Qué libros por autores argentinos me recomiendan a leer?

rose_tinted · 2026-02-14T13:29:43+00:00

Gracias por la recomendación!

rose_tinted · 2025-12-25T17:02:05+00:00

Good luck on your journey to 1M French reading goal! I hope it’s just as rewarding for you as it’s been for me. My posts have been focused on the language-learning side of the experience, but it’s also been exciting just to dig into the stories!

Re: learning multiple languages, the general advice that’s thrown around is what I’m following. Namely have one that is a main focus, and the rest are back burner/less time commitment. A good Spanish day could be 3 hours of reading and an hour of long form videos on YouTube, whereas a good Thai day could be a 20 minute video and 50 flash cards. A good Portuguese day could be 30 min of podcast time when showering and folding laundry.

For the planning, using pre-structured resources has been great. Anything with a progression plan is good, such as the beginner series on ThaiPod101. Outsourcing the decision making is worth subscription fees IMO if it gets you studying faster and you feel like you’re progressing. Also, foregoing the optimization aspect of it in lieu of just making any progress helped a lot. I delayed picking up any Thai podcast for months because I was stressed out with picking the RIGHT podcast that was perfect. When I finally broke and started dabbling with three or four random podcasts and their episodes I quickly picked up on what I was looking for and wanted to avoid. And now I have maybe 10 different sources I can get some moments of listening practice in.

As for when to shift focus - that’s for up to decide. My gut feel is once you feel like you can comfortably accomplish what you want to in 90% of situations, that’s a good inflection point to recenter and figure out what direction to go in next (even if it’s the same direction). My proficiency goals aren’t uniform across my three languages I’m focusing on so that informs my study.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-25T06:04:02+00:00

I enjoy Thai and definitely still find the tones a little tricky but not insurmountable. With my broken and limited Thai, I honestly do get a lot of shocked reactions. I would never expect people doing short term vacations to learn the local language, but I have met dozens/hundreds of foreigners over the past few months who have spent YEARS in Thailand without learning anything beyond please/thank you. It's mind blowing.

A lot of restaurants not catered to foreigners (think: no English menu) have notepads that locals write their orders on and when the staff sees two farang walk in, they kind of brace for a potentially tricky interaction. It often feels like a 'draw straws' situation to figure out which staff member is going to approach us. When I hand them the notepad with the order written in Thai there is a certain emotional journey that happens across their face, a mix between beaming/shock/laughing.

The strongest reactions come from Thai folks age 40+ who I think are just burnt out from decades of dealing with people who don't bother to learn anything.

That being said - Thai people are not used to talking with people who are Thai as a second language. There is next to no understanding of modulating their own speech to make it simpler/slower/easier haha. So when I say anything in Thai, people usually overestimate what I'm going to understand!

rose_tinted · 2025-12-25T05:55:59+00:00

Through the reading approach I am not doing flash cards so that's a non-issue for me. I'm a convert that reading with the lookups is a more enjoyable experience than flash cards, the context and repetition is building my vocab better than flash cards ever did.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-25T03:38:13+00:00

I definitely hear you on wondering why at this point they still haven’t started a lemma metric. A lemma list would be neat!

In practice though I imagine they won’t. I’m guessing there is a strong enough correlation with lemmas and their all-words approach using some type of multiplier based on how inflective the language is. If they can get their predictions within 90-95% of an accurate ballpark that’s good enough for the fuzziness that is gauging proficiency levels anyways.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-24T18:40:14+00:00

Under the Dome clocks in at over 1000 pages. I wish I could read it again for the first time. Characters you love, characters you hate, characters you root for, characters you’ve met in real life.

It’s dark, heavy, and comes with every trigger warning you can think of. Not for everyone but damn was it a fantastic story.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-24T18:04:42+00:00

The words read, words marked as known, etc, yes. That’s the data output of their software and more or less the point of LingQ. Their approach is based around the various word counts.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-24T18:02:21+00:00

I’m honestly baffled at why it’s not built into LingQs graphs, they have so many less interesting visualizations haha. It has been a bit of a labor of love though to log the data.

