Short Stories in Spanish: New Penguin Parallel Text (New Penguin Parallel Texts) (Spanish Edition)

This book is a bit above my level, but I'm close enough that I can get a few sentences in before I have to read the translation on the right page, then a few more sentences, then check the translation. Then I go back and re-read the paragraph and it all suddenly makes sense. This is definitely giving my rusty Spanish skills a good workout. The stories are written by "real" writers, not Spanish textbook writers, so that's a big plus. The translations are not word for word, they capture the meaning of each sentence. That's fine by me as once I get the idea of the sentence and go back to the Spanish, it makes sense. I start to notice a cognate I missed the first time, or some other clue I missed to the meaning. Good practice. Great book.

I wanted a book to help me to learn spanish. I'm about 1/3 through it and its great! Stories are quick reads with very real and complex translations. It's a book in parallel text as promised. It is serving it's purpose. Get it!

This book begins with easy stories, mostly in present tense. It progresses to more difficult stories. The stories are by Latino authors, so you have the additional bonus of Latino culture with the stories. The back of the book gives brief information about the authors. It includes exercises, some to be answered orally and others written, and a Spanish glossary. It's a good tool to have in your "bag of tricks" for learning and improving your Spanish.

Definitely not a beginners book. Probably comes in at the intermediate level & above. Assumes you know the complete verb system...the stories throw pretty much everything at you in terms of sentence construction. The more advanced you are, the less you need to depend on the English translation and just read the stories in Spanish, which even by themselves are treasures (I. Allende, G. Garcia Marquez, C. Fuentes among the estimable authors included).The translations are a joy to read, because you notice right away that there's not this word-for-word transliteration that you get with many attempts at parallel texts. The translators (each credited in their own right) really try to bring across in English the feeling and emotion that the writer intended when they penned the original Spanish. It's eye-opening. On top of that, the book's editor John R. King has added about 20 - 30 or so footnotes per story that really take your understanding to a new level. A great example: in the first story, he adds a footnote to denote when the two characters in the story slip from using formal verb construction into informal. It would have slid right by me, had it not been for the footnote. And it does mark a definite change in the direction of the story.Really good stuff.