Harry Potter lives in the cupboard under the stairs at his uncle and aunt’s house at number four, Privet Drive - until the day when a mysterious letter arrives from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and a giant on a flying motorcycle arrives to change his life with four simple words: ‘Harry - yer a wizard.’
The regular schedule covers one chapter a week, but if you find this too fast, the relaxed schedule covers one chapter every two weeks.
Regular Schedule
Week
Start Date
Chapter
5
Apr 29
Chapter 5
Relaxed Schedule
Week
Start Date
Chapter
9
May 27
Chapter 5 (first half)
10
June 3
Chapter 5 (second half)
Discussion Guidelines
Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.
When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.
Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.
Read this week’s chapter in Spanish. A longer chapter and I found myself looking up more words this week. I thought it was worth learning the names of the different woods so now I know my acebo (holly) from my caoba (mahogany) . I was better with my metals but latón (brass) and peltre (pewter) now added to my vocabulary! Although not sure I really know what pewter is in English…
We know JK likes her alliteration, so it was good to see that the Leaky Cauldron in Spanish is El Caldero Chorreante!
Wait, how do I not know what pewter is either? I figured it was a strange very rarely used metal, since it’s the only context I’ve ever seen it in. (Not much better in French either. I’ve been mislead by a a game I played as a child into thinking that this is an actual metal that you can mine when it’s as I just learned an alloy.)
Anyone else listening to the Spanish audiobook? If so, who’s your narrator? Do you like them? I know I’ve been complaining about Carlos Ponce quite a bit already, but I’m really just not a fan of the guy. He read the first half of the chapter in exactly one breath, and then couldn’t summon up any sort of remotely interesting voice for Malfoy when he decided to pull in oxygen again.
I should really just switch to another narrator while we’re still early in, but audiobooks are expensive and I already bought this one.
I listened to chapter one in Spanish today, I’m pretty sure it’s the same narrator as you comparing to one on iTunes, for some reason it doesn’t say the narrator’s name on Spotify.
I can see what you mean, he certainly speaks quite quick! To me it’s really difficult to judge the quality of an audiobook and the voices in another language. The voice that struck me as odd was Hagrid who seems quite dour and serious compared to his beautiful West Country accent in the movies.
There is another version on iTunes narrated by Leonor Watling that sounds nice on the preview. She does talk rather quick as well - I had to check I didn’t have it on 1.5 speed!
The storytel version has the same narrator, so no luck there either.
I also don’t think that the speed of that Spanish version is that much faster than audiobooks usually are. Comparing on Storytel the audiobooks in different languages, the Spanish is the fastest one, at 8h12, then English at 8h20 and French at 8h21, and surprisingly, Korean at 12h25. The Korean audiobook is the only obvious outlier here, and despite Spanish being slightly quicker, it’s not that big of a difference either.
So it might be more the matter of him not putting enough emotion in his voice, rather than the reading speed that’s bothering you.
Perhaps. To be honest, his reading speed isn’t bothering me, it’s the lack of pause between sentences. I don’t know, maybe it’s normal for Spanish speakers, but it almost sounds like during editing they cut out most of the pause between sentences or something.
@Megumin , as a native speaker, if you have some time, could you tell us whether this is normal for Spanish? Here is the link to the audiobook, on Spotify.
It sounds normal to me, but I’m pretty new to audiobooks in general, let alone in Spanish, so I’m not actually sure what normal is.
I’m now curious about this. Is this narrator the weird one, or is it always like this?
And I will say that it comes and goes. Like, some parts of the chapter feel “normal” to me pause-wise, and others don’t. Sorry I’m not being more specific.
