It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. ~C.S. Lewis, Introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation
Let’s play Book Tag again. In today’s edition of Book Tag, please suggest your favorite book or work of literature, fiction or nonfiction, written or published BEFORE 1800.
Remember the rules: In this game, readers suggest ONE good book in the category given, then let somebody else be “it” before they offer another suggestion. There is no limit to the number of books a person may suggest, but they need to politely wait their turn with only one book suggestion per comment.
I’m going to start off the game with Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes or El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha as it was originally titled. Published in two separate volumes in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote was one of the earliest examples of a “novel” and has been influential in literature from the picaresque novel to modernist school of magical realism. At first people considered Don Quixote to be a comedy; the bumbling hidalgo, or gentleman, muddles his way across the Spanish countryside making a fool of himself and his faithful servant Sancho Panza. Then, later, critics sawa the book as a tragedy in which a cruel world destroys the idealism and gallantry of a good man and eventually drives him to insanity. Take your pick, but I think it’s a little of both.
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivÃa un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocÃn flaco y galgo corredor.
In some village in La Mancha, whose name I do not care to recall, there dwelt not so long ago a gentleman of the type wont to keep an unused lance, an old shield, a skinny old horse, and a greyhound for racing.
Now it’s your turn. What Old Book can you recommend?
