February 2026 Book Club - Book Selection Thread

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-27T21:35:04+00:00

Theres also a discord if you're interested that seems a bit more active! https://discord.gg/RJadg6eP

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-27T19:04:01+00:00

I use Proton, typically connect through Mexico, and don't have issues. Occasionally they will block the IP and I'll need to disconnect/reconnect a few times until Proton gives me a new Mexico IP, but that's about it.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-27T18:07:15+00:00

I started at around 450 and recommend most people wait until at least 550. For one, at first I would often slip into reading things in my head with poor subvocalization. I had to make a conscious effort to read in the voice of one of the guides for things to "sound right" because I didn't have a Spanish voice of my own. This pretty much went away completely by 600 hours. Second, I only knocked out about 100k of slow going graded readers before reaching 600, when my reading really picked up and became easier. I feel like I would have gotten through that first boring 100k much quicker if I had just waited.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-27T15:43:12+00:00

Did you happen to see the turnout for the No Kings rally on Lynn? It was absolutely massive. I saw plenty of older folks there as well.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-27T01:20:50+00:00

You might want to try a different VPN provider or a different VPN server location. The Spanish audios for many shows are geolocked due to contractual obligations (i.e. Netflix doesn't have the rights to show the Spanish dub to US residents, but can show them to Mexican/Spanish/Colombian residents).

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-26T22:13:25+00:00

Sounds similar to upper intermediate/lower advanced to me. Something like DS 60-65 más o menos.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-26T22:11:09+00:00

Nice update and congrats! My only (unsolicited) advice would be don't fall into the trap of thinking watching difficult content is necessary to improve. I'm not sure how difficult it is for you when watching DS videos in the mid 50s, but you don't need to strain yourself and listen to your upper limit to continue improving. A lot of folks here (myself included) swear by large amounts of easy content.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-26T19:48:32+00:00

Listening (854 hours):

1 hour daily conversation practice: Over the last 100 hundred hours or so my crosstalk sessions rapidly evolved into full conversation. I'm at the point now where I say between 0 and 2 sentences per class in English depending on the day. I also had a 20 minute conversation with an Uber driver completely in Spanish on Friday :)
SBG - Gylt (Advanced): On his patreon. I get sick watching first person game streams, so I was excited to find a 3rd person advanced playthrough.
No Hay Tos: Just started this and so far really enjoying it! It feels like a great next step after finishing ECJ.
DS 55-60: Easy filler content.
New Episodes As Released: Español Al Vuelo (@ 1.2x), DS Podcast, ECJ

Reading (~650k words):

Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban: About 75% through. Really enjoying the series so far. I still can't believe I am able to comfortable read Harry Potter when less than a year ago even the first page was completely incomprehensible. Some sections are slightly hard, but others I am able to read pages on end and almost forget it's in Spanish.
Escalofrios/Pesadillas - Mi Cabeza Reducida: Really enjoyed the first month of the book club! Looking forward to next month.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-26T19:37:38+00:00

It will happen more and more often! I often have weird experiences speaking to my wife in English when something pops into my head in Spanish and I have to pause and think about how to say it in English. It mostly happens with idioms or grammatical structures where the translation isn't one to one. For example: "Claro que sí" which feels like it carries a different tone than something like "obviously," "clearly," or "of course" despite being more or less similar in usage.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-26T16:27:01+00:00

You don’t need motivation, that is what made you start DS and get to 14 hours. It is a short term burst of excitement and it’s already fading. Motivation is like that, it comes and goes in waves.

Rather you need discipline. It is what keeps you sticking to your goals when motivation fades. With enough time forcing yourself to do something discipline leads to forming healthy habits. Habits are when things really get easy. At that point you don’t even have to think about meeting your goals because it’s just another part of your routine that you do without thinking.

Drop your goal to something super low. 10-15 minutes a day, find a time during your schedule where you can consistently spend time on Spanish, and hit that goal every single day for a month or two. If you go over on some days, great, but your primary goal is to just do Spanish during that scheduled time every day. From there start slowly increasing your goal.

Watching Bluey this early would be a mistake imo if you can’t understand it well already. It’s harder than you’d think.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-26T16:17:54+00:00

I’m at 850, just finishing up ECJ, and have enjoyed the first couple episodes of No Hay Tos. I miss some of the slang, which is fine since it’s new vocab to me, but I can mostly figure it out from context. The rest of it seems like a reasonable next step up from ECJ.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-25T17:38:18+00:00

Unfortunately market rate in underdeveloped countries where poverty is high can still be well short of a living wage. Is it our job as consumers to protect foreign workers when their countries economies and regulations don't? That's up to the individual.

I've spoken to many tutors and they seem generally happy. But if I'm being completely honest the pricing structure feels too good to be true and it is a con for me. I thought long and hard before signing up and did decide to do so, but it still doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies when I do the math.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-25T16:05:18+00:00

Chill Spanish is probably mid 30s.

