Start Reading Bestselling Spanish Novels Today!

Ever notice now a great story pulls you in from the very first lines?

Like this one for example:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Right away you start wondering:

Who was Colonel Aureliano Buendía?
Why was he about to be executed by firing squad?
What does ice have to do with it?

Those are the first lines from a novel titled “One Hundered Years of Solitude”, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that sold over 30 million copies, earned the author a Nobel Prize in Literature and was translated into 37 languages. Oh, and you should know that this novel was originally written in Spanish.

It’s a good story. But it’s even better in Spanish.

Read the first chapter from each of 5 classic Spanish novels translated inline for beginners.

Leverage Spanish Stories to Improve Your Spanish

If you’re thinking it would be great to read that novel in Spanish and use it to improve your Spanish you are of course right. But it’s not an easy story for beginners to read. Gabriel Garcia Marquez had a big vocabulary and because it uses a lot of not so common Spanish words, it’s not an easy read even for intermediate Spanish students, much less beginners, and if you simply head over to Amazon and buy a copy in Spanish, you are likely to put it down frustrated after a few pages, unless you are already advanced in your Spanish study.

Reading Spanish Books Will Improve Your Spanish

Reading books in any language is a great way to grow your vocabulary. That’s how I developed an over 30,000 word vocabulary in English. Books are a great way to learn new words and how to use them.

The problem with reading books in your new language, is that as a beginner, it’s just too much of a pain to look up more than a few words per page, even if you can look up the words instantly by taping or clicking on the word on your computer.

There is also the problem of being able to understand what the individual words mean by using your computerized translator, but still having no idea what the entire phrase means when the words are taken together. In English, if someone says to you, “You hit the nail on the head!” it means that you said something exactly right and the meaning of the phrase has nothing to do with hitting, or nails, or heads. In Spanish there are many similar examples.

You Could Read the Spanish Versions of “Fun With Dick and Jane”

It’s easy to find simple stories in Spanish in Spanish that were written for foreigners learning Spanish.

There is nothing wrong with reading these stories, the problem is that they just aren’t nearly as interesting as 30 million plus copy best sellers — not even close. If you try to find Spanish books at your current level of Spanish, what you will find are books that are the Spanish equivalent of “Fun with Dick and Jane” when you really want to be reading is the Spanish equivalent of “Gone With the Wind.”

Why Most Spanish Book Translations Wont Help You Much

Have you ever picked up a dual translation book that you were interested in? You’ve seen the type with Spanish on the left and English on the Right. These books do have some value, but only once you can already read your new language fairly well. For beginners they are useless. It’s just too hard to look back and forth between the Spanish and the English and figure out what everything means.

What you need as a Spanish student trying to read a book in Spanish is a way of reading the book while quickly understanding the literal meaning of each Spanish word, and what the entire phrase means when the words are written together.

Which Spanish Books Should You Read?

You will love these Spanish novels. This book gives you the first chapter from each of five best selling novels.

Another problem you will have when you are trying to read Spanish books for the first time, is that you have no idea which books you will enjoy, so it’s easy to waste a bunch of time and money as you figure out which Spanish books you will enjoy.

To help solve that problem we took a survey of the most popular novels in Spanish and we’ve translated the first chapter from each of five best selling Spanish novels, in a way that will let you as a beginner read and enjoy the book today.

First you will read one or two phrases or sentences with our carefully made inline translations, and then you will read the Spanish text again just below that without translations and that’s where the fun starts!

You are reading real Spanish novels, in Spanish without translations (starting today, not after six months of study) and using interesting books to rapidly grow your confidence and vocabulary in Spanish.

It’s very likely that one or more of these novels will grab your attention and pull you into it so much that you become a big fan of that author. Remember these are all mega best sellers.

Five Spanish Novels You Should Read First

Real Spanish literature you will love, not dumbed down stories for beginners.

We took a survey of one hundred native speakers of Spanish and asked them to list their favorite novels in Spanish, tabulated the results and here are the results that we’ve packaged into our book.

Of course you can read them in any order, but here they are in the order that we suggest reading them:

Tales from the Jungle — Cuentos de la Selva

Like Water for Chocolate — Como Agua Para Chocolate (also a major motion picture).

Love in the Time of Cholera — El Amor en el Tiempos del cólera

The House of the Spirits —La Casa de los Espíritus

One Hundred Years of Solitude — Cien Anos de Solidad

They have had combined sales of over 100 million copies!

We’ve five novels, because our method of translation roughly triples the length of the book and we want to have the option of publishing a paper version of this book even though right now it’s an ebook only.

So this is a BIG book with over 150,000 words.

So How Can I Read These Novels Starting Today?

Not long ago, I got an email advertising a program for learning Spanish that promised me that after only three months of studying Spanish with their program, I would be able to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Now I think that guy has a good program and I’ve recommended it to a couple of people, but what I want to do, is to start reading One Hundred Years of Solitude today, without waiting to do some more boring studying that I might never get around to doing.

So here’s how we do this and in a minute I’ll show you a sample and you’ll get to read it, first with carefully made inline translations, then a minute later, in the original Spanish, without translations.

The first time you realize that you are really reading real Spanish, written for native speakers of Spanish, not dumbed down “Fun With Dick and Jane” stories for beginners, it’s really exciting!

How to Read This Book

You probably know by now that direct word by word translations from Spanish to English don’t always make sense and that the word order in Spanish is sometimes (but not always) the same as English. First we do a literal word by word of a short phrase from Spanish to English. The Spanish text will always be in black with the translation and notes in green.

If the literal word by word translation makes sense in English our format is Spanish text (literal translation then {notes about an important word in that phrase}).

