Cerebral_Arbitrage wrote:Interesting discussion about Gabo, Llosa and their estrangement. I also find these historical mysteries fascinating.
Me too.
By the way, I found the link to Los 5 mejores libros para empezar a leer a Gabriel García Márquez - The 5 best books to begin to read Gabo. Based on my experience with Los funerales de la Mamá Grande, which is in the middle of the list, I'm thinking again what that person's suggestions were. The link is worth reading because it gives the "whys". For the record:
5. Crónica de una muerte anunciada (1981)
4. El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1961)
3. Los funerales de la Mamá Grande (1962)
2. El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985)
1. La hojarasca (1955)
I'm toying around in my head whether to get some of these with my Audible subscription. Haven't decided yet whether it's best to "review and redo", or "sally forth and circle back". I wish I knew better how the chapters are divided up in books 5 and 4. In general, Gabo creates long chapters. I prefer short ones, as they're more "digestible" units. At least, they're easier to schedule the consumption of. Books 5 and 4 are in the neighborhood of 2-3 hours each, so novellas.
Since my first pass(es) at these will probably be as audio on walks, and it's easy to get distracted by the "wild" animals in nature (deer, especially), and my thinking nature is non-linear, I'm definitely thinking the "5 books" suggestion is worth pursuing roughly in the order suggested. That doesn't mean I'm setting down Cien años while I'm still early in my first intensive read, only that the "extensive listening" material will be on deck for several weeks.
I came across this Accelerated Language Learning video this morning and it reminded me of several things Professor Arguelles talked about in his "Learn a language in 15 minutes a day":
It made me think the older Assimil (at least the French 1st book), which had a continuing narrative, may have been "better" from a pedagogical perspective than say, New French with Ease, which I seem to recall is very good. I liked it more than New Spanish with Ease, which had excessively slow initial dialogues.
Also wanted to note that in my current intensive Cien años de soledad, I've been using "how many times does Gabo use this word or word form?", as part of my decision-making process on whether to make an Anki card or not. I don't have a hard-and-fast rule, but if I'm on the fence and it was only used once or twice, I don't make a card. Not using "word frequency" as the main criterion. My thinking is more along the lines of, "do I want to understand this part of the story better?", or, "would this be a good word for an image card?" So far, if it's used 3 times, I'm on the fence. I've made some and skipped some. I'm at the beginning of chapter 3 (of 20), so may have to let more of them slide for now. Occasionally, I hit the jackpot and a word will be used 7-8 times, but most of the words I'm unsure of, when deciding whether to make a card or not are in the 2-3 range.
I've been trying to dial back Anki and have done so on my 5000 word and FSI decks. Only about 3 new cards per day on each of those decks right now. Since I've been using both of them for many months, dialing down the intensity takes a little while to really bring down the minutes per day.
On minutes per day, today I've logged almost 45 minutes in Anki, and 30 of them are for Cien años de soledad. So, I'd like to continue to bring down the minutes on those supplemental decks and also not get too carried away making cards for Cien años de soledad.
But the Cien años de soledad deck provides support for Gabo's other books, so I don't think Anki is pure insanity.