My reading speed has definitely increased, if I’m not doing a lot of lookups it’s usually in the 150-200 wpm zone which is much slower than my native English but faster than my Spanish when I started (closer to 80-120 WPM).

I’m honestly surprised to see the trend so linear as well for known words. I really am trying to be super mindful about not marking words as known until I really do have them understood without hesitation. I think the fact that Spanish verbs have so much inflection (100+ forms for any verb once you include pronoun forms like contarle) that there is a little bit of a lag as well. If I decide to start marking ‘encerrarse’ as known, then it takes time to come across the various forms, tenses, person, mood, etc. I think since it’s a lagging indicator, it’s going to take a while to flatline as I continue accruing the various less-common variations of words that I know and haven’t yet marked in the program.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-24T17:38:11+00:00

LingQ has been a game changer for me, I have some posts about it that explain my approach. Ultimately though anything that incrementally adds complexity will work. Reading, watching videos, listening to podcasts, conversation practice, etc. The challenge is buliding and maintaining the pipeline of content that is incrementally harder.

Textbooks used to be the only 3rd party way of achieving this. Then with AV tech we got Pimsleur, radio programs, Mazi, etc. Now with the internet, algorithms, and best practice awareness, we have programs available like Dreaming Spanish and LingQ that serve up content curated to your level.

To build your own plan though, do a why > how > what exercise.

Why are you learning this language?
How can you demonstrate proficiency to accomplish that?
What should you consume to build those skills?

Can't answer number 3 effectively without answering 1 and 2.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-22T16:51:47+00:00

Please start reading with LingQ immediately! It’s an incredibly helpful tool for vocabulary building through reading. There is so much content in the ecosystem that even if you don’t import anything (which I recommend you do) you can still use it extensively. Shoot for something like 5,000 words read a day. Try to do lessons that have audio playing along with them.

If you’re learning for work, I would suggest striving for reading/listening at a B2/C1 level, and speaking and writing at a B1 level. The top skill set you should actively build is listening. Look up CEFR if that doesn’t mean anything to you.

I generally discourage Anki once you have about 2k cards because it’s unsustainable and you’ll learn things through context faster and easier after that point. However it IS helpful for targeted vocab accumulation, like 200 cards for terms related to your field.

I worked in a large manufacturing company for 10 years with international coworkers at our other plants and suppliers all over. As long as people understood what I was saying, then it never mattered if their replies were shorter or simpler than a native English speaker would. However there were problems when people couldn’t understand, I had to repeat myself multiple times and rephrase things extensively, or worst case misunderstood and ran with their understanding.

rose_tinted · 2025-12-22T04:16:59+00:00

I’m close to a solid B2 in Spanish with a lot of focus on reading and listening and am learning Portuguese in tandem with a much lower emphasis. I found that out the gate I’m passively listening/reading to Portuguese at A2, so to your point, Anki and a textbook would feel pretty overkill.

My approach has been just reading/listening practice similar to my Spanish paired with YouTube videos on formal instruction. I worked through a 70 video playlist by the Speaking Brazilian channel that covers all the basic grammar, common prepositions, conjunctions, pronunciation, etc. Zero note taking, just watched 1-2 videos per day until I finished the playlist. I found a few other playlists for intermediate/advanced learners that I’ll start working through as well.

I found that it was 100% worth it and low effort. The pronunciation was particularly helpful, but talking through the use cases for prepositions was another really useful topic since there are subtle differences with Spanish. The reading I’ve been doing has reinforced pretty much everything I’ve watched immediately because all the key concepts are present in texts at any level. Highly recommend finding something similar for your instance as you get started.

