Spanish Novels: Upper Intermediate's Bundle B2 - Five Spanish Short Stories for Upper Intermediates in a Single Book (Learn Spanish Boxset #4)

Learn Spanish Boxset #4

by Paco Ardit

Looking for Spanish Novels?I know how tough it is to find good books to help you learn a new language.You usually don't have a large vocabulary.You aren't able to read long and complex novels intended for native speakers.You'd like to go right to the fun stuff, but maybe it's too hard for you now.A typical beginner's Spanish reader isn't interesting or just plain boring.But this book is not like that.Learning with Spanish Novels is easy and straightforward. Forget about difficult long texts with English-translations. This book for Spanish learners is not like it will take you to the next level in no time! That means less effort and struggle on your way to fluency in Spanish. Improving your Spanish can be lots of fun.An Easy Spanish Book Both Fun & EasyThe Upper Intermediate's Bundle (B2) packs five titles published in the Spanish Novels Series. This is a great way to continue your learning journey after you're done with the A1, A2, and B1 stories. This Upper Intermediate Spanish Reader is packed with useful expressions you need in everyday greetings, asking questions, talking to friends, etc. Anyone who has an upper intermediate command of the Spanish language can take advantage of this book. You need to know conditionals, gerund, pluperfect and simple past tenses. Besides, in this book you will find longer and more complex sentences and chapters. This bundle includes the following B2 Perro que habla no muerdeLa maratón 2052El robo del sigloLlamada perdidaFive easy stories to learn the most used grammar structures in different situations. As the difficulty level is just right you will learn and enjoy it at the same time. There's no doubt about An upper intermediate Spanish book is the best option to continue practicing the language.Why Spanish NovelsShort sentencesShort chaptersEasy vocabularySimple grammarEveryday dialoguesUpper Intermediate Spanish readers in SIMPLE Spanish.Sample from one of the stories (El robo del siglo):Los viernes, el Banco Central de México D.F. cierra sus puertas al público a las 3pm. Después de esa hora, ya nadie puede entrar al banco. Los empleados, de todos modos, deben seguir trabajando hasta las 4.30 o 5pm. A nadie le gusta quedarse después de hora, pero la verdad es que no hay otra opción. Todos los días quedan cosas pendientes, y alguien debe encargarse de resolverlas. Hoy, los últimos en salir son los cajeros. Para ser un viernes no está nada a 4.40pm ya estaban afuera del banco. En la puerta saludaron al personal de seguridad. Ellos siempre se quedaban hasta las 6 de la tarde (y a veces un poco más). El día de hoy, debían esperar a los técnicos informáticos. Sus jefes les aseguraron que los técnicos iban a llegar al banco antes de las 6pm, por lo que no tendrían que quedarse después de hora.Learn Vocabulary With a Spanish Easy ReaderThe Upper Intermediate's Bundle (B2) includes a short guide to download and install a FREE Spanish-English Dictionary.

Genres: Spanish Literature

426 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 21, 2016

About the author

Paco Ardit is the author of the Spanish Novels Series. He was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1976. Since the early 1980’s he lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He loves learning and teaching languages, reading books, and writing fiction. His mission is to create the best materials for language learners who don't want to settle for easy and boring.

Combining his experience in learning, languages and fiction writing he comes up with fun and engaging graded readers in multiple genres: Mystery, Detective Stories, Romance, Comedy, Drama, and more.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are trying to learn Spanish, reading is a great supplement to your other learning. Paco Ardit (Walter Freiberg) offers a lot of his books in these bundles and I highly recommend them as it is much less expensive than buying his books individually. This bundle includes 5 novellas, each about 80 pages long. There are no vocabulary lists, no Q&A, just the stories. These novellas are written at the intermediate level, a bit advanced for me but still quite accessible. Yes, I had to look up some words but you can usually determine the meaning from the context of the story.

