Read a novel in Spanish.

I bought another one, La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, because I had read it in English and totally loved it. It’s not really literature, but it is very well written, and completely captivating.

As it turns out, the Spanish is much easier to follow than Vargas Llosa (La tia Julia); very gratifying. But the novel is easily 3 times as long. So we’ll see which one I finish first, oh, 2 years down the road!

I got stuck right in the middle of La Tia Julia a few months ago, and have let it slide. I’m going to make an effort to just finish it, even if I don’t understand every word.

This is a perfect time to find and finish up La Tia Julia…

is going well. I’m about 1/3 of the way through the novel – about 200 pages so far! I don’t have to understand every word of it to get the overall gist, but I am using a dictionary here and there, and thus picking up a lot of vocabulary.

And although I read this before in English (a couple years ago), I guess I didn’t retain much, because it mostly seems new. So maybe the next novel I don’t need to read first in English (e.g., Don Quixote?).

For a long time I thought I would try reading Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude in English, and then in Spanish… it’s quite a book, and to be honest I haven’t gotten through it yet in English.

Anyway, it seemed more do-able to try something a little simpler. When I was in Portland, I picked up Mario Vargas-Llosa’s “Tia Julia y el escribidor,” which I read in English about a year ago, at Powell’s, which has a wonderful Spanish section. So far, so good. I think I will try to find a pocket-sized dictionary to carry around with me, though.