Spanish Books Books

As a pianist and coach for Western Canadian opera companies and Universities I can absolutely recommend this volume as essential for every singer and coach interested in pursuing Spanish repertoire. Nico Castel is an amazing artist with a remarkable facility for languages and a gift for communicating his knowledge. This book, utilizing the International Phonetic Alphabet, is ideal for singers attempting Spanish repertoire for the first time, and for those experienced in the language and genre.

This is a great book for Spanish diction; the only really essential information is the table in the front with rules for every letter's pronunciation. I'm a vocal coach, and have found this book invaluable in coaching songs of Spain and the Americas. With its simpler vowel system, it's a shame that beginning singers don't start out with Spanish rather than Italian - it's easier to do correctly and convincingly! There are several typos scattered throughout the IPA given for some words and musical examples that directly contradict rules given earlier, and some forgetfulness with open/closed E (all should be sung open) - this can be confusing, but if you stick to the rules it should be fine!

As a pianist and coach for Western Canadian Opera companies and Universities, I consider Nico Castel's book to be an absolute must for those considering Spanish repertoire. Nico Castel has a unique knowledge of languages and a remarkable gift for communication. Utilizing the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), this volume is ideal for singers and coaches beginning to work with Spanish repertoire, or for those already familiar with the language and genre. I recommend it very highly.

I have found this manual to be quite good, which is convenient since there is practically nothing else out there for Spanish singing that I know of. Castel's book provides quick-reference as well as detailed guides to pronouncing Spanish, and he gives good coverage of Spanish variants that one may come across. The repertoire suggestions are handy as well. About the only thing I can think of to improve the edition would be a CD with audio samples of the various sounds, since there are some that are indigenous to Castilian Spanish. This of course would drive up the price, but I think it'd be worth it since most people purchasing this book *genuinely* want to sing well in Spanish.

Esta es la obra más popular de Mika Waltari, autor finlandés de primera mitad de siglo veinte. Y es uno de los mayores bestsellers de todos los tiempos. Pocas veces un "best seller" tan popular como éste se gana las buenas críticas literarias de los entendidos y permanece en las estanterías de las tiendas de libros generación tras generación.

"Sinuhé" merece permanecer en todos los hogares porque es una obra maravillosa que, como todos los libros clásicos, quedará en la memoria y los corazones de todos quienes lo lean.

Es considerado por muchos -y yo estoy de acuerdo- como la mejor obra histórica hasta la fecha. Cuenta la historia en primera persona de un egipcio y de sus experiencias y viajes hace más de mil años antes de Cristo. En estos viajes llega a conocer las grandes naciones de lo que hoy es Oriente Medio. En sus páginas hay un pozo inmenso de sabiduría, no especialmente por su variedad de experiencias y personajes, sino por la reflexiones acerca de la naturaleza humana, que son tan de ayer y de hoy como de cualquier tiempo.

El modo de contar de Sinuhé es tan particular que engancha y, aunque no contase cosas tan interesantes como cuenta, produce una sensación de música cadenciosa y alegría en el corazón; porque uno se da cuenta de la bondad y sinceridad que emana de este protagonista a lo largo de la narración de sus aventuras.

Esta es una obra extensa, más de 700 páginas en mi edición, pero uno llega a gozar de estos paisajes antiguos, de estos personajes tan maravillosos cuyas almas casi leemos. En fin, de esto está hecho el corazón de los hombres, de un vacío insondable que clama por ser llenado de lo divino y de su misterio.

Quiero decirles que esta es la historia mas interesante que he leido en toda mi vida. Se trata de Sinuhe, un doctor egipcio exiliado que escribe su vida, desde su nacimiento humilde hasta que llegue a atender los faraones. Este libro te hace pensar, te hace llorar, te hace reir, ¡lo tiene todo! Ademas, esta basado sobre hechos reales. El autor tuvo mas de 10 años estudiando la historia de Egipcio y los rollos de Sinuhe. Es interesante notar que a pesar del hecho que la historia trata de sucesos que pasaran hace unos 3.000 años, nosotros podemos identificarnos con todo. Espero que todo el mundo tenga el privilegio de leer esta obra maestra. (Este repaso se refiere al "The Egyptian", lo cual es la misma historia, pero en ingles.)