The novellas:
Perro que habla no muerde - a cute story about a young boy and his dog.
La maraton - an overweight guy decides to change his life
Marte 2052 - a rather bleak look at the future
El robo del siglo - crime fiction
Llamada perdida - a story about a really annoying young woman

These stories a part of the graded reader series - B2 intermediate. I think they can be read by advanced beginners or intermediate learners. May be a bit too simple if you are advanced beyond intermediate.

[Ursula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Ardit Paco`s books. They are a great way to improve you Spanish rreading ability. That time I just adored the first story most. It is about a friendship of an boy with a dog, who could talk. But I already knew that dogs are able to talk with their owners, who are childern. And now I am grown up and my dogs still talk to me. The other stories are well written and te vocab is well chosen.

[Joachim · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than four years ago, I read two of the stories in this B2 bundle. I don't recall the plots or anything, but even at the time I noted it was an easy read, and especially handy to kill time during a school recess as the chapters are very short. Anyway, I decided to return to the rest of the series and brush up on my rusty Spanish. Below I review La maratón, Llamada perdida, and Marte:2052.

When it comes to the language and book structure, which is no doubt the chief reason why a person would read something like that, this book meets my standards. It's an immersion right and proper; there're no vocabulary lists, grammar boxes, or exercises. As long as one reads at the adequate level, it's easy to absorb tons of words in a short span of time without having to resort to dictionaries, or become bored out of one's wits. That's what I appreciate these stories for, and why I rate them relatively high.

The content, however, could do with some polishing. The first two stories I read, La maratón and Llamada perdida, are supposed to be a realistic fiction. Being a graded reader, the necessarily constrained vocabulary, sentence structure, clarity of text, fixed length of chapters, etc., make the writing task challenging. As a result, the plots are underdeveloped, many things are unexplained or written hastily, but at least this pair of stories made some sort of logical sense, even though I'm still left asking why doesn't the girl just block the unknown caller if the calls are bothering her.

Deliberately, I left Marte:2025 for the finish. I've never been a fan of science fiction books, and didn't have high hopes. To no-one's surprise, this experience only entrenched my opinion, albeit unfairly to the genre as a whole. From a scientific point of view, the story was rather inaccurate, and there were major writing mistakes (e.g. a changing number of continents). The characters were especially poorly sketched, and the whole thing of Mars being inhabited by, gasp!, human-like entities has just killed it.

All in all, as far as I remember, all four stories, except Marte: 2025, are a decent and pleasurable way to get into the habit of reading in Spanish, if you don't expect anything extraordinary literature-wise.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me han gustado estas historias de Paco Ardit tan cómo las otras que he leído. La nivel es más alta, así que tiene sentido que las historias no son menos interesantes. Lo que sucede en las historias no siempre es muy realista, pero aún es más o menos entretenido. La historia de "La maratón" contiene algunos estereotipos negativos sobre las personas gordas, y eso era la peor parte del libro para mí. Pero incluso en "La maratón" hay cosas que me gustan, como la cuenta de la dificultad en bajar de peso.

[Ian Magargee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for upper intermediate learners

I love Paco's short chapters. They make reading his stories less intimidating and more fluid. I also feel like at no point was I overwhelmed with unfamiliar vocabulary. I could genuinely settle into and enjoy each story without the distraction of constantly looking things up, which I think makes for the best kind of learning experience. Great for extensive rather than intensive reading if you're around the B2 level. Thank you Paco!

[Rob Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great way to learn Spanish

I have been reading many of Paco's books and it has really changed the way that I can speak and understand Spanish now. I am so thankful that he wrote these fun and interesting stories that make you want to read more and learn more Spanish. Thank you, Paco.

[Chris Leuchtenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good practice for my intermediate spanish and just interesting enough to keep me reading.

[DavidO · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just right

Not too hard, not too easy. The stories are pretty interesting, though most of them go over the top and become overly dramatic. So, not perfect but good enough.