You can read The Great Gatsby for free with one word in five swapped into Spanish, right now, no account required, on the e-reader page: nine chapters, 43,195 words, 8,899 of them replaced, and a companion dictionary that explains every one.
This is the first title in what we're calling our free library — a small set of public-domain books, blended, with a dictionary attached, that work on any EPUB reader and work best on a CrossPoint e-reader. Gatsby is the one that exists today. Blended Books on Your E-Reader is the overview of how all of this fits together. Here is exactly what it contains, what level it suits, two real sentences from the actual file so you can see the blend before downloading anything, and the ways to get it onto a device. If Spanish specifically is your target language, learning Spanish with LingoBlend covers the rest of what the app and site offer beyond this one book.
The numbers#
Every number below is counted from the file we publish, not estimated — the same figures are on the book's card on the e-reader page.
| Source text | The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (public domain) |
| Language pair | English → Spanish |
| Blend percentage | 20% |
| Chapters | 9 |
| Total words | 43,195 |
| Words swapped into Spanish | 8,899 |
| Dictionary entries (look-up headwords) | 4,633 |
That last row is worth a word of explanation, because it looks like it should match the swap count and doesn't. 4,633 is how many distinct words you can look up; 8,899 counts every time one of them appeared in the text. The two count different things, so they do not match.
Two sentences from the actual book#
We don't want to describe a blend in the abstract when you can see one. These are copied verbatim out of the EPUB file itself — nothing paraphrased, nothing invented — with the Spanish words in bold and what they replaced listed underneath.
From the dinner at Tom and Daisy's, early in the book:
Daisy and Tom miraron at each other for a momento in silencio.
- miraron = looked
- momento = moment
- silencio = silence
The novel's closing line:
So we seguimos luchando, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the pasado.
- seguimos luchando = beat on
- pasado = past
Notice the second example: seguimos luchando is a two-word Spanish phrase standing in for one English phrasal verb, "beat on," blended as a single unit rather than word by word. That's deliberate — a phrase translated piece by piece usually reads as nonsense, so LingoBlend keeps idioms and multi-word expressions intact. On CrossPoint running the current stable firmware, the lookup gesture selects one word at a time, so tapping either word of a two-word Spanish phrase still surfaces the full phrase in most cases — see the companion dictionary post for exactly how that works and where it doesn't.
What level this suits#
The English prose is Fitzgerald — call it B2: full sentences, period vocabulary, nothing simplified. The Spanish sitting inside it, at 20%, mixes common words (cara, mano, dijo) with a longer tail of less frequent ones (calumnia, discreto), so a learner solidly at B1 and pushing toward B2 in Spanish is the target reader. If that's earlier than you are, the sentence above with miraron, momento, and silencio packed into one short line makes the point: three blended words in twelve — a denser line than the 20% average, but a fair preview of what a blended paragraph feels like. If it reads as too much right now, our easy Spanish books for beginners post points at gentler material, and how many words it takes to be fluent in Spanish gives a sense of how far B1 vocabulary still has to go.
If you want a different percentage, Pro members set it themselves when they blend their own classic or pasted text — see One honest limitation below.
Why Gatsby first#
Three reasons, not one. It's short enough to actually finish — under 50,000 words, nothing like committing to a 400-page doorstop in a language you're still building. The plot is one most readers already half-know, even if only from the title and a half-remembered film, so the English carries the Spanish instead of the other way around. And it's public domain, which is the only reason we can hand the whole thing out for free with no account and no catch.
How to get it onto a device#
Two ways to get the book — the website or OPDS — and two ways to get the dictionary: alongside the book from the website, or through the LingoBlend Dictionaries plugin.
1. From the website. Go to the e-reader page, find The Great Gatsby in the library section, and download the book and its dictionary zip directly. This works for any computer or phone and doesn't require a CrossPoint reader at all — you can put the EPUB on a Kobo, a PocketBook, or a phone reading app. See Kindle vs Kobo vs CrossPoint for language learners for what each device does with a book like this one.
2. Over WiFi via OPDS. Add https://www.lingoblend.app/opds/root.xml as an OPDS server, typed with https:// (a bare address defaults to http and won't connect), open English books blended into Spanish, and pick the underlined edition — that's the one the companion dictionary is built for. Full walkthrough, including the dictionary's own route onto the device: download blended books with OPDS.
3. The dictionary, through the LingoBlend Dictionaries plugin on CrossPoint. In the reader's File Transfer web UI, open Plugin Store and add https://www.lingoblend.app/crosspoint/catalog.json, then Settings → System → Plugins → LingoBlend Dictionaries → Free library downloads the Gatsby dictionary straight into /dictionaries. The book itself still comes from the website or OPDS, above. The plugin is also a direct download on the e-readers page, to copy over by USB. Plugins need CrossPoint 1.7 or a Nightly build.
Whichever path you use, you need both files — the EPUB and the dictionary — if you want to look words up on the device. The EPUB alone still reads fine; you just can't tap a word and see what it replaced.
The three editions#
The library ships Gatsby in three forms of the same blend — same 8,899 swapped words, different way of showing them.
| Edition | What you see | Needs the dictionary? | Pick it if |
|---|---|---|---|
| underlined | Blended words underlined, meaning hidden until you look it up | Yes | You have a CrossPoint reader and want retrieval practice |
| glosses above | The English original printed in small type above each Spanish word | No | Any EPUB reader, no setup, you want the answer visible immediately |
| linked | Each blended word links to a glossary entry at the end of the chapter | No | A reader that supports tappable links but not a custom dictionary |
The website's main download button gives you the underlined edition. The other two are listed under "Other editions" on the same page. If you're not sure which to pick, underlined, glosses above, or linked walks through the tradeoff in more depth than this post has room for.
What to do with the words#
Reading the book is the first half. The second half is making the words stick, and there are two ways to do that depending on your device.
On a paired CrossPoint reader running 1.7 or a Nightly build, press and hold a Spanish word and choose Clip, then Sync clippings over WiFi — the word lands in your LingoBlend Dictionary tab with the meaning the book actually gave it (miraron clipped from this book keeps "looked," the meaning the sentence used) and starts coming up in the five spaced-repetition games. The full clipping walkthrough is in save words from your e-reader.
On an older CrossPoint firmware, a Kobo, or a phone reading app, save words manually instead — through the Chrome extension on a laptop, or by typing a word into the app's Add Word screen. More manual, but it reaches the same dictionary and the same games.
One honest limitation#
Today the free library holds one book. We are not going to name a title, a language or a date for what comes next — when there is a second book it will be on the e-reader page. If you want a different book or a different language right now, Pro members can blend their own classic or pasted text on your readers page in any of our 17 languages — see blend a whole book for your e-reader for how that works.
The takeaway#
The Great Gatsby, one word in five in Spanish, is free, needs no account, and takes two different paths onto a device depending on what you're reading it on. It's a real test of whether blended reading works for you before you spend anything on Pro — read a chapter, clip a few words if your setup supports it, and see whether the Spanish woven through Fitzgerald's English actually sticks.