Sinuhe el Egipcio es una maravilla de libro al igual que todos los otros libros de Mika Waltari (los dos libros de Mikael Karajalka, El Sitio de Contantinopla, SPQR, etc). Resulta emocionante poder recorrer el Egipto de 3000 AC con una enorme cantidad de detalles, para los cuales Mika Waltari estudio muchos años la cultura egipcia. A partir de este libro se hizo una pelicula que es muy buena, pero el libro es realmente alucinante. Recomiendo este libro para aquellos que quieran conocer mas de la literatura de Mika Waltari.

Sinhue is just like you and me, growing up in a fast changing world and facing challenging obstacles.

Living day to day with certainties and confusions that plague all human beings evolving in a life that resembles our own in so many ways...

The scenery to this story is the middle empire in Egipt, the Pharaho, Amenothep IV reigns under the name of Akenaton and Amon-Ra has fallen to the Sun disk, Aton, the new god that reigns unchallenged in heaven.

As feelings stir passions also love and friendship are set ablaze.

As the tides of events calm down so does age set in and calm reigns again in Egipt and in Sinhue's heart...

Tutankamon, the child Pharaho reings again to reestablish Amon-Ra from defeat to splendor !

Memories of golden times and of great feats, long gone friends and a lost love, a tragic beginning in a cane basket going down the Nile.

Is destiny repeating itself?

Beautifull novel, set in historic events.

This book is more than I expected. Excellent biographical information and literary context for the six authors. Relates the work of six great Spanish poets of different epochs. The translations are very helpful for someone who knows some Spanish. I would have preferred more literal and less poetic translatons. Even a fine poet like Barnstone must take liberties with the original when he turns a Spanish sonnet into an English sonnet. This book is invaluable to the amateur and, I would assume, to the professional as well.

For those who already know the various authors of this book individually, words will be in excess to describe the treasures contained therein. The five Spanish already classical authors and Jorge Luis Borges closing the group with honors are a guarantee of high quality and deep touching entertainment. Tasting the fluent and sincere social verb of Quevedo, or absorbing in silence the sweet and perfect mysticism of Juana Inés would be sufficient to recommend this book. But we find much more, Machado, García Lorca and Miguel Hernández, marked by the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, found in their sensibility, the way to transform hate and blood into the purest and most powerful poetry. About Borges, well, what can one say about a man of his talents, his well known depth is something you will find easily linked to his enormous sensibility and human solidarity. Definitively, this multiple anthology is a treasure to keep forever.

The translation is marvelous: I read them all before in Spanish. And the Selection? Amazingly good ! Congratulations to the translator! It`s not an easy feat to translate Garcìa Lorca or Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz...eoither The Master: Quevedo...or Machado ( the name is ANTONIO, NOT ANTONIA ) The person who selected the poems is really knowing... If you want to read and enjoy the very best of Spanish written sonets...This Book is a Poetic "Bible " Don`t miss it !

The sonnet form was introduced to Spain from Sicily in the fifteenth century through the writing of El Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458), a poet who wrote Petrarchan sonnets in Spanish. During the Renaissance, the Italian sonnet made its way to most of the countries of Western Europe. In England, Edmund Spenser changed the Petrarchan rhyming form of 'abba abba cdecde' to 'abab bcbc cdcd ee,' and William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets with the form 'abab cdcd efef gg.' As Willis Barnstone says in the introduction to his book, 'Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet,' 'the Spanish sonnet, a literary vagabond in courtly dress, began in the court of the Sicilian Frederic II, went up to England, and finally, seven centuries after its Italian birth, with its picaresque wits and form intact, dropped down just above the Antarctic Circle to appear in the poems of the Argentine Anglophile [his maternal grandmother was English] Borges.' Professor Barnstone goes on to present a thorough history of the evolution of the Spanish sonnet and a colorful biography of six Spanish language poets who used the form. His writing is informed by his long friendship with Jorge Luis Borges. Barnstone offers here a sampling of 112 Spanish sonnets by these six masters, placed side by side along with his own magnificent translations.

Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645) is described as a 'monstruo de la naturaleza' [monster of nature] because of his prodigious outpouring of writing. 'Like Swift, Dostoyevski, and Kafka, he is one of the most tormented spirits and visionaries of world literature ['El Buscón' (The Swindler), 1626, is his masterpiece] and also one of the funniest writers ever to pick up a sharp, merciless pen.' Though Quevedo's sonnets are at times scatological and darkly satirical, they are also humorous and hopeful.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51-1695) was a Mexican discalced Carmelite nun who is considered by some religious scholars to be the first female theologian of the Americas. Although I was familiar with her love poems and her articulate defense of a woman's right to write in 'Response to Sor Filotea,' I had not read her sonnets in translation before. As he does with all six sonneteers, Barnstone faithfully maintains Sor Juana's rhyming, meter, and cadence in his translations of her sonnets. His analysis encompasses her writing and her life, including some critique of Octavio Paz's definitive biography, 'Sor Juana, or The Traps of Faith.'

Antonio Machada (1875-1939) recalls the landscape of his native Sevilla in his sonnets. In, 'El amor y la sierra' (Love and the Sierra), he writes, 'Calabaga por agria serranía / una tarde, entre roca cenicienta. (He was galloping over harsh sierra ground, / one afternoon, amid the ashen rock).' Barnstone calls Machado 'the Wang Wei of Spain' because 'he uses the condition of external nature to express his passion.' As Petrarch had his Laura, Machado had his Guiomar (Pilar de Valderrama). In 'Dream Below the Sun,' he writes, 'Your poet / thinks of you. Distance / is of lemon and violet, / the fields still green. / Come with me, Guiomar. / The sierra will absorb us. / The day is wearing out / from oak to oak.'

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) was a Spanish poet and playwright who was affected by Luis de Góngorra and gongorismo. His 'Gypsy Ballads' was 'the most popular book of poetry in the Spanish language in his time.' Barnstone states that 'his closest attachment, his passion, was the painter Salvador Dalí,' with whom he carried on a six year love affair. Luis Buñuel castigated him for his Andalusianism; indeed, Lorca felt that Buñuel's satiric and surrealist film 'Un chien andalu' mocked him. After traveling to New York and Havana, Lorca became 'the playwright of Spain' with his brilliant 'Bodas de Sangre' (Blood Wedding). His 'Sonnets of Dark Love,' unpublished during his lifetime, were probably written to Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, an engineering student. Barnstone believes that 'dark love' is an allusion to San Juan de la Cruz's 'dark night of the soul.'

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) of Argentina considered himself a poet, though he was a master at prose. According to Barnstone, because of the blindness that afflicted Borges in midlife, 'he could compose and polish a sonnet while waiting for a bus or walking down the street' and then later dictate it from memory. 'Borges's speech authenticated his writing, his writing authenticated his speech. To have heard him was to read him. To have read him was to have heard him.' In 'Un ciego' (A Blindman), he says, 'No sé cuál es la cara que me mira / Cuando miro la cara del espejo; / No sé qué anciano acecha en su reflejo / Con silenciosa y ya cansada ira. (I do not know what face looks back at me / When I look at the mirrored face, nor know / What aged man conspires in the glow / Of the glass, silent and with tired fury.)'

Miguel Hernández (1910-1942), a poor goatherd and pastor from the province of Alicante in Spain, wrote his best poetry while imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War. 'In the prisons, Hernández became,' in Barnstone's opinion, 'the consummate poet of light, darkness, soul, time, and death.' One of his poems, 'Llegó con tres heridas' (He came with three wounds), is a popular song, recorded by Joan Baez on her 'Gracias a La Vida' album.

'Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet' is recommended to all who love this poetic form and want to know more about the lives of these remarkable poets. A good index and list of references are included for further study.

To simply call Solitaire of Love a novel would not be doing it justice, both intencely passionate, and bitingly analytical, Cristina Peri Rossi delivers her cynical philosophy of love to the reader desguised as a love letter. Solitaire of love (the fourth book of Peri Rossi's translated into English) follows the obsessive relationship of an unnamed narrator and Aida, the woman he loves to the point of addiction and destruction. The entire book reads like a dream, containing surreal and meaningful details of life, along with the foggy illusions of sleep. Peri Rossi, like a good psychoanalyst, breaks the book down to its most elemental meaning, decoding what is often encoded during simple day to day interactions. Perri Rossi deals with relationships, sex, and desire with an uncompromising certainty, revealing even the most mysterious of human emotions without ever loosing their beauty and mystery. Although Solitaire of Love is one of the most unabashedly lyrical of Peri Rossi's books, it never stoops to being sentimental or cliched. It is certain to delight the reader who is in love as much as the reader who is out of love.

this is stunning. words cannot express.

