Having finished Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Educated Mind a few days ago, I thought this was interesting: Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is the very first book on Bauer’s suggested reading list. Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered with Don Quixote (not yet, anyway), but Bauer’s insightful book actually made me excited to read it. But, thanks to Sam Jordison, all my fears about the book have come flooding back. Maybe I’ll wait, at least until I become obsessed with reading it.

One of the reasons I’m so sure that few people have actually got much beyond the opening stages of the book is the fact that the only episode anyone ever quotes—the famous incident of the tilting at windmills—is in the very first chapter. Are there really no memorable incidents in the ensuing 900-plus pages? Or is it just that no one else has managed to read them, either?

I think the latter: especially since after the windmills episode there just seem to be hundreds of pages involving dozens of complex (but singularly unfunny) retellings of the same joke viz: Don Quixote is deluded so he gets beaten like a gong—repeatedly—by bullies in every part of Spain. Oh, and his horse is sick and old. Boom, boom.

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However, as I’ve already noted, I still haven’t finished the damn thing. On this second attempt I initially stalled because I went on holiday and the great slab of a book was just too heavy to carry with me. Then six months passed before I remembered to take it up again. The next time, I’m sad to admit, I just grew tired. I reached a 110-page digression about a mad hermit who was starving himself on the side of a hill for the sake of lost love … and I lost the will to continue.

Another six months have gone by, and when I recently flew off for a break in America I was glad to leave Cervantes on the shelf. Even so, the book still plays on my mind sometimes. I don’t like that feeling of defeat and I’m seriously considering taking it up again when I get back. …

Actually, maybe things aren’t as discouraging as you might think: Jordison writes, “[T]he book still plays on my mind sometimes,” which is usually a good thing, even if you don’t necessarily like the book (or think you’ll ever finish it). One of the things that drives me as a reader is my search for the truly memorable books. Some books I finish with a sigh of relief and the feeling that I’ve just been allowed to breathe; others I simply turn the last page and set aside without giving it another thought; then there are those rare books that lodge in my brain, that conjure up certain images and emotions with the mere mention of a title, plot, or characters. That’s a lot more than most books can accomplish.