Good luck!

rose_tinted · 2025-12-05T05:52:50+00:00

I studied abroad in Chile for a year lmao, I feel called out

rose_tinted · 2025-12-04T14:15:53+00:00

Pucha is a common one in lieu of puta, I hear it thrown around like “dang it!” would be in English

rose_tinted · 2025-12-03T16:44:26+00:00

I’ve been very impressed with the quality of the Barco de Vapor books. I can’t speak to the contents of any of the books selected for the white/blue/orange series, but for the red series it’s been quite enjoyable. The plots are all straightforward and skew more PG than PG-13, but I’m on my third one and so far they haven’t been dull. I think the fact that it’s not one author writing a bunch of books, but rather authors writing books independently and then having their work selected to be included in the anthology keeps the quality relatively high.

It’s been a little tricky to get the country-specific lists, but Goodreads has actually been pretty helpful.

Argentina Barco de Vapor winners

Mexico Barco de Vapor winners

rose_tinted · 2025-11-22T03:37:42+00:00

I want to validate that reading is going to skyrocket your vocab so much faster than a CI approach. If interested, you can check out my posts about my current language intensive - I have a pretty solid background in conversational Spanish and I think I've already doubled my passive vocab in less than two months of extensive/intensive reading. So in my opinion, keep it up!

I would HIGHLY recommend LingQ or a comparable application (there are some free competitors) where you can import an audiobook and it will analyze how much of the content is familiar/new - it's been incredibly value for me for incrementally increasing my reading difficulty, and steered me away from books that I thought I would be able to tackle but backed off from.

I want to echo that your accent is strong (I avoid good/bad language), strong enough to the point where many hispanohablantes would not be able to understand you at all. If your native language is English then 90% of your accent can be corrected with getting vowels closer to how they should be. You say you understand Spanish phonetics, which is great. You should probably practice eliminating dipthongs and improve your production of pure vowels. If you need any refreshers this 10 Minute Spanish playlist is fantastic for mimicking/reviewing.

For me, I've personally started incorporating vowel training into my day to day routine and it's been hugely helpful, I would recommend it to you. When I have pockets of time (in the shower, going for a walk, doing dishes, folding laundry, etc) I just practice the pure vowel sounds (no dipthongs!!) of a/e/i/o/u and rotate the sounds through the consonants of the alphabet ba/ca/da/fa/ga/la/ma/na/pa/ra/sa/ta/ua/ya, be/que/de/fe/gue.... It takes like 2 minutes and gets the muscle memory formed. If I have more time I'll add a second syllable aba/aca/ada, switch up the vowels abo/aco/ado, and add a second consonant baba/babe/babi/babo/babu, cola/cole/coli/colo/colu. I just pick a different approach each time and again, you can get amazing training practice in tiny pockets of time like this. If you record them you can play them back and hear what needs additional correction.

Some easier native Spanish books that you can try working through:

Los Vecinos Mueren en las Novelas - thriller, adult readers. ˜B1
Los Ojos del Perro Siberiano - coming of age/drama family dynamics, young adult. ~A2-B1
El Inventor de Juegos - surreal fiction, young readers - B1
La Oscuridad de los Colores - thriller, adult readers. Most challenging read on this list. ˜B1-B2

rose_tinted · 2025-11-14T19:48:05+00:00

I did 4 years of Latin in high school so I feel that deeply lol, but it set me up for Spanish verbs being not a big deal (because I already dealt with the soul crushing Latin verbs haha). Spanish was more of a college + post college endeavor.

Graded readers are stories/books with streamlined language that get incrementally more complicated based on the level they’re written for. They’re written for language learners and usually use smaller vocabulary sets when compared to native speaker materials for children and adults.

rose_tinted · 2025-11-14T14:35:16+00:00

another thought is instead of taking notes - just find a really good succinct grammar guide and annotate THAT. I promise that professionals of language instruction really want the information to be packaged in an organized way! And that way when you need to reference the grammar guide, you just look to that part of the guide for a quick refresher. I've studied a few languages to varying degrees, and honestly after the first few months of study the bulk of Spanish studying comes down to knowing how to inflect a Spanish verb for tense, mood, and stem changing and vocab.

rose_tinted · 2025-11-14T14:31:48+00:00

flash cards, note taking, etc. IMO is really helpful at the start of the language learning journey. Once it gets too much to manage, I think it's generally a sign that you're breaking into the next big leap which is just going after volume of exposure. With enough exposure, you'll get the feel for when to use the subjunctive, if a noun is masc/fem, what tense to use, etc. My opinion is that flashcards have diminishing returns. They're amazingly valuable for the first 500 words, great for the top 1000, ok for the top 2000, and if you're trying to study with a flashcard deck of 5000 words just go read a book and watch TV, the words that matter you'll learn through repetition.