Detailing an intense love affair down to its minute parts, "Solitaire Of Love" is a gorgeous portrait of how loving someone so intensely is as glorious as it is painful. The male narrator loves Aida, but knows that one day she may leave him as she did her husband and her other lovers. She becomes his oxygen, his reason, his erotic muse, which all ultimately proves his undoing. Because to love someone is a personal, private thing, like a game of solitaire, that only the one can enjoy fully. Reminiscent of Violette Leduc's "Thérèse And Isabelle", Slavenka Drakulic's "The Taste Of A Man", and Kate Millett's "Sita", Peri Rossi's magnificent story is a seductive look at the realities of sexual passion.

To simply call Solitaire of Love a novel would not be doing it justice, both intencely passionate, and bitingly analytical, Cristina Peri Rossi delivers her cynical philosophy of love to the reader desguised as a love letter. Solitaire of love (the fourth book of Peri Rossi's translated into English) follows the obsessive relationship of an unnamed narrator and Aida, the woman he loves to the point of addiction and destruction. The entire book reads like a dream, containing surreal and meaningful details of life, along with the foggy illusions of sleep. Peri Rossi, like a good psychoanalyst, breaks the book down to its most elemental meaning, decoding what is often encoded during simple day to day interactions. Perri Rossi deals with relationships, sex, and desire with an uncompromising certainty, revealing even the most mysterious of human emotions without ever loosing their beauty and mystery. Although Solitaire of Love is one of the most unabashedly lyrical of Peri Rossi's books, it never stoops to being sentimental or cliched. It is certain to delight the reader who is in love as much as the reader who is out of love.

This is one of my favorite Plaidy books! It is very well written, and it really makes you think, "Was Philip II of Spain a good guy, doing everything he did out of duty, or was he bad, doing it out of hatred and sadism?" I didn't like him before I read this book because of his role in the Inquisition and the fact that I blame him for my heroine's death, Lady Jane Grey (hence my nickname). I still wonder.

Philip II grew up with duty always first. He was serous about everything, and he always acted like an adult. His first marriage was his choice. He fell in love with his first wife, but never knew how to tell her. She died before he got a chance. Around this time, the Inquisition started heating up, under his control. Also, Mary I cam to the throne in England. She was a Catholic trying to bring Catholicism back to England, as well as the Inquisition. The marriage would be good for Philip, but he had no feeling towards Mary, and the English hated him. He married anyway, and in a few years, she died as well. After she died, Philip had to make another alliance, this time with France. He married the daughter of the King. Once again, he fell in love, and once again, she died before he could tell her. Philip had a son by his first wife that was not quite right in the head and he tried to kill Philip. Philip thought it was his duty to his country to get rid of his son. For the sake of Spain, he did.

From reading this review, you will probably despise Philip. I am not a good a writer a Plaidy, so I cannot be surprised. The only thing I ask is to read this book before you judge him.

This book helped along the fascination I have for that period. Jean Plaidy in her characteristic style brings out all the influences on Philip's life. His strict spanish upbringing warring with his deeper sensual nature. The book is divided into 3 parts, dedicated to 3 different phases of his life as well as 3 different women that he was married to. The impression I got is this: That JP started with an extreme close up view of Philip when he was young and gradually distanced the view by including more characters into the story. One of those books that brings out the shades of grey - in historical characters - only to well. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the tie ins between English and Spanish histories.

This book rocked! It was my fourth book that I read by Jean Plaidy, and it was the one that made me fall in love with her books and make her my favourite author.

Philip was a small fair boy and was raised to be a serious Catholic. When he was a teenager, he married Maria Manuel from Portugal. She was very pretty with her dark hair and dark eyes. Philip was in love, but he didn't want to tell her because he had his whole life to anyways. After an encounter with his grandmother, Juana the Mad, Maria is with chid and to Spain's happiness it is a son, Don Carlos. To Philip's greif, Maria dies too. Philip got upset because he never got to tell her how much he loved her.

After years of widowhood, Philip marries for state reasons. He married Mary Tudor (read In The Shadow of The Crown by Jean Plaidy). Don Carlos was a little screwed up in the head and Philip knew that he would not be a good ruler. So, he figures if he marries Mary and gets a new heir for his empire and add gets England for his son.

