Time to stop by here and add a few lines to this.  I have done all of Quixote I could handle and still get the hang of what Bauer is recommending I do while I read.  Notes, thoughts, quotes, etc.  A good process for me.  Helps me slow down a bit and appreciate more of what I've read.  Also maybe see more of the author's intent. 

Cervantes pretty much gives it away early on in Don Quixote.  Older guy with limited means reads the great adventures of others and decides to do the same. Also an idealistic person with the desire to see the world set right, like the knights of the lore he read could do, wants to be a part of force for good.  After several adventures the reader soon gets the picture and grows weary.  At least, I did.  Was this a serial adventure?  Would've worked well for that, but I don't think it was.  But, I did get some practice with the Bauer method.  Also met one of the earliest examples of a novel.  I thought Stern's Tristam Shandy had that title, but maybe for English literature only.  Cervantes' work was more episodic than the later Stern work as I remember.  

The idea in Bauer is to read through history and in this case the timeline of fiction.  She recommends several others titles within that timeline, some of which I've read and chose not to read again.  Others particularly from the Victorian era I won't be visiting at all.  I've tried some and just cannot do it.  Happily, Bauer is a believer in moving on if a book isn't right for a person at the time.  

So without a guilt trip hanging around my neck, I moved on to a late 20th century work, Possession, A Romance by A.S. Byatt.  I shuddered at the subtitle.  Romance?  I loath that genre.  But because I'm working within the Bauer framework, I did get a library copy.  

Romance has a new definition forming in my mind now.  And Bauer's idea of writers building on the past may be at least part of the reason I'm rethinking what romance can be.  The jury is still out, as they say, but this book seems to draw from all the earlier forms of what romance may have been and especially the late 19th century era as far as the "feel" of the story, a dominant male and a capable but suppressed female trying to find her niche anyway. 

Miles and miles to go before I can get caught up with all I've missed, but maybe, just maybe, working through the first part of the Bauer book has been helpful in that regard for me.  

Just for the record, I am not promoting the Bauer book.  I am using her recommendations though to fill the gap in my education.