I discovered two beloved and durable classics in 2025, but only one counts towards my 1,001 Books challenge: Don Quixote by Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman.

Don Quixote’s length means it becomes an undertone to whatever else is going on in your life during the weeks (okay, months) you are reading it. For critic Ariel Dorfman, Don Quixote is forever linked to the coup in Chile, as she and 30 other refugees read it to each other in 1973 while hiding in an embassy. Ed Simon, an editor at LitHub, connects Cervante’s imprisonment and themes of freedom in the book with the kidnapping and imprisonment of immigrants in modern America.

As for me, I read Don Quixote (DQ hereafter unless I mean the character) while binge-watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (IASIP hereafter), and now, it is inextricably linked with The Gang’s adventures. 

This is perhaps not as meaningful as others’ experiences, but as I watched and read, I started to suspect that Cervantes invented the sitcom, rather than the novel, which he is often credited with. This feels significant, as sitcoms are dying out, after overtaking novels as a dominant narrative form in the twentieth century*. So while I’m interested in what Cervantes has to say about freedom, imagination, and the dying days of the Spanish empire, my brain was primed to see him inventing the form that eventually led to Danny DeVito writhing on the floor, naked and covered in hand sanitizer.

So rather than write a review of DQ, as you hardly need me to tell you if you should read it, I’m going to look at all the ways in which DQ is echoed in IASIP, a show that premiered exactly four hundred years after the First Part of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha was published in 1605. 

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