He meets Mary and is not too charmed by her. She was old, but she had been a beauty in her youth. He treated her kindly and Mary was thrilled. She had been neglected and hardly loved since her mother's death and was thrilled that this handsome young man was treating her kindly. This was a man who would help her country come back to Rome (it was a Protestant country ever since the reign of her father, King Henry VIII). But Philip does treat her well and she is very happy. (If you type in Philip II into google and go to images, you will see that Philip is even handsome by today's standards.)

But after living with Mary, he is not crowned king of England. The people hate him. But Philip does like Mary's half sister, Elizabeth. He considers marrying her if Mary were to die. Philip didn't even love her as a husband should love a wife. He sort of thought of her as a painful old aunt. He leaves and promises to be back in a few months. But he doesn't come back until he needs help from England in a war against France.

Mary dies later. She was very unhappy and wanted Philip there. She really did love him. Poor Mary.

AFter that, Philip asks for Elizabeth, now Queen Elizabeth I (Queen of this Realm by Jean Plaidy and Gay Lord Robert by Jean Plaidy)to marry him. She dallies with the proposal. She did have many to choose from. Since he didn't get any real answer, Philip marries a French Princess, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was originally intended for Don Carlos, but Philip married her himself. But Don Carlos was already half in love with her himself. He saw her minature and was in love with the idea of marrying her. He would even stop killing animals for her. Don Carlos was furious when Philip married her. He already hated Philip enough.

Elizabeth, now Isabella, just wanted to stay in France. But it was her duty to go to Spain and be Queen. In Spain, her husband was cold to her and hardly smiled. Sometimes in private he would treat her tenderly though. Her step-son was a comfort. He spoke French to her and made her feel not so alone. After a few years of marriage to Philip, she only has princesses. Philip was sure that she would eventually give him a son.

But, Philip finds himself in love with her. He never wanted to love anyone else since his first wife. Isabella was pregnant and he was planning on telling her his feelings towards her. Unfortunately, she dies in childbirth, her daughter with her.

This book is awesome and I think that you should read it. I loved it and it is one of my favourite Jean Plaidy books. You should also read the books that I put in there too. It is interesting to see what the different people are thinking over the same situations. Also, I recommend the Isabella and Ferdinand series if you liked The Spanish Bridegroom. The first book is called Castile for Isabella, 2nd is Spain for the Sovereigns and 3rd is Daughters of Spain. They are awesome too.

This book was much more fascinating than I thought it would be. The authors thoroughly researched their history and presented a view into the mind and emotions of Phillip II and the other characters which is fascinating. His family history is very interesting. It includes mental illness, psychopathy, and tragic romance. The characters' personalities and emotional functioning come to life in this analysis of the reasons behind their behaviors. It builds to a climactic end. I enjoyed this book very much.

I was a bit skeptical when I first noticed that there was a "grammar reference section" in this book--why would a grammar book need a grammar reference section??? It soon made sense, though.

It turns out that this TY grammar book is presented and arranged a bit differently than most. It's generally broken down into usage, function, and application, rather than abstract parts of speech as most grammar books are. It has chapter titles such as, Expressing Existence and Availability, Expressing Location, Describing Process and Procedure, rather than the typical headings such as present tense, preterit, subjunctive, etc. All the concepts are in there, but they are grouped according to task, idea, or usage.

For example, the Talking About Habitual Actions chapter covers reflexive verbs, position of reflexive pronouns, common reflexive verbs, adverbs ending in -mente, frequency adverbs, soler + infinitive, and acostumbrar + infinitive. So these are grammatical constructs you would use for Talking About Habitual Actions. Make sense? It's a nice idea.

I find this a refreshing change. It's much easier to read. I have lots of Spanish grammar books and they are great, but none present the material quite like this book does. This format is very handy to look something up quickly and get a brief answer (including good examples) of the concepts. The grammar reference section in the back lists topics more like a standard grammar text would and goes into a bit more depth.

This is a fabulous tool for anyone studying the Spanish Language! It is explains Spanish grammer in a simple concise form which is much easier to understand that many textbooks! Everyone studying Spanish should pick up this bargain of a supplemental tool!!

