It is said that the novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes should be read three times – youth, middle age, and old age. I first read it at 17, in English literature class my senior year of high school. Our teacher, who dearly loved the book but knew better than to force the unabridged version on a class of 35 teenaged boys, gave us the option of reading the abridged or unabridged version. The difference was 600 pages, so you can imagine the results.
Two of us chose the unabridged version, and we had to read it in the same amount of time that the rest of the class was reading the unabridged. Neither of us regretted our decision, but we both had to carry that book everywhere we went, reading in any spare moment. The assignment was both a paper and an oral presentation in class.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.
Illustration: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, engraving by Gustave More (1863).
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