So far I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting anybody who has read Don Quixote of La Mancha in detail (except my teachers and professors, I guess, although I have serious doubts). I have even met people who dare to discourse passionately for hours supporting their vast knowledge of the novel in the Spanish cartoon series (1979). 
I myself have really read the entire novel straight through, without skipping around or peeking at the ending (stories inside the main story included). I don’t want to sound like a know-it-all. It’s just the plain truth.
I love reading. I have always loved reading since I was a child. I know that many people find Don Quixote boring and stop reading it, however important and famous it may be. I can understand them, although I don’t share their opinion. I can’t stand those hypocrites who muffle up in a heated-cervantist cloak to show off at social reunions. I would gladly decapitate them. Of course, they can’t fool me. I have a special internal detector for exposing all kinds of show-offs, especially the scholar type.
It is true that Don Quixote is best read at a certain age. And even better if you have studied it previously. If you understand the novel, you’ll enjoy it. It is not common to find a teenager who choses voluntarily to spend his free time reading the misadventures of this idealistic knight and his squire having tons of YouTube channels to subscribe.
I loved Don Quixote, its language mainly, so old-fashioned, so different from our contemporary way of speaking. Wonderful.
Other renowned books in the history of world literature have given me a hard time. I am not the super erudite woman who lies down on the beach reading “An Approach to Heidegger”. On the beach, Stephen King is the best (thanks to his books I now speak and write English reasonably well).
I must confess that when I read James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, I nearly passed out. I have never read anything so boring in my life. HOWEVER, I READ IT FROM COVER TO COVER, believe me. I didn’t skip a single line. I swallowed it all bravely, without complaining. My extraordinary willpower helped me achieve such a difficult goal. But it was really hard.
Seated on a stationary bike , I used to read one chapter a day until I finished it. I felt so immensely happy overcoming the hard trial! Since then I can give my opinion on the book.
Reading is a pleasure for me, a passion, not a self-imposed hard task. I never saw the parallels between Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey (this one I truly like). I think I would have needed a literature professor perched on my shoulder, as Long John Silver’s pet parrot, explaining to me the ins and outs and the ultimate sense of this hermetic novel.
Though I went to great pains to complete the reading, I didn’t give up. I am a literary masochist. Just another one of my obsessions. Even if a book doesn’t interest me at all, I stubbornly go on reading. Furthermore, I read the last page number (or rather last screen number, as I changed to ebooks long ago), not minding that I have to take Solpadeine migraine tablets afterwards and watch a zombie movie to get even.
In no way is the agony inflicted by a boring reading comparable to the one my head inflicts on me if I don’t reach the colophon.
The book I am currently reading is the first one of Posteguillo’s Trajan trilogy, which I highly recommend. But read first his Scipio Africanus’s trilogy.
I don’t pay much attention to critics. I read the books and watch the films I want, and then I judge. The best book, the one each person loves best. READ, READ…THAT IS THE IMPORTANT THING.