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/lit/ - Literature

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6845684 No.6845684 [Reply] [Original]

What Spanish Language books to read? Preferably shorter and / or simple to understand at first.

Background: I took 7 years of Spanish or so, and stopped my Freshman year in college (biggest regret of my college experience).

Nowadays, about 6 years since I've formally taken A Spanish course, I can still understand the language decently when spoken to, and I can read okay, but need to make frequent stops to look up the definition of words.

With that in mind, what do you recommend, /lit/?

> inb4 Don Quixote

Just finished it in English. Will read in Spanish someday, but not ready yet.

webm unrelated, but neat.

>> No.6845702

Also, if anyone has any recs for spanish podcasts or listening materials it would be greatly appreciated.
I work in education, and thus have a month off until the school year starts, so I have quite a bit of free time for this.

>> No.6845707

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

>> No.6845716

>>6845684
cool webm, although to be honest I find glass sculptures kind of lame.

>> No.6845730

>>6845716

You must respect the craftsmanship though.

>> No.6846763

>>6845684

Isabel Allende's short stories are good. I have never read her novellas, but I remember reading the short stories in High School Spanish courses.

>> No.6846852
File: 43 KB, 400x400, 1436354303211.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6846852

>>6845684
Mexican here, lemme give you advice.
Don't read any Cortázar, Bolaño, Fuentes, Borges, etc. They're hard, they may not be for us natives (and that's why a lot of hispanics say they aren't hard) but they fucking are for non-natives.

Read Juan Rulfo, either Pedro Páramo or El Llano en Llamas. The guy is like the mexican Hemingway, great books with simple straightforward prose. His books are also really short (100 pages aprox. each).

>> No.6846867

>>6846852

thanks so much for the advice. I am a huge Borges fan, but I've only read his work in English. I would like to read it in Spanish, but I assume the vocabulary and the word play would be tough until I re-learn a lot.

>> No.6846891

>>6846867
Glad to help m8.
You should also check out José Emilio Pacheco (another mexican autor).
His book Las Batallas en el Desierto is easy as fuck and like 70 pages long, and most of his other stuff are short stories.
He also writes good, easy to read poetry, if you feel like reading poetry in spanish.

epublibre . org is an excellent site for getting epubs in spanish, btw.

>> No.6846965

>>6846891

Hell yeah, thanks a ton for the link and the recs, friend.

>> No.6846973

>>6845684
I recommend you to read Julio Ramon Riberyo (from my country, Peru). He's not the best writer, but his short stories are simple and entertaining.

>> No.6846999

>>6846973

added to the list, thanks!

>> No.6848178

To be completely honest, I'd recommend you read some YA. Not necessarily twilight tier but stuff like Earthsea and Narnia and Darren Shan. They're meant for younger audiences with worse attention span and vocabulary.

Start with YA and go up from there. That's my 2¢

>> No.6848335

La Saga de los Confines, de Liliana Bodoc es una trilogía fantástica, muy buena

>> No.6849512

>>6848178

I figured as much. I would rather not just read English works translated into Spanish, though.

I've ordered some Isabel Allende short stories, which I remember reading in Spanish Classes in high school.

Like I said, I can read pretty well. Slowly, of course, but many of the words come back to me when I see them written.

>> No.6849520

>>6848335

Thanks! I've got it added to the list.

>> No.6850478

>>6846852
d-do you have that onion booty?
I wanna ream a qt mexican gf like you

>> No.6850629

>>6849512
Isabel Allende is shit-tier, really, don't waste your time on that bitch. She's the talent-less ripoff of García Márquez. Her characters, plots, misdirected prose and outdated as fuck magical realism are just too vapid. If you want to read magical realism in that exotic, baroque vein you can stick with the Latin American Boom of the sixties.

>> No.6850631

>>6845702
I had a hard time finding Spanish audio books the conventional way (torrents) and the podcasts I found were shit. I was pleased to learn though that many libraries let you download audio books at no cost, and they have a great many in Spanish (at least my library)

Also I'm reading Don Quixote in Spanish currently and find it pretty easy to comprehend

>> No.6850838

>>6846852
Would Borges really be that difficult for a native English speaker? He was a massive anglophile and wrote in a very English fashion for Spanish literature. I'd imagine he'd be one of the easier authors to start with.

>> No.6850940

>>6850629
So much this. Don't even bother, anon.

>> No.6850969

>>6845684
just read harry potter in spanish

>> No.6851272

>>6850629
>>6850940
Not that anon, but I think there's a place for Isabel Allende. She may not be a great author, but if you're looking for a legitimate, non-YA author who writes in easy to understand spanish, I think Allende is great.

>> No.6851292

>>6845684
Pedro paramo, el llano en llamas, memorias de mis putas tristes, pedro y el capitan.

>> No.6851368

>>6845684
Rayuela
Ficciones
La Tregua
Platero y yo
Boquitas Pintadas

>> No.6851375

Juan José Arreola is GOAT and very accessible to read.

>> No.6851408

>>6850838
I've never read him in English, but I kind of agree with your sentiment. A lot of what makes Borges complicated is complicated in any language, and a lot of the more complicated vocabulary consists of cognates between the two languages. It just happens that it's hard to understand everything that Borges says because his works are very erudite, so that can be another problem to add on to someone with shaky language skills.

>> No.6851919
File: 26 KB, 500x438, 1429388078352.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6851919

>>6845684

>that webm

>You will never be that skilled at something

>> No.6851956

Isabel Allende is utter shit.
Try Borges, Cortazar, Horacio Quiroga, Rulfo, Bolaño, etc. The usuals.
please don't call borges a magical realist

>> No.6851979

>>6848335
Lei esto cuando era chico y me encanto, me habia olvidado completamente de que existia.
Sus otros libros estan buenos?

>> No.6852177

El lazarillo de tormes its as classic as Don Quixote, if youre reading Cervantes, it wont be that difficult for you to read the first novela picaresca.

>> No.6852602

>>6851919
had to lol when he placed the horse among the 3 other identically made horses. Why would I want a skill that's already been superseded by machines man?

>> No.6852614

>>6845684
that shit would be so much easier if he just used his hands to mold it

>> No.6854334

At the risk of sounding stupid, is there a reason why the works mentioned in this thread are so recent ? Is it because the language has changed and reading a recent book is easier, or has literature written in Spanish gone through some sort of golden age in the 20th century ?

>> No.6854898

>>6854334
Modern Spanish is already convoluted enough to represent a challenging reading to non-natives. More archaic forms of Spanish would be extremely hard.
Also, a greater percentage of Spanish literature is Latin American literature, which was still on a very formative process during the 19th century and it feels somewhat samey. There are some good books there, nonetheless.
I, for one, don't like Spanish literature (as in literature written by people from Spain). I find it uninteresting, bland and its spanish variant is very dry. The only author from Spain I'd reccomend is Javier Marías.
Another factor I can bring forth is that Latin American literature tends to be strongly regional in themes, use of language, semiotic devices, etc, so that only increases the difficulty of fully understanding someone's work without a somewhat deep cultural background. Borges might very well be one of the only exceptions for that.

>> No.6854914

>>6852614
It's molten glass. Even with gloves, he'd burn the skin off his hands.