misguided knights and fight clubs

Im currently reading 'Don Quixote' by Cervantes considered one of the greatest books ever written and by golly it is. It is a parody of all those knights-fighting-dragons-and-saving-beautiful-women stories that were so prevalent in Cervantes' lifetime and indeed are still fairly common today albeit in a completely different form. Here the 'hero' Don Quixote is a man who spends entire days in his libary reading these kinds of books and after a while they go to his head and he decides to become a knight and rid the world of evil in the service of 'his woman' Dulcinea del Toboso- a woman who doesnt even know he exists and is kind of..well, the village tart. Together with another dodgy character Sancho Panza he sets off to live his own adventure which includes a ferocious battle with windmills-which he takes to be giants- and plenty of misunderstandings with innocent travellers who he often mistakes for evil knights so eager is he to do battle not to mention taking the first inn he sees to be a castle and the prostitutes who help him there as the beautiful damsels of the castle helping out a knight. The book is almost criminally funny especially because Cervantes decided to WRITE the way those stories were written and consequently the language is comically complicated and long-winded- like Shakespeare on acid. For a long time after the book was written, Quixote was considered nothing less than the epitome of a clueless fool- someone who lets his imagination get in the way of reality. But during the romantic movement, this view changed a bit and he was now viewed as a kind of tragic hero and while a bit misguided, he had his heart in the right place. Im nearly finished but its already taken its place in my hall of fame as one of my all-time favorite books. Its a bit of a door-stopper though: well in excess of 700 pages with print so small it is more suited for a magnifying glass. Terry Gilliam tried to film this a few years ago with Johnny Depp in the lead role but it turned into one of the most disastrous film projects in history and was never completed-in fact, there is a documentary called 'Lost in La Mancha' detailing all the things that went wrong during the shoot. One of the funniest-not funny for Gilliam certainly- was the freak flood that swept away virtually all his cameras and equipment.
I also got the chance to read 'Fight club' by Chuck Pahlaniuk and I was suprised at how closely the film followed the book. Many people who watch the film might miss the point and just take it to be a guy film about men beating each other up for fun but its so much deeper than that and reading the book made me realize this even more. At its core its a very anti-consumerism book: we are not what we buy, we shouldnt let the things we purchase own us, we work jobs we dont like to buy things we dont need. Infact the book always makes me think of that Radiohead song 'No suprises' ("A job that slowly kills you...ill take the quiet life, a handshake of carbonmonoxide") its about trying to find yourself even if that means waking up with broken bones and a bloodied body almost every day. Its quite ironic because Tyler Durden keeps saying "You are NOT a unique snowflake!" and indeed by the end of the book, everyone has become one all intent on anarchy that seems a little misguided but when the book is starting out the message is different and a bit more hippie-ish. Its a very clever book.