Aye luve auld buks, but nae this ae.
Plot = 0 stars
Familiarizing yourself with Scottish = 4 stars
Making you want to learn Latin =5 stars (numerous short Latin phrases throughout)

Only was able to finish this due to a trip to Scotland and getting past halfway before the trip and then finishing it due to being seriously behind on my Goodreads book total goal for 2024. (I have no idea if this book even had a plot-seems like it wanted to.)

I am part Scottish so enjoyed the dialect, the characters are brilliant, even if, like most 19th century writers, Scott is a little slow. It's very easy to forget how groundbreaking his books were. I enjoyed it immensely.

Starting on Volume 01. Excellent as usual. About an older man and a younger man that caught the stage together and became friends. Mystery surrounds the younger.
Finished volume 02. Enjoyed. Very Scottish. Lots of Scottish dialect.

Sir Walter Scott has a way with characters. That's what makes this novel worth looking into.

I know, Dickens is famous for his quirky characters, giving them to us by the hundreds. But Sir Walter Scott creates characters who are as odd and full of life as anybody, but they feel more genuine to me, more like a real human, than any I have found in literature of the era.

In this novel, we find Mr. Oldbuck, the educated old gentleman known as the antiquary. He's a bit of a buffoon, but not in the final analysis; a bit of a misanthrope, but not truly; a bit of a tyrant, but maybe not after all. The author gives us such a complete picture of this grumpy old man who wearies his visitors with stories about historical minutiae and makes unending complaints and demands that plainly put him in the wrong and needles and pesters others in a way that no one should have to put up with... but then he helps a stranger in need, and takes the part of a friend he has offended, and shows such patience and thoughtfulness toward the poorest in his community, especially when they need it the most. They know him to be both a blowhard and a man of uncommon good sense, a frivolous man and a man entirely to be counted on.

He's real. He's that relative that drives you nuts at family gatherings but would drive a hundred miles to get you out of trouble. He's not the most fun to be with, but he is absolutely necessary.

Edie Ochiltree is an old beggar, a mendicant authorized by the crown to live off the kindness of the community, a dispensation made visible by the blue gown all such beggars wear. He is the glue of this novel, the man who connects everyone else together. He knows what is happening everywhere in the area and is full of the lore of the place, remembering every story about every family. He is both entertaining and difficult, a little like jester, which he is sometimes compared to. But he is kindhearted and thinks nothing of spending whole days trudging from one town or castle to another carrying messages or warnings or working on someone's behalf, refusing any reward other than the handful of grain or smallest of coins. No, he won't come in the house. No, he won't take a silver coin. No, he won't accept anything more than he is entitled to as a blue-robed beggar. But he will repeat all the news, and he will sing an old song that you forgot you knew, and he will remind you of something embarrassing that you did years ago. There is kindness but no sentimentality in Edie.

Senile old Elspeth was remarkable. The German scam artist was entertaining. And any number of minor characters were just as finely drawn, even if they were only found on a few pages. They made the novel for me.

The plot is less central and the action less compelling in this novel than others I have read by Sir Walter Scott, but I enjoyed it just about the same as the rest. Maybe I struggled a bit with the long passages of dialogue in dialect, but that was okay, and a few passages were dense with exposition. I didn't mind. I enjoyed visiting these characters and following them to the end of their journey and the unraveling of all the mysteries. I won't lie--I'm looking for more adventure in the next one. But as long as it is as engrossing as The Antiquary in some way or another, I'm good.

Recommended for readers of old books.

No es una mala historia, pero tampoco es un buen libro. He escuchado que era el libro más famoso de Walter Scott, pero no supera ni está cerca de ser tan bueno como Ivanhoe.

Tiene pasajes sumamente tediosos y un abuso de las frases en latín. Para mi ha sido bastante decepcionante.

There's a plot here, and it's a reasonably interesting plot, but I found myself struggling through a lot of the stuff around it. I don't know if that was me not being in the right mood for Scott, or him being a particularly dense writer this time round, but it was difficult for me to pay attention to all the intricacies of what was going on.

Latin and dialects weren't good for me .

The most difficult book i ever read because of the language. I have to read the summary on Wikipedia to know what was going on and who is who. It took me months to finish too. However, i did not dislike this book at all. It is sort of charming.

Oh this was fun — a mystery with literal cliff-hangers & a duel. The Antiquary is a lovable curmudgeon surrounded by eccentric friends & family and wise servants. The Scottish vernacular is a bit confusing. I found if I read it out loud it helped me find the modern english meaning.

First published in 1816, 'The Antiquary' is a historical tale set in and around a fictional town on Scotland in the early 1790s. The main characters include some eccentric Scottish Lairds, a German swindler, an elderly vagrant army veteran and a mysterious visitor calling himself Lovel. The plot is often wrapped up in provincial trivia, and lacks the grandiose themes often found in Scott's novels. This in my opinion is a good thing, since it supports and imparts a sense of fun or frivolity about many of the sequences. One of his best.

El anticuario es el personaje central del libro, sobre el cual de una u otra manera gira el resto de la narración. Es abrumadora la cantidad de citas que “aclaran” el texto pero que considero lógico ya que es lo propio de la época en la que fue escrita. Por otra parte he disfrutado con su lectura.

I read that this was Scott's personal favorite, so that colors my opinion most likely, but I LOVED this book. It doesn't have the scope of Waverley, but the characters are so well done - it was excellent. I don't know how many times I laughed out lout at something Monkbarns said - he was so clever, and so biting and funny - and yet, Edie could turn the tables on him in a moment (the ditch! oh, the ditch scene - that was a perfectly written bit of comedy).

The classical references in this one (because of the antiquary) were so many, Scott continues to show me just how little I know even as I make my way through the great books. It is so very humbling, yet I love his writing more and more with each book I finish.

I thought the loss of Mucklebackit, and the funeral, were towering examples of prose, of deeply felt storytelling without being overwrought or overly sentimental. The action scene on the coast was incredibly written - Scott's best action scene I have read to date - and even though there is the same storyline of mistaken/unknown identity here as in Guy Mannering, it wasn't the central theme of the story, but served to move all these characters, who were so well developed, further along to tell a small, unimportant story in a great way. And finally, I loved the brief glimpse of the love story between Jenny Caxon and the lieutenant, and how those terrible women at the mail post received their just punishment. Highly recommend.