I used this book after I had learned some Spanish from tapes. I was going to a Spanish speaking country, and I needed to see what the words actually looked like, as well as to get an idea of how the language is structured. Here's the thing you need to know: although it says "Teach Yourself Spanish *Grammar*", this book is extremely useful as a practical guide to speaking the language. It's organised according to functions (for example: expressing wants, likes, giving opinions, describing the past). This makes it about a thousand times more useful than an ordinary phrasebook. A phrasebook only teaches you how to ask for, say, fruits at a market. If you're lucky, it'll teach you how to ask for vegetables too. With this book, you can just look up "expressing wants" and learn querer and preferir, and how you can use them with a noun, a verb, or a pronoun.

It's really a more "building blocks" approach to language, but it still provides sample sentences for each idea, so you can see how it's done. This book won't have you speaking fluent, advanced idiomatic Spanish (nor is it a good reference grammar for advanced learners), but it will definitely prepare you to say a wide range of things in basic Spanish.

By the way, I've lent it to two other friends who have also used it to get a basic knowledge of Spanish for reading or travel. One of them refused to give it back to me until he'd finished it!

For any student, I would recommend this book. When I teach my classes, I often reference it for a second or third way to present the material, and have recommended it to any student wishing to review.

It starts off with conversational help, and then the chapters delve into more grammatical lessons, always chock full of examples to help the information make sense.

It would be an excellent textbook if there were exercises, but it's not intended for that purpose. I would say the ages are mature high school students and up.

Sra. Gose
Author of Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 1 & Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 2

I purchased this book for a teen in Nicaragua as a gift. I cannot review the contents, but looking it over seemed to be a good concept for someone learning English.

I'd like to consider myself an intermediate spanish student. This book is just a tad over my spanish reading level. I really enjoy a challenge, so I enjoyed trying to read the spanish side. The stories were a good read in english, but I think it would have been better for me to start with "First Spanish Reader".

I bought the book with a view towards,

1) improving my Spanish

2) reading interesting new thoughts by Spanish writers

It achieved both goals admirably.

I also learned that apparently the Spanish language has not changed nearly as much as the English language from the time of Shakespeare and Cervantes to the present day. I understood more of the Cervantes -- in Spanish -- than in my first readings of Shakespeare in English, my native tongue.

Some of the stories were more difficult than others to be sure. Just as there is a huge style difference between writings of Earnest Hemingway and Nathaniel Hawthorne in English.

Like a previous reviewer, I found myself referring to the English side of the book less and less as I continued to read.

One improvement should be made in future books of this type, however. The definitions of the Spanish words in the back should do more than just restate the original translation. This where the author can truly help a student understand the nuances of the language. Give the reader the origin of the word -- Latin, French, Greek, etc. -- along with a general definition, not just the repeat the same english translation used in the body of the story. If that's all the author is going to do, he should save the paper.

This book includes several excellent stories by many of the finest Spanish authors starting from the 16th century to the 20th. I recommend it highly for the intermediate Spanish student.

When I started reading book I had to regularly refer to the english page for a translation. At the end of the book, I seldom need to check the translation.

I assume that the stories written in the 16th and 17th centuries were re-written to update them into current Spanish, as I would think the older Spanish would be much more difficult to understand. As a result, this made the stories easy to read at the same time I could appreciate the skill of the writers.

Actually the one I am working with is French through pictures but it is the same except for the language. I am trying to port it to a CD-ROM using Hyperstudio. Hyperstudio is similar to Hypercard but works on both systems. It is the next step beyond flash cards, that is it includes sound, is of course much faster and flexible....

This book looks deceptively simple, even juvenile. However, if you faithfully follow page by page, you will learn about 600 words and working grammatical knowledge more easily and quickly than any other book I have seen. Languages were my field for some years, and the "..through Pictures" series by I.A.Richards, et.al. are the first I would look for. The book - a paperback of 270 pages - is entirely in Spanish and builds in a self-explanatory procedure. You can produce basic, useful statements in a few hours, and experience a pleasant, rapid learning curve. If you are like me and want to know some more grammar along the way, "Spanish for Beginners" by Charles Duff is a good companion book. But make sure you finish Richard's.

I used this book to acquire a great deal of the Spanish I now have--I teach Spanish now. The author is phenomenally competent at sequencing and incrementing the material for the easiest, fastest, and most stress-free method for language learning I have ever seen. (I have studied several languages.) I am desperately seeking a replacement for my lost copy of it---in any condition, at any price!

