I finished Don Quixote and thought: now I can start reading again. This was an unfair, dismissive, glib, ungrateful thought, but there it was at the front of the queue, ahead of: it was great, fine, it's over, I recommend it, unless you don't like books, because they make you tired, because at school their launched corners hurt your skull, it's not going to help you out of your predicaments, I dunno what is, it's none of my business, there's nothing we can do. The donkey was my favourite, probably. If you only read one 400 year-old elongated piss-take this'd be the one. And obviously make sure you choose a translation that's lucid, supple, clear-eyed and bulbous, or you'll be wasting your time. Like if you're picking a biography, or the history of a place, or the life of an idea, you'd better make sure it's magisterial. If it's not magisterial it has no value at all.
I saw a book cover today that told me to GIVE IN and read the book it was covering. GIVE IN. Like it had me at gunpoint. I slapped it onto the floor and instructed it to reconsider its approach. The bookshop's staff escorted me to the pavement.