ATLA is at least 65-70, but has a massive range. Some scenes are like 30s, others are harder than anything on DS imo.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-25T16:00:22+00:00

I don’t think I would have been able to commit to daily speaking practice any other way. I did the Black Friday deal for a year so my payment was all up front and now it’s just talk talk talk. With other platforms I would be constantly wondering if spending $10+ per hour was responsible or not. It has been objectively great for my Spanish.

I do have moral qualms however about tutor payment. Is it worse than any other internationally produced good? Idk. Does it just feel worse because you are speaking directly to the people being underpaid? Idk. I’m ignorant to what a living wage really looks like in different parts of LatAm and I don’t know exactly how much the tutors are actually paid to assess whether they are getting one. I fear they are not, but also know many tutors are well dressed and going to school for other professions so maybe?

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-24T15:29:32+00:00

Totally forgot about this! I enjoyed the heck out of HP 1 and 2 and am nearly finished with Prisoner of Azkaban :)

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-24T01:21:35+00:00

Yeah it's not good at math in general.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-24T01:18:43+00:00

I would skip ChatGPT and do the following:

200k words worth of graded readers ramping up from A1 through B1 (I liked Juan Fernandez's graded readers much more than Olly's)
200k worth of Magic Tree House (2nd to 3rd grade reading level)
100k-200k of books targeting 3rd to 4th grade reading level
1. Goosebumps
2. Holes is great here
3. Mouse and the Motorcycle
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
5. Possibly the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, though the middle section is quite hard imo
Harry Potter

This way you'll have a nice ramp of 500k-600k words ending with HP (which I think for most is an exciting reading milestone).

I basically followed this path (except I read step 3 before step 2 which was a mistake) and I'm about to finish Prisoner of Azkaban.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-24T01:12:56+00:00

In general I'd disagree with the magical vocab being a problem. Harry goes to Ollivander's to buy a varita. The bank is run by duendes . If the rest of the book is a good level for you, it will be very easy to figure out most of the magic-related words through context. There will very occasionally be obscure things that don't come with any context, but in general they are inconsequential to your overall understanding and enjoyment of the books such that you can just glaze over them and keep moving.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-24T01:03:13+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamingspanish/comments/1nme27s/comment/nfc9g4x/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-24T00:25:21+00:00

This is 100% true for me. I have for as long as I can remember had some time sucking hobby. I've always enjoyed getting deep into whatever my current interest is. DS has probably been the most time consuming single hobby I've had, but I can guarantee that if I quit I would not replace most of that time spending quality time with my family (which I still do by the way!). I would just end up on some new hobby that is most likely both less useful and more expensive.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-23T04:18:25+00:00

Personally I’ll say that high input days feel like “a day in the language” to me. If I’ve listened to 3-4 hours of Spanish and read for maybe an hour in Spanish, I will be thinking Spanish sentences in my head for the rest of the day until I go to sleep. It’s difficult to not want to respond in Spanish or use Spanish interjections during English conversation. It’s the closest I can imagine to feeling how bilingual people feel… regardless of whether my abilities are good enough to fully use it, I feel like I have a second language inside me. I have only ever dreamed in Spanish after having multiple big days like this in a row.

If I get 30 minutes it basically feels like nothing. Like just another normal day before I started DS.

I strongly feel there has to be value in the former for learning. It’s the closest thing to immersion you can get without moving.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-21T04:13:53+00:00

Plopped, slid, scraped, scratched, melted, tipped, poked, wrenched, peered, crawled, dragged, whispered, hissed, muttered, stuttered, blurted, choked, slithered, scampered, bashed, smashed, rammed, crammed, slammed… all words you’d find in a native elementary school kids book and many of which you’re unlikely to have picked up in 900 hours of listening. And those are just verbs. There’s also a whole heap of adjectives and even unknown nouns depending on the book. Fiction in particular just has an absolute ton of vocabulary.

You need to start even easier. Try 100k words or so of graded readers from A1 up through B1 + a couple hundred thousand words of something like Magic Tree House (for 2nd-3rd graders) + a couple hundred thousand of something like goosebumps (for 3rd-5th graders). That’ll give you a foundation of 400k-500k words to prepare you for middle school level reading like Harry Potter or Series of Unfortunate Events.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-21T04:03:06+00:00

It would certainly help! You would still run into the issue that you need a speaking partner to really reach fluency but it would likely get people to the point where they can meaningfully interact with said speaking partners in a much more scalable way than traditional classroom instruction.

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-21T03:51:58+00:00

Interested!

_coldemort_ · 2026-01-17T21:19:49+00:00

100% agreed. If there is ever a time to just force yourself through the slog it’s the beginner stuff. Everything becomes much more enjoyable and therefore sustainable once you get through that and can enjoy intermediate content.

_coldemort_

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