10. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I'd never read Don Quixote, and had only a vague idea of what it was about, probably based on the musical (which I'd also never seen).  This book was published around 1605 to 1615.

Don Quixote has read too many books of chivalry, and sets out to be a knight-errant, much to his friends' concern.  His imagination turns inns into castles and peasant girls into high-born ladies, a herd of pigs into an army and a copper basin into a helmet.  The people he meets on his adventures are amused or angry by turns.  Sancho Panza is his squire, and Sancho's down-to-earth sayings contrast with Don Quixote's romanticism.  Finally he is defeated in a duel and the mysterious knight who conquers him tells him to give up knight errantry for a year.  Heart broken, he dies shortly after coming home.

I was intrigued by how many phrases used in Don Quixote are still in use today, and wondered whether that was in the original, or a choice by the translator, or had come into use just because they were in the book.