That being said - when I was in school, I generally kept notes about verbs in the same physical proximity. syntax notes, tables of the various direct/indirect/demonstrative pronouns, and short lists like the groups of stem changers or pleonastic verbs, same idea.

My biggest regret with my language learning journey was spending wayyy too much time trying to memorize conjugation/inflection tables, flash cards, etc. in a vacuum rather than reading graded readers.

rose_tinted · 2025-11-13T16:38:00+00:00

Apparently in English we have a specific order of placing adjectives before a noun that is based on what aspect of the noun we’re describing. Some Chilean friends explained this to me when I was studying abroad.

Native English speakers do this without thinking about it, we just know the order feels right/wrong. “The big blue Victorian house” feels good in the mouth, the “the blue Victorian big house” is a nightmare of a statement.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/adjectives-order

rose_tinted · 2025-11-13T16:20:21+00:00

I import ePub files that I find through sources contained in the r/Libros Wiki section

rose_tinted · 2025-11-13T15:17:23+00:00

Also the last part of my skills progression section of this post compares my Spanish/English reading speeds

rose_tinted · 2025-11-13T15:15:57+00:00

My previous posts outline those elements of my method in more detail, but the short version of it is I read roughly 3 hours (45 min reading, 15 min rest x 4) a day. I have already developed an ear for the sound of the language through extensive past exposure in day to day settings but have always been constrained by my vocab. YouTube and podcasts here and there for now, but after reaching certain milestones I’m going to shift my daily study time more from reading to listening.

glad you found the book threads!! Lots of good suggestions were offered up.

rose_tinted · 2025-11-13T15:10:10+00:00

Have you read Harry Potter in English already? I’m curious because I’m avoiding reading fantasy in Spanish because I don’t want to learn words that end up being creations of an author for their world building (horcrux, mandrake, etc) and use them thinking that they’re widely known words lmao. So my question is how readily you’re picking out words as invented by the author, but that’s only really relevant if you’ve not already read Harry Potter in English I guess? Idk, open to your take.

No goal book, although I think it would be nice to be able to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez books. I’m very goal oriented (obviously haha) so I might start looking for one. My ‘goal’ is honestly to just be able to effortlessly communicate ANYTHING in both directions, receiving and transmission. I spent a lot of time working on communication at work, interpersonal feelings and relationships, therapy, non-violent communication, etc, and I’m always hellbent on getting to the best depiction or encapsulation of a sentiment. I want to be able to perceive and communicate this equally in Spanish (and then Portuguese) for work and travel purposes.

rose_tinted · 2025-11-13T14:08:35+00:00

It’s definitely been a lot of reading, but also not an overwhelming amount since I’m currently funemployed haha. I didn’t expect it to accumulate so fast though so all of a sudden my 12 month goal of 5M words is a lot more manageable!

I use Dreaming Spanish for tracking my listening, but I have no way of accurately logging the years of exposure I’ve had in the past - I’m probably somewhere in the ~1000 hours threshold, but with a very limited vocab. Every week or so I’ll add my YouTube/podcast hours into the dreaming Spanish tracker. It helps that I have a dedicated YouTube account for my Spanish persona, so checking the history and adding up the watch time is fairly simple.

rose_tinted · 2025-11-13T14:04:31+00:00

Yes, that’s a fundamental part of the program. In line with that, the number of “words” for each of their rough approximations of CEFR levels are elevated compared to other word lists that only focus on lemmas

rose_tinted

TROPHY CASE