Hello all. I am looking for an electronic copy of the 2009 book “LAS CLAVES DE EL SIMBOLO PERDIDO” by PEDRO PABLO GARCIA MAY.
Below is the info and a link to buy a paperback version, which I already own.
Editorial: PLANETA
Lengua: CASTELLANO
ISBN: 9788408090052
Back in 2010 or 2011, when Borders Books was going out of business, I bought a paperback copy even though I couldn’t really read it. For years it sat on my shelf and later it would periodically come off so I could flip through a few pages to “test” myself each time I had either done a 90 Day Challenge or was feeling good about my Spanish. Each time I noticed I was getting better and back on the shelf it went. Until one day it didn’t. Thanks to my success at LingQ, I kept reading and eventually finished it as my first unassisted book. No LingQ, dictionary or anything. Much like Master Steve’s experience with the Rickshaw Boy in Mandarin or El Bosque Originario in Spanish, it was really an accomplishment.
The problem is, I still religiously track all the words I read and I still want to use the book to add a bunch of known words to my count and add a lot of words and phrases as LingQs. However, I have yet to find an electronic copy which I can import into LingQ. I am willing to pay for the book a second time if I have to, but I’ve been unsuccessful in my search.
Any suggestions from natives or other learners who might be able to locate it?
Thank you!
Long Island Lingquist
I assume you have searched through all the normal internet avenues. Have you tried calling somebody like ABE books to see if they have it? Maybe it is not listed in their internet catalog.
Thank you, but that’s a different book entirely. I have been to that website, but they seem to only carry the one I am looking for in paperback.
That’s just it. I’m not sure. I have searched all the ones I’ve known and think I’ve exhausted just normal Google searches. Then again, I don’t know a lot of specific places (like ABE books for example) and was hoping that those LingQ people familiar with Spanish or other foreign ebooks could check with their sources.
Indeed. I was in a hurry before bedtime. Sorry.
It’s quite possible that an ebook version has never been released. Contacting the author or publisher directly might be another way to find out if the ebook is available. Although it would be a lot of work, scanning the book with OCR software may be one way to extract the info.
Yeah, it might come to contacting them. I was about to do that and then thought to ask here as there are plenty of people who have discussed buying ebooks from places, but I wasn’t sure of any of those sources/online stores.
I might be up to scanning the book, although labor intensive, but I’m concerned a bit about doing it with non-English test.
yea, the scanning could be tricky if you don’t have a scanner widely used in business so that the software is up to it. I have an old ScanSnap by Fujitsu from a doctors office. It is fast and has software for business use so the spanish OCR is probably up to the task on a newer model. They are not too expensive. The advantage of the ScanSnap is that you could cut the pages out and put them in in whole batches to scan quickly (it will just grab them one after another, scan according to your settings, and OCR them automatically). Optionally, you could get any old cheap scanner or use your own and then get a copy (preferably older to save money) of Adobe pdf. It could do all the OCR with no problem.