Spanish novels?

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Right now I'm in the process of trying to teach myself Spanish, not to know a little bit and forget it in three years, I mean I'd really like to learn to speak it as well as I can speak English. Part of my ambition on this - I'm very cogniscient that there is a whole continent and land bridge to the south of us that speaks it as their dominant language (aside from various native American languages) and I know there have to be many brilliant minds, great thinkers, people who's thoughts and opinions I'd really want to know a lot more about, who may only have their thoughts published in Spanish or who may have incredible radio programs where to clue in I'd have to know it inside and out.

My question is this - do any of you know of any really good Spanish novels, fiction or nonfiction, that you would recommend reading? I'm at the point where I feel like I could tackle a project of reading a 300 to 400 page novel in Spanish, it would be especially helpful in learning and drilling in the most commonly used verbs, phrases, etc..

En clase de Espanol, leemos libros por ninos. Puedes mirar en amazon por novelas extranjeras.

You may want to check the list of Nobel literature laureates for Spanish authors:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lite ... laureates/

Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes in a Colombian style that is difficult to read...But, if you work with an English translation at the same time, it isn't so bad.

There are many.

Here you have one:

"Cien años de soledad" de Gabriel García Márquez
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundre ... f_Solitude

It starts:


"Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de veinte casas de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarías con el dedo."


"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. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point."

I just said the heck with it and went to Borders to grab something, anything. This is what I came up with:



From the overview it sounds like a bit of Dean R Koontz mixed with John Grisham, 665 pages worth of windy and floral wording, I have a feeling this'll keep me busy for a while to come

It depends what sort of literature you're into.
I could recommend Jorge Luis Borges -see wikipedia entry- if you're into surrealism, laberynths, etc. I particularly like The Garden of the Forking Paths, The Book of Sand, A Universal History of Infamy.
All of his books have been translated into English and the translations are generally very good. So you could buy copies on both languages just in case if you have any trouble following the story
Well, have a look. You might like it.

And you can find Borges absolutely everywhere. Amazon comes to mind

oh man, if you're trying to read in spanish you're in for some great stuff. there's genres that dont exist in english well like magical realism. and i highly recomend reading isabel allende. marquez, neruda, storni, and deffinately the nobel winners too. i think you'll find that its a different style and it's amazing. im taking a spanish litterature class right now and i love it!

Cronopios by cortázar is one of my fave books, short stories, sometimes one or three pages long. Odd stories!
in fact cortázar wrote a lot of short stories, i've read his whole work, i still don't know if I feel proud or not of that fact

la fiesta del chivo, by vargas llosa, about latino dictatorship
hm, there's lots to choose from... hmm, aha! El hombre que lo tenía todo todo todo by Miguel Angel Asturias

btw just realized my dad has read the whole work of Luis Spota
damn aspies