Monday, October 3, 2016

Book Review - La Casa: Short and Easy Spanish Novels



This book caught me by surprise. It is not your regular bland story for beginners. LA Casa: Short & Easy Spanish Novel for Beginners is about a family that finds the perfect house or so they think. The story picks up quickly and I found myself asking the characters (out loud) why they chose to do certain things. I found myself concentrating on the story and not the level of the material. I have to admit that the book was nothing like I expected.

The bi-lingual book is written for people at the A2 level (Advanced beginner) and it has an interesting design. Twenty-one chapters - Ten sentences each chapter - No more than 12 words per line. That was the format.

It was a quick and easy read and I finished it in about 30 to 45 minutes.

Joe Arenas, the author, has written a jewel of a short story here and I think it would a good tool in the quest to retain or increase your level of Spanish.

Me gustó mucho este libro y se lo recomendaría a los principiantes y los lectores intermedios.
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Bakari Akil II, Ph.D. is a Professor of Communication and also writes for his blog at Psychology Today. He is also the author of Spanish Conversations: Realistic Conversations to Improve your Spanish and Conversaciones en Inglés: ¡Conversaciones realistas para mejorar tu inglés!

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Book Review - Citas en el Restaurante


Citas en el restaurante is a quick and easy read if you are at least an advanced beginner to intermediate reader. The e-book follows the foibles of a guy who enters the dating scene after 6 years of being in a relationship. His method of finding love is through e-dating. As you can guess, he is a mess when it comes to dating and his best foot forward is often his worst.



The chapters are short and easy to digest. The author keeps it interesting by changing the scenes in every chapter. I think this is a great book to help the reader maintain their level of Spanish while also picking up some interesting words and phrases. I enjoyed reading it and it took me only 2 days to finish it by periodically reading a chapter when I had a bit of free time. 

The book is one of a series of e-books created by Jorge from thatspanish.com. I could not find a last name for the author and I think he meant it to be that way. Anyway, it is free if you are with Kindle Unlimited ($9.99 for unlimited number of books each month that are registered with Amazon's KU program). Or, it costs $1.69, if not enrolled in the KU program.


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Bakari Akil II, Ph.D. is a Professor of Communication and also writes for his blog at Psychology Today. He is also the author of Spanish Conversations: Realistic Conversations to Improve your Spanish and Conversaciones en Inglés: ¡Conversaciones realistas para mejorar tu inglés!