I’ll try to put some thoughts together later, but the short answer is not as much as I would have thought.
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Apart from the potentially old fashioned language, it’s also a long read! I think ten years between publication of parts 1 and 2 so no need to rush into the second part!
My memories of listening to it in English were that it was surprisingly fresh, and quite modern in its style. Especially some of the fourth wall breaking in part 2.
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It’s long and requires a real commitment to a single book that I just don’t have. The current plan is to work on the 2nd part next year, partly due to length, partly due to difficulty. While it’s firmly in my range, I’m not going to pretend that I read it as the sophisticated spanish reader this deserves. I read it as a story and enjoyed it, but I’d like to go deeper for the 2nd half.
While the vocabulary was initially very difficult, it wasn’t any worse than El camino | L30?? which had three different words for manure (depending upon which animal it came from) in the first 2 pages and so many different birds or Las aventuras del capitán Alatriste | L35 with its almost didactic, no, actually didactic, enumeration of clothing and weapons. Perez-Reverte wants you to know the names for the different types of capes men wore during Spain’s golden age. There were a handful of specific boat and horse related words, but I struggled far, far, um, far more with the vocabulary of La tía Julia y el escribidor | L41?? which I was reading at the same time. From a vocab building perspective, I was surprised at how many words I thought I was seeing for the first in Quixote that I would then immediately see everywhere. This did not happen with La tia Julia y el escribador nor with Alatriste.
I can’t speak to grammar because I’m self-taught, but I’ll say that the sentence structure is just nuts. Long, twisty, with one digression after another, more or less like the story itself. Word order is also just a little weird, small things like “deciros quiero”. I had to keep constant attention to not loose the thread of the story, to not loose the thread of the sentence and sometimes just to find the verb.
But here’s what took me the most time and energy to get used to as a sight reader, sight reader being key …
- compressed words: de ella, de esta, de ello etc = della, desta, dello etc
- archaic spellings: donde → do, ahora →agora
- h to f subsitutions: hechazos → fechazos, hermosa → fermosa, hada → fada
- f to h subsitutions: alfombra → alhombra
- pronoun placement: me pregunto → preguntome
- pronouns at end of an infinitive: decirlo → decillo , dejarlo → dejallo
- and how none of the above was consistent, even within the same paragraph.
Any of the above is fine, even 3 or 4 of them, but all of them, plus their use/disuse changing constantly meant that looking at the page, especially at the very beginning, had me baffled. But, still not as bad as Tres tristes tigres | L30?? which I may try again. However, despite the initial annoyance, it was quickly clear that it appeared harder than it actually was … though no. 6 really screwed with me.
That said, it is hard. I got headaches for the first 200+ pages, something that hadn’t happened in … a year? And I had limits on how much of it I could read in a sitting before it would stop making sense, 20-30 pages. 30 pages really pushed it, even at the end.
and forgive me if I screwed up any spelling or example above; I don’t have the book handy to double check.
I did this just to see if I could. I can! I can read Don Quixote! I’m patting my self on the back. It’s a big deal. But I want to be able to read it better, so still work to be done.
do give it a try; it’s looks worse than it really is.
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This was really interesting thanks for sharing these. This reminds me a bit of reading Japanese books that are written in a local dialect, and suddenly everything goes wonky compared to normal spelling and grammar.
Specialist vocab in books can be really challenging. Even Ciudad de las bestias which was a YA novel had four different words for parrot in one chapter!
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Wow, what a great overview; thank you for the great info!
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@brandon - I noticed a new potential reader in the Spanish language community…?
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jajaja unfortunately i was just testing things out 
My highschool spanish is quite rusty!
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¡Que lástima! I was hoping maybe you’d set yourself a challenge to read Harry Potter in all the languages available on Natively!
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That sounds like a neat challenge, not gonna lie.
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I picked up Cuentos de Eva Luna | L34 again. It’s a book I’ve owned for a long time. When I picked up my Spanish again a couple of years ago I made a start on this, but found it a bit too hard and put it on hold. After two years of regular reading, I found this much easier to read now, which felt like a good marker of progress!
I’m not sure I’ve read short stories in a language I’m learning before. It’s nice in that each story is complete in around ten pages, but the start of a story can be the hardest part when reading in another language and I’m having to do that over and again!
It’s an Isabel Allende so I’m enjoying the South American setting and the touches of magic realism.
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I read Aura | L32 which I picked up in the last year or so after seeing others read it here. Perhaps it might even have been one of the books picked to anchor the levels when the Spanish grading system was being set up.
The cheapest version on eBay was a bilingual edition (with the black cat on the front). That may be helpful as having read it in Spanish I feel like I need to go back and read it again, and then probably read it in English afterwards!
A fascinating book. Very creepy. It was interesting reading a book written in the second person. The author also uses future tense for the actions of characters who are not the protagonist, which gives a fascinating feel to the text, and one I don’t think easily translates into English.
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I started reading Todos los fines del mundo | L32??. I came across the book this week in a beautiful little book store called Donosti in San Sebastián. I realised after buying it that it was only published last month - there’s always an extra pleasure reading in another language when it’s something brand new.
The book is written by a Mexican author, with a Mexican protagonist, although the first part of the story is set in Madrid. It’s set about 30 years in the future in a time of climate crisis threatening the world.
It’s quite a reflective book (the author’s previous work includes collections of essays). The narrator will digress to think about certain topics, particularly the nature of love and friendship.
I’m enjoying the climate crisis aspect of the story. The main character wakes one day to a siren, announcing that temperatures in Madrid are forecast above 50 degrees centigrade and all residents must stay at home for their own safety unless they are key workers.
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I’m here to break your streak, @Micki. 
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I have been steadily working my way through books I bought in Spanish years ago, and then didn’t read because I got distracted by Welsh and then Japanese. I had bought a few Spanish books that were translations from English, including Roald Dahl and CS Lewis. I can see why I did - it’s attractive reading a story you’re already familiar with when reading in another language, and when I was buying these books it wasn’t so easy to discover books by Spanish authors.
I’ve almost got to the bottom of the pile of those originally written in English, but I had one big one to read - La Comunidad del Anillo | L34 by Tolkien.
What a book! I only knew the movie but there’s so much more in the original novel. It’s certainly been challenging, I don’t think I’ve read a book with so much history and lore of the fantasy world.
It’s been lots of fun, but I’m looking forward to clearing the pile (one small Narnia book left) and then getting back to books originally written in Spanish.
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I am reading La Profe de Español by Juan Hernandez (lvl 12). I’m finding it easier than Un Hombre Fascinate (lvl 11). They are real close regardless.
I am at 405 hours of CI video/podcasts.
I’d love to be reading what you all are… one day!
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Great to have you, zachary! We could definitely use some fresh new Spanish learners around here; I look forward to seeing what you read next!
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Hi just thought i’d introduce myself. I joined in April and been working through mostly graded readers since then. I’ve been making an effort to grade and review all my books! I’m currently reading Harry Potter 2 - which is above my level, but I wanted to read something with a bit more to it. I know the story well, so just skipping the words that I don’t know!
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Welcome to the forums! I thought the first Harry Potter was a great read in Spanish. Fast paced and lots of fun, and like you say when you know the story it doesn’t matter if you skip the occasional tricky part.
Let us know how you are getting on with it. I remember learning lots of tree vocabulary for all the different type of woods wands can be made from!
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