«One of the great books of the year.» Alberto Olmos «A precious book, wonderfully written and enormously entertainig.» Mario Vargas Llosa I just wanted to “show off” and be able to finally say I have read those three books.Ĭonclusion: if you want to achieve something, just undertake it for the sake of it.An exciting personal and literary tale on the history of Madrid from its origins to today. In my case, I think there may have been a bit of vanity and conceit involved in my achievement. Sometimes, only sometimes, you can achieve your goals just out of stubbornness and in a very irrational way. Actually, there are many people who speak about those books, but I pretty much doubt they have ever read them. And this was my aspiration: to have read three novels which very few people in the world have read: “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes, “I The Supreme” by Augusto Roa Bastos and “The Man Without Attributes” by Robert Musil. In my paticular endeavour there was a personal aspiration which some people may find banal, pretentious and useless. When I said “out of stubbornness”, I meant that my goal was to finish the book once for ever more than doing it for pleasure. However, reading it requires preparation and time. Is “Don Quixote” the best Spanish novel? I wouldn’t dare to say so. There were moments for real laughter while reading it, but there were also moments of boredom and dull reading. So, in mid December 2015 I said to myself: “You’d better read it from cover to cover and without stopping otherwise, you’ll never finish it”. I have tried to read “Don Quixote” umpteenth times along my life and umpteenth times I gave it up. Reading “Las armas y las letras” acted as a spur to undertake the reading of “Don Quixote”, although I must admit I did it more “out of stubbornness” rather than pleasure. I really encourage you to read it (I don’t know if there is an English version). It’s a reference book which left me a very good taste in the mouth. I recommend “Las armas y las letras” to anybody willing to learn something about Literature and History during the Spanish Civil War.
It was the month when I undertook the reading of two books: “Las armas y las letras” (Arms and Letters) by Spanish writer Andrés Trapiello and “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” by Miguel de Cervantes. December 2015 was a particular month for me.
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