When the direct translation of the Spanish into English either doesn’t make sense or is not easy to understand, we present first the Spanish Text, then a (literal translation <<then a good translation which will make sense>> {then notes on an important word from that phrase})

Then again below the text with translations, you will have the Spanish presented again without translation and you should read it again without translation for an additional review and of course you can always refer to the translated text above for any words you don’t know.

Try Reading this Right Now

This sample is from a very popular book called “Tales of the Jungle” (Cuentos de la Selva) by Horacio Quiroga. It’s the first chapter in our book.

Slowly read through the Spanish text in black with the translations in green, then immediately read the untranslated Spanish Text in black again right below it. The untranslated Spanish text is not only pleasant to read, it gives you an additional review.

This story is called, “The Giant Turtle” (La Tortuga Gigante).

Había una vez un hombre (There was one time a man <<Once upon a time there was a man>> {Había = past haber: to have; Había una vez: Once upon a time there was) que vivía en Buenos Aires (who lived in Buenos Aires {vivía = past vivir: to live}) y estaba muy contento (and was very contented <<and lived a very happy life>> {contento: happy, cheerful}) porque era un hombre sano y trabajador (because he was a man healthy and worker <<because he worked hard and enjoyed good health>> {sano: healthy; trabajador: worker}).

Then Without Translation Again Below

Había una vez un hombre que vivía en Buenos Aires y estaba muy contento porque era un hombre sano y trabajador.

Download the first chapter, Cuentos de la Selva, immediately when you place your oder.

Pero un día se enfermó (But one day he sickened <<But one day he fell ill>> {enfermó = past enfermar: to get sick, to get ill}), y los médicos le dijeron (and the doctors told him {dijeron = past decir: to say, to tell}) que solamente yéndose al campo podría curarse (that solely going to the country he could cure <<he would never get well unless he went to live in the country>> {curar: to cure, to heal, to get well}).

Pero un día se enfermó, y los médicos le dijeron que solamente yéndose al campo podría curarse.

Él no quería ir (He didn’t want to go) porque tenía hermanos chicos (because he had brothers little <<because he had little brothers>>) a quienes daba de comer (to whom he gave to eat <<whom he fed>> {daba = past dar: to give; comer: to eat}); y se enfermaba cada día más (and he sickened every day more <<but he was getting sicker every day>>).

Él no quería ir porque tenía hermanos chicos a quienes daba de comer; y se enfermaba cada día más.

Hasta que un amigo suyo (Until that a friend his <<One day a friend of his>>), que era director del Zoológico (who was director of the Zoo), le dijo un día (told him one day <<said to him>>):

Now Read The Entire Paragraph Without Translation

Había una vez un hombre que vivía en Buenos Aires, y estaba muy contento porque era un hombre sano y trabajador. Pero un día se enfermó y los médicos le dijeron que solamente yéndose al campo podría curarse. El no quería ir, porque tenía hermanos chicos a quienes daba de comer; y se enfermaba cada día más. Hasta que un amigo suyo, que era director del Zoológico, le dijo un día:

So what do you think?

You just read your first paragraph of this very popular novel, without translation and with understanding and a few minutes ago you would have thought that was impossible.

As Yogi Berra, once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”

How Much Would This Improve Your Spanish?

Many polyglots (people who speak multiple languages) recommend reading as a major part of your path to fluency. (cite 1, 2 & 3). Do you think it would improve your Spanish a lot? I think so.

Personally I am reading as many books in Spanish as I can, and for me, reading books translated with this method as much more pleasant than reading books where I have to click on every word to get a translation and if the Spanish book has an idiom, like “Hit the nail on the head.” I never do figure out exactly what the it means.

Vote For the Books You Want Translated Next

A good question that you might want to ask, is why we have only translated the first chapter of five different novels instead of maybe translating all of one novel.

The answer is that we aren’t 100% sure which of the books our customers will want to read from beginning to end. Let us know and we will do them.

As you might guess, making these kinds of translations is slow and expensive. The translations are made by hand and carefully hand formatted to be a great learning experience.

Every chapter has a link at the end that you can click on and request a translation in this style of the entire book as well as a link to buy the Spanish only book on Amazon if you are ready for that.

We will do the book next that gets the most advance orders. So you get to choose what we work on next.

Of course it’s very satisfying when you get to that stage!

Easy to Read on a Kindle

You will your ebook in all the common formats for easy reading on your favorite device. You’ll get a .doc file, an e-pub, .pdf, and Kindle formats. It’s very easy to email the book to your Kindle, just look for your personal email address in the Kindle settings on Amazon, attach your book to your email. Amazon will send you an email asking you to confirm that you want the book sent to your Kindle. Click okay in that email and the book will magically arrive, just like any other Kindle book

Free Bonus Book #1 – Cuentos Para Pensar

Download a free copy of the inspirational book, Cuentos Para Pensar by Jorge Bucay, immediately when you order

When you place your order now, we will give you a bonus of book the inspirational Spanish book translated in the same method so you can read it today called, “Tales for Thinking” (Cuentos Para Pensar) by Jorge Bucay.

Free Bonus Audio Book #2 – Cuentos de la Selva

When you buy Novels for Novices Spanish Volume 1, now, you will also get an additional free bonus for immediate download, the entire audiobook, Cuentos de la Selva.

Buy Novels for Novices — Spanish Volume 1 for Only $4.99

What a deal, you get the first chapter from each of five classic bestselling Spanish novels for only $4.99. You’ll also get a free copy of Cuentos Para Pensar (a book of inspirational stories), translated in the same inline style for easy reading right away.