Great for Beginners

Excellent reader for beginners. It is broken in to "tense" sections, i.e. present tense, past, subjunctive, etc. I read it outloud with my tutor and it is very helpful. I would highly recommend it.

Excellent first reader with a literary bent

Classy and elegant are the first words that come to mind upon going through the first few pages of this book.

The book is a selection of stories, or their portions, from the original literature, ranging from the medieval times to the first half of the 20th century, and covering both Spanish and Latin American authors. In addition, it has an occasional interlude consisting of a short poem or a selection of proverbs to tempt the neophite into further exploring the richness of the Spanish language. Being a dual-langage book, the english translation of a story appears on a facing page. I found the translation of varying utility in nailing down the nuances, but the glossary at the end of the book is quite good, so one can read without a separate dictionary at least on the first pass.

The book generally avoids the use of subjunctive and introduces the past tense only in the middle. I had thought that this would make the stories look emaciated, as is the case with a number of such readers I'd seen. Somehow, it does not happen with Flores' delightful volume; if anything, it drives the point home that verbs is not all there is to a language, rich vocabulary and phraseology are just as important, and Flores' selections definitely get across that aspect of the beauty and expressiveness of the Spanish language.

As you work through this reader, more likely than not, your motivation to keep going with your Spanish and, furthermore, to get familiar with its rich literature, will be reinforced tremendously. It will also encourage you to venture into unabridged novels and stories in Spanish sooner than you had thought possible.

Finally, an attractive price helps make it a real winner.

an exotic and practical entry to spanish

Although there are some mistakes which my mexican tutor vigorously pointed out years ago (Cefiro doesn't mean zephyr in spanish or central america, or something like that),this is more than anything an entertaining book. "Why some people don't figure in the census" is just about as entertaining a short story as any american modernist could write in two pages and the surreal "the Switchman" gives the beginning reader a chance to see a creepy Kafka-like story in spooky, creative, poetic, spanish. Yet with respect especially toward this last story is that right in the middle of the book it stops being a beginners' book. I think that the second half of it should be read in english - depending on the persons' desire or time spent learning the lanuage,- and read in spanish months later: The latter half of the book contains relatively difficult stories with specific and scarcely used words.

Yet at the same time this is really the only good thing about these dual language books: - to reach real foreign literature by means of, in our case, English ; to think that by simply glancing over to the other page one can fool one's inherent english syntax into conjuring itself up as spanish. Will this yield a result?;- expecting the clarifaction of words and relatively obscure grammar(DISIMULAR- to overlook; LO DE MAIZ- the corn affair) which are not simple to suddenly become simple in a first readers' book for beginners is silly. But the stories! This is a fountainhead book one can always go back to for grammar and those words(horquilla - pitchfork, perito-expert, avena - oat) that aren't used daily and a glossary that can be easily found in a BINDING that two angry wrestlers contemplating the book as a wishbone would have trouble unlacing! This book would also, I imagine, help Germans or French who are forced into learning spanish as a third language refresh their memory by dint of the stories' inherent charm and wit.

I recall one story where a women is referred to as "lista" - at MY own slovenly and innocent first glance it was rendered only "smart" or "alive" , but after many rereadings the connotation "sly" reared its head and a simple parable, though yes only a parable, took on a more shrewd and teasing meaning. Any future student of spanish will be faced with false cognates and problems such as those addressed in this book, and yet it solves these problems without being irritating.

The connotations and simple double-meanings I have mentioned permeate the book, and I am sure the meanings of many -especially those of el guardigujas- will continue alluding me for some time to come.

This book should be given to all high school students harboring intentions to study spanish.It is nothing less than a linguistic phenomenon,- a jewel.