My son and I are starting up a long out-loud read of Don Quixote. I’ve taught the novel before but have to confess never having reading the whole out-loud as a performance.

Already there’s something about the work that’s reminded us of Tolkien and Daniel Handler’s Unfortunate Events Series. The travel in the first, though Quixote is famous for finding “adventure nearby,” and the narrator in the second. The first impression from us is that despite the ornamented language, Cervantes is both vast and incredibly economical: he get’s a lot said in a very short span of time. Incredible. And then there are the incredible, subtle images . . . Hopefully my students in World Literature will figure out what calls the knight to adventure and how modern this notion is.