Thanks again for setting this up @Micki! Itās been a little while since Iāve read anything in Spanish, so Iām hoping this helps get me back in the groove. I think Iām going to set myself up with ttu and Yomitan so I can mine words from the book as we go; level 22ās probably somewhat close to my actual level.
Thank you @Micki for organizing! I got my book today and read the first chapter! (Itās very short). Feels very doable and a good level for me to start out with - definitely vocab to learn, but I did not stop reading to make a list - and I felt I understood most of it. Looking forward to this especially since I have not been able to read anything substantial in Japanese yet.
(I also bought Nos Llamaron Enemigo - and read about 20 pages of that to get a feel for it. I am actually not sure I have ever read a graphic novel before.)
I am completely flexible as to the start date - would have marked them all if it had been possible.
Ah, I thought I had made the poll multi choice but it was only set up for a max of 2 choices. Iāve reset the poll if people could vote again, and Iāve made a note of peopleās votes to date.
Or people could comment if they would prefer starting after a specific date.
Thatās what happens when you do something in a rush!!
Here is how the book divides by chapters. This is based on setting the text size on my digital version to give a total of 250 pages. So one page looks like this:
This looks really great - I think the short first week seems like a helpful warm-up.
This will be my first book club. Can you all talk about how you usually approach things - both in terms of how you tackle learning the material and what I should think about as I am reading for the group discussion?
My process Iām planning is this: my Spanish is fairly weak, so Iām planning on using ttu reader with this book + Yomitan so I can mine the (probably scary amount of) vocab I donāt know and auto-create Anki flashcards. Any questions of grammar Iāll make a note of and ask the group here for help.
As for the group discussion, itās pretty informal! Any questions about comprehension in general, or vocab or grammar or what have you in particular, are welcome, as are thoughts about how the storyās going, speculation for future events, or just whatever you think interesting. Some books lend themselves well to digging up related news/informational articles which are also fun to share; I donāt know if Esperanza will fall into that category, but you never know.
I will try to join (even though I havenāt read a complete book in Spanish yet ) tho Iāll probably just extensively read it cause Iām not going to know many things in it hehe. I may give up at some point but Iāll try not toā¦
Mostly I think I can try bc I did find I had a āstudent guideā book on it in English. I taught vignettes from this book before in English but I donāt remember anything HAHA had to be 5 years ago or so. The guide includes summaries in English and character lists, so I think having that to fall back on will help me ensure Iām comprehending at least the main points and hopefully book club discussion will help me too! If anythingā¦maybe Iāll finally recognize past tense
The only ones I understood offhand in Spanish were uva, papaya, cebolla, melones, and papas. I canāt wait to see how many cards Iām able to pull from the book. I didnāt do any mining with our previous book clubs, so Iām excited for this one!
In that list I like the word almendras. Itās in one of my favourite first lines - from El amor en los tiempos del cĆ³lera by Gabriel Garcia MĆ”rquez:
Era inevitable: el olor de las almendras amargas le recordaba siempre el destino de los amores contrariados.
It was inevitable. The smell of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
Why the smell of almendras? Because itās the smell of cyanide.
The other useful feature useful in bookclub discussion to avoid inadvertent spoilers is āHide detailsā which can also be selected from the little cog menu, or typed in as codes before and after the text.
) tho Iāll probably just extensively read it cause Iām not going to know many things in it hehe. I may give up at some point but Iāll try not toā¦
and hopefully book club discussion will help me too! If anythingā¦maybe Iāll finally recognize past tense 
I canāt wait to see how many cards Iām able to pull from the book. I didnāt do any mining with our previous book clubs, so Iām excited for this one!
