As I’ve said in other posts or “Journal Entries,” I’m reading the book “Don Quixote.”
It was written around 1605, and if there is one thing I’ve learned from this book, it’s that there was not much entertainment in the 1600s. Aside from fighting wars, that is.
Right now, in the book, five or six people are traveling together.
At night, they stay at “Inns” they find along the “Kings Highway.”
And…It’s pretty boring right now.
But when one of them finds a manuscript, an unfinished book that someone accidentally left behind when they stayed at the Inn, I said to myself, “Surely the writer of this book didn’t put a book inside a book for the reader of this book to read.” Make sense? Nothing was making sense to me, either.
What is going on right now in this book I’m reading is the people in this book have found a partly finished manuscript. They gave the manuscript to one of the people traveling with them who knew how to read.
And now everyone has gathered around the dinner table to listen to someone read the book to them.
So, I, the reader of this book, now has to read another book that is in this book. Make sense?
On the one hand, I think, “I’m having to read a book within a book.”
On the other hand, I’m thinking, “If the writer of this book is getting paid per word, he’s brilliant.”
The book within the book was three chapters long—three chapters of reading something that has nothing to do with the book. I’m getting a headache trying to explain it.
I finally said to myself, “You know…, Everyone should have a book in their book library that they still need to finish. And this is the perfect book for that.”
If someone asks, “Have you read ‘Don Quixote?'” I can say, “I haven’t finished it yet. I’m halfway through it, though.”
And I sat the book down.