This is the best way I have ever seen to learn conversational Spanish through a book. I have seen a friend with no knowledge of the language become fluent in conversing at a Cuban restaurant he liked to frequent, solely by studying this book and its sequel, Spanish Through Pictures: Book II. They build your vocabulary through a series of line drawings; never giving an English translation. This is similar to the way we all learned our primary language as a child, and helps you to actually think in the language you are learning.

Assimil programs are based on effortless assimilation of the language material. I believe that Assimil programs are most popular language learning programs in Europe.

From the very beginning you are immersed in the language - the program has 109 lessons on 478 pages and 4 CDs with approximately 3 and half hours of audio entirely in Spanish.

Each lesson contains short dialogues and is accompanied by any notes and grammatical explations, which are also reviewed later on. Throughout the book are interspersed cartoons and jokes making learning of Spanish even more enjoyable and fun.

Note: The tapes / CDs that accompany the book are spoken with Castillan pronounciation - Spanish spoken in Spain - not in Latin American.

Once you're done with this book, you can continue onto the next volume - "Using Spanish".

I like the program. It really throws you into the deep end of the pool. I just think it throws too much at you at the beggining which may discourage the novice. I reccomend Michel Thomas Spanish Deluxe for the complete beginner. After doing Michel Thomas Advance going to Assimil is probably a good next step.

Assimil programs are based on effortless assimilation of the language material. I believe that Assimil programs are most popular language learning programs in Europe.

From the very beginning you are immersed in the language - the program has 109 lessons on 478 pages and 4 CDs with approximately 3 and half hours of audio entirely in Spanish.

Each lesson contains short dialogues and is accompanied by any notes and grammatical explations, which are also reviewed later on. Throughout the book are interspersed cartoons and jokes making learning of Spanish even more enjoyable and fun.

Note: The tapes / CDs that accompany the book are spoken with Castillan pronounciation - Spanish spoken in Spain - not in Latin American.

Once you're done with this book, you can continue onto the next volume - "Using Spanish".

I don't think you really can learn a foreign language on your own. But as far as these self-studying tools are concerned, Assimil's Spanish with Ease shows that they have put in the thought and effort to design the courses. It is well worth the extra money (compared to other self-taught Spanish books.)

Let me first tell you what this is not. It's not a phrase book for tourists and is not a comprehensive Spanish grammar course, and it doesn't give you a free dictionary. And you need to sit down and read the book to learn (I simply don't buy the "All-Audio" model by Living Learning.) But if you are serious about learning Spanish on your own (i.e. actually going through all the lessons), Assimil is a very effective tool.

For example, the book is printed in Spanish on odd-numbered pages and corresponding English on even-numbered pages so that people could refrain from "cheating" by looking up the English. The lessons are mostly interesting dialogues that could arise in daily life. It provides informative footnotes that explain idiomatic usages. It gives a pretty detailed grammatical appendix (including some irregular verbs) and variations of regional usages in a dozen Spanish-speaking countries. It also have very fun cartoons to go with the lessons. The accented syllables are boldfaced.

Wide range of Darío's life work. Short stories and poems. Contains most of his famous stuff. Print large enough to read easily. English translation on right side helpful for intermediate Spanish readers. It's amusing to disagree with the translator's take.

You simply can't go wrong with this series. Here is one of the great names in Spanish literature, Rubén Darío, made even more accessible through the dual-language format. A must for teachers, students, and those of us will always be both!

The egregious ascendancy of Latin American poetry ever born; Dario incarnates as nobody else the sublime beauty, nocturnal gaze, autumnal meditation and existential anguish tinged of a bucolic scent and contemplative mood.

Along his poetry it 's easy to certain to associate with Whitman in determined concerns; Dario visits the hospitals of the hell and makes his own journey; but besides, his dark reflections are impregnated with a visible tinge of spiritual penury and incurable hopeless.

Baroja stated once: the Castllian owns two great names: Valle Inclàn and Ruben Dario. Go for this invaluable book and ve part of that poetical iniverse.

I found this book to be very insightful into the mind of Ruben Dario. Having the translation in both languages gives the reader an accurate idea of what Dario wanted to express; and also gives the reader an accurate idea of why he chose certain words to say certain things. Some small detail I would have wished is that it contained the full lirical calendar, the autum, winter, spring, and fall poems. Overall, an exellent book.