien en realidad no es más que una muchacha normal, 20 años más joven que él, poco agraciada con quien Don Quijote está obsesionado. A lomos de su delgado caballo Rocinante y junto a su criado Sancho Panza, a quien convierte en su escudero fruto de su trastorno, viven increíbles aventuras como la salvación de unas jóvenes doncellas (que no eran más que un pequeño rebaño de ovejas) de unos terribles gigantes, que son en realidad molinos de viento cuyas aspas se mueven con velocidad; o la búsqueda de las calzas del mago Merlín, que en teoría otorgarían los poderes del célebre mago a quien las llevase puestas.
Qué esperar: Don Quijote de la Mancha es una novela escrita en tres partes por Miguel de Cervantes. Definitivamente, no es una novela para leer en una semana, sino más bien un largo viaje que disfrutar examinando y admirando los pequeños detalles, como la progresión de los personajes y sus comportamientos en las distintas etapas de la aventura, y el contraste de la realidad paralela (la Edad Media) en la que Don Quijote cree firmemente vivir, con la realidad de la ambientación de la novela: la edad moderna post-colonizaciones. Don Quijote es, sin ninguna duda, un clásico con el cuál cualquier librería que se precie debería contar.
Mi opinión personal: Personalmente, yo disfruté mucho con la lectura de esta obra de arte. Quizás es debido a mis gustos personales, ya que mis preferencias recaen más en los detalles y la belleza implícita de una obra, que en la acción narrada en la novela en sí misma. La progresión de los personajes y su forma de actuar cambiante dependiendo de la etapa de la novela en la que se encuentren es una de las cosas que más disfruté de la lectura de este libro. Otro ejemplo de esta belleza implícita es el contraste entre la Edad Media y la Edad Moderna que se puede apreciar en la forma de actuar de Don Quijote, quien cree vivir en la época medieval, y la forma en que es tratado por la gente del tiempo real en el que transcurre la novela, el siglo XVII. Este contraste nos ayuda a diferenciar dos épocas que a menudo asociamos debida a su proximidad temporal, pero que no podían ser más diferentes entre sí.
What to expect: There is a lot of detail, but it’s not too much. (It’s not like The Priory of the Orange Tree.) I haven’t read the second book, so i don’t know if the author keeps up the good plot and writing, but we’ll see.
Plot: Dragons and humans have signed a peace treaty 40 years ago, but both sides are aggressive and not peaceful. Our main character Seraphina has knowledge of the dragons and tries to evade trouble (unsuccessfully). There are a lot of interesting and different characters in the book, and I enjoyed the world building a lot.
Reader Note: This took a while for me to read, and by a while I mean three years. I dropped this book and then picked it up recently. I’m genuinely happy I picked it up, because I enjoyed it immensely. Also here, dragons have a human form, and are very actually developed with their own philosophies but have some problems with being human and handling emotions, it’s entertaining to watch. But they don’t know our ‘customs’, like wearing clothes most of the time, which causes secondhand embarrassment.
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What to expect: this is a book written by a reader for readers. It is a book for adventurers and people that like short stories and libraries.
Plot: When Zachary (our main character) was little he found a painted door, but never opened it. Now, he finds a mysterious book in the university library that has no barcode and decides to see where the book leads him (through like where it was published and who donated it). The book is filled with short stories about a Harbour and Starless Sea.
We are introduced to multiple characters with different storylines in different points in time, with different beginnings and endings. Some characters are important and come back later, some appear once and never again.
Reader Note: the timeline is super wonky. The book has a main plot line about a main character and his journey to the Harbour and the Starless Sea. There are experts and notes and short stories put into that main story, as if the author took a book and used short stories as bookmarks.
Tags and Warnings:
Uhh, idk. Is it really Good Writing a tag? I honestly enjoyed this book a lot. Pirates and Ships, Time Skips, Fairytale kinda
Quick run of the plot: a group of theatre kids, a tragedy happens, the main character is in jail, but we don’t know why or what happened. There are two timelines with one in the ‘now’ (that are viewed as prologue for each part) and one in the past (the majority storyline is written in the past), and it is written in 3rd pov (so he thought/she said).
Background/Setting: The kids go to a top art boarding school, set in one of the aesthetic dark academia settings (so the school building is a castle with a grounds lake and some kind of other buildings around it). Each year students are cut from the grades, so that by the senior year, there are minimal people left. Many people buckle under the stress, but our main characters are in their senior year (there are seven in total).
Recommendation: The story heavily revolves around plays and theatre, mainly Shakespeare. I think you will find this book interesting if: you like to analyze plays, read murder mysterys, are a theature kid, are a part of the lgbtq+ community (some theature gays for you), or just like romance and drama.
Tags and Warning: Hurt no Comfort, Minor Character Death, Minor Background Drug Usage (but person gets clean in like three pages), (and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaour favourite) Ambiguous Ending