October 4, 2020 My son thinks I’m reading “Donkey Hotee”. The book has never been funnier than in the first 7 chapters of Vol. II. As always, it’s the dialogue that gets me the most, especially Sancho’s talks with his wife and with Don Quijote. Cervantes is getting more creative and trying new things, and … Continue reading 62 chapters into Don Quixote
October 1, 2020 Dorotea’s unspooling of her story – while we, along with the anguished Cardenio, guess who she might be – is the most gripping thing in the book yet. (I read this rather than watch the first Trump/Biden debate, and I’m so glad.) Her speech when Fernando enters her room is stirring (“I … Continue reading 41 chapters into Don Quixote
August 30, 2020 I’ve finished the novel. One disadvantage of reading out-of-sequence is that when I came to the second half, I had already read most of the truly great stuff in that half. I was then able to skip over those passages as I did my read-through, but that meant that I was only … Continue reading Finishing War and Peace
August 22, 2020 I saw the BBC's "War and Peace" on a Saturday and a Sunday. I spent the following week getting other books “out of the way,” so to speak. On Monday I did my Zoom reading on a “Moby-Dick” marathon, which finished the next day (in the middle of a tropical storm left … Continue reading My quarantine addiction
August 19, 2020 In my first searches for “War and Peace” on YouTube -- the day after I’d shown my kids some summaries of Moby-Dick, The Odyssey, and Frankenstein -- I learned that there had been a play in 2012-17, “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” . It played in New York (and … Continue reading Natasha, Pierre, and that comet again
