From July through December 2016. Canberra, Australia
"Money to Read" is a grant to read "Don Quixote" in Australia. An Australian citizen has been awarded 1,500 AUD to read "Don Quixote" in the National Library of Australia in Canberra.
"Don Quixote" has almost 400,000 words in the Spanish version, but few people have time today to read so many words. This grant buys that time from someone who is very interested in reading the whole book.
This call was launched by the Embassy of Spain in Canberra and mmmm..., as part of the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the death of the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. 158 Australian citizens or permanent residents applied for the grant through the website www.moneytoread.com.
Moira Christie, neighbor of Pearce, a suburb in Canberra, and mother of four, received the grant. Ms. Christie has read in silence the English version of "Don Quixote" in five hour shifts during sixteen days in the foyer of the National Library. At the end of each day, she summarized the reading through her twitter handle @moira_reads, and a video-blog at the YouTube channel of the Embassy.
"Don Quixote is a book I've never read, and I was intrigued to know more. All I really knew was the windmill story, that for some reason Don Quixote started attacking windmills". Mum of four children, Moira said that reading for hours in the cool, quiet confines of the library was her idea of bliss, and a book lover's dream job.
"Money to Read" was originally carried out in 2005 in Spain by mmmm... and the Instituto Cervantes, as part of the 400th anniversary of the publishing of "Don Quixote". Javier Carretero, a Madrid taxi driver, was chosen among 181 applicants, and he read "Don Quixote" in nine days, for 642 Euro, in the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid.