Next, I am reading a book by Camilo José Cela: LA COLMENA. I am reading it in Spanish, its original language. How grateful I am for our computer and internet world, for who  would I have to talk to about these books?

A Word About Don Quixote

I was fascinated by Cide Hamete Benengali, the Moorish scholar who wrote down the history of Don Quixote in Arabic. I also found the Bachelor Sansón Carrasco to be an interesting character. Isn't it amazing that he announced the study of Don Quixote at his school in Salamanca?

I would love to study this book and make more comments, but I had to return the book to the library. When I can get my own copy, I can highlight and comment to my heart's content. I  may live in the dark ages, but I am not yet into downloading books onto Kindle or Nook I like those hard copies!

I HIGHLY recommend Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote.

FANTASY WORLDS

I wish that I could read all of those stories that Don Quixote was into about knights and enchantment. But in our day, don't we have many more fantasy stories of our own? I doubt that anybody ever went daft for the reading of them.

DON QUIXOTE LIVES IN ENGLISH! I have never read Don Quixote in Spanish, and the English translations I came across in the past were terribe; either academic and boring or "dirty old book" partial translations. A few days ago, my husband brought home from the library the new translation by Edith Grossman. It's not boring at all! In it's full context, it's not a "dirty" book in the least. It's a much more wonderful read than I could have imagined. I felt very sad when I read about the priest and the barber preparing to burn Don Quixote's books. Books were not abundant in those days. In today's world we would deem it silly to blame mental illness on a bunch of fantasy knight stories. Storybooks were a very good scapegoat, weren't they?

CHANGED MY MIND! I am going to open this blog up again. I have been gone a long time because of illness, but now I am well.

Change Must Come

I don't think that the title to my blog is working. Since I don't see any way of changing the name of my blog, I am going to transfer over to a new one. Saying LATIN WORLD isn't attracting the people that I wanted, English speakers that are interesting in deepening their understanding of Spanish. It may take me a while to create a new blog, then delete the old one. Patience, please.

This Place Is A Big Help!

As I struggle my way through "La Tia Julia Y El Escribidor" (Aunt Julia And The Scriptwriter), I find myself enormously grateful to spanishdict.com for helping me to cope with all of the vocabulary stumblings. I recommend this site to all who want to read Spanish/Latin American works in their own language!

http://www.spanishdict.com