Spanish Novels: La maratón

Spanish Novels for Upper-Intermediates - B2 #17

by Paco Ardit

Looking for Spanish Novels?I know how tough it is to find good readings to learn a new language.You don't usually have a large vocabulary or are able to read long and complex sentences.You'd like to go right to the fun stuff, but maybe it's too hard for you now.A typical 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 that. It will take you to the next level in less time. That means less effort and struggling towards your way to fluency in Spanish. Improving your Spanish can be lots of fun. A Spanish Book for Upper-Intermediates (B2) Both Fun & EasyLa maratón is the book number 17 of the Spanish Novels Series. 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. Luis lives in Colombia and co-owns an ice cream shop in Bogotá. He's overweight and lives for the food. One day the power in his building departament goes out, and he has a hard time climbing the stairs to the sixth floor. He goes to the doctor and he suggests him to change his lifestyle. Luis starts running and eating healthier, but his girlfriend and his business partner won't make things easy for him.This Spanish Book for Upper-Intermediates will show you 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. This Upper-Intermediate Spanish book will definitely help you work your way up toward more advanced readings.Why Spanish NovelsShort SentencesShort chaptersEasy vocabularySimple grammarEveryday dialoguesAn Upper-Intermediate (B2) Spanish Reader in SIMPLE Spanish.From the First la casa de Luis y Gisela, los domingos son los días de maratón. Cuando la gente piensa en la palabra “maratón” se imagina personas corriendo durante horas para alcanzar una meta. Pero para Luis y Gisela, maratón no tiene nada que ver con “hacer ejercicio” o “correr”. Las maratones de los domingos para ellos son maratones de Netflix y comida chatarra. Es prender el SmartTV por la mañana temprano, quedarse pegados a la pantalla durante todo el día y apagar la TV por la noche, a última hora. Ver temporadas enteras de sus series favoritas mientras comen comida del delivery.Los domingos por la noche casi siempre piden lo hamburguesas de McDonald's. Hoy encargaron dos BigMacs para cada uno con papas extra-grandes y gaseosa. Esta es una comida de tamaño normal. En alguna ocasión han llegado a comer tres y hasta cuatro BigMacs cada uno. Con dos BigMacs y papas grandes aún tienen bastante espacio libre en el estómago.Learn Vocabulary With a Spanish Reader for Upper-IntermediatesLa maratón includes a short guide to download and install a FREE Spanish-English Dictiona

Genres: Spanish Literature, Fiction

104 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 1, 2020

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

[Carlos Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trying to read a bit in Spanish every day. Pretty sure I'd find this story utterly absurd if I read it in English, but for my level of vocabulary and grammar it's a good fit.

[Ian Elder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty helpful for practicing reading Spanish. A very simple story, but entertaining enough to read very quickly. There's a good amount of dialogue which I really appreciate.

I would have liked a glossary of idioms used--ideally explaining the idioms in Spanish. There are lots of expressions that a dictionary doesn't help with.

Mild spoiler below:

Don't read this for marathon training advice! Going from never exercising in your life to marathoning in 6 months is not a good idea for most, and beefing up training in the last two weeks is the opposite of what you should do!

I'm kind of joking, no one would ever read this for that reason, but seriously the author could do a tiny bit more research...

[Gillian Burles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Level was very comfortable to read (had to check on a word every now and then when the context wasn’t clear). Very appreciative of these books as the different levels help me get more and more exposure.

[Ian Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent novella from Paco Ardit. This one tells of a self-confessed slob, Luis, owner of one of the most popular ice cream parlours in Bogota, who is inspired to train to run a marathon. The catalyst for this is when he arrives at his apartment block one day to find the lift isn’t working because of a power cut. He decides to use the stairs and has rather alarming chest pains by the time he reaches his apartment.
Luis is 39 years old and has been clinically obese since childhood having been brought up in a rather podgy household. His girlfriend, Gisela, has a similar background. Although she is a talented chef, she has a penchant for junk food and the two of them encourage each other’s gluttony. Sundays are spent watching box sets fuelled by Big Macs and tubs of ice cream. Likewise, Luis’ business partner, Hugo, can match his gut. However, once Luis decides to start a new regime of jogging and salads, Gisela and Hugo do everything they can to undermine him, ridicule him and tempt him back to the road that leads to heart disease, stroke and premature death.
I won’t spoil it by saying anymore about the plot. Suffice to say that the plot is engaging enough to carry all the grammar you would expect for a B2 upper intermediate story: conditionals, gerunds, pluperfects etc, and (for me anyway) a lot of new words, or words used in some kind of Colombian/South American sense: bolilla, edulcorantes, tamanes.
This is a great book for the price and I would recommend it to anyone who is either at B2 stage already or looking to move up to B2 from B1.

[Eric Paradis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Belle trouvaille que sont ces romans en espagnol qui permettent d'aiguiser sa lecture dans la langue de Cervantes. Petits chapitres courts en langage familier, une intrigue assez convenue, mais très actuelle, ça donne envie d'en lire d'autres. Il y a différents titres pour différents niveaux de maîtrise de la langue, which is good ou plutôt ¡ Que bueno !

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disfruté este libro inmensamente, el nivel parece bastante preciso y me sostenía la atención durante 4 horas de lectura. Se trata de Luis que es un confeso gordo quien trabaja en una heladería con su gordo amigo Hugo y juntos son los dueños del negocio, uno de los mejores de Bogotá con todos los gustos de helado disponibles. A su novia también le gusta su comida (Me atajé de llamarla gorda también!) y ninguno de los 3 han participado nunca en ejercicio. Un día hay un apagón en su edificio, bastante común en Bogotá según lo qué he leído, por lo tanto Luis necesita subir las escaleras hasta el sexto piso para llegar a su hogar. Después de subir se siente dolor por el corazón y su estado físico no es nada impresionante! Por consejo de su médico, decide tirar la comida chatarra para un estilo de vida más saludable y activo. A su novia piensa que se ha venido arriba con todo el asunto y le dice que se debiera rendir. Concretó una meta de perder algunos kilogramos y participa en un reality show para personas que nunca han corrido un maratón antes. Con la ayuda y el apoyo de sus nuevos amigos termina en el puesto 18 y está jubiloso. Al final se corte con Gisela y encuentra amor con otra más alineada a su nuevo pasatiempo y estilo de vida. A cualquiera que le gusten los libros sencillos en español le va a gustar seguro este libro.

[Jenee Antoniu]

It feels like it took forever to finish this book, but it was just 6 months. I think I was in a little over my head with this one. I'm definitely not ready for Upper Intermediate level Spanish reading. This one knocked me down a peg.

Great things about this book (and I think the whole series of books): it uses repetitive structure so that you can learn new vocabulary and sentence structures, without being so repetitive as being annoying. The story line was predictable (which helps with comprehension in a second language), but it was still interesting.

I definitely was able to understand the gist of the story on my own. However, I did quite a bit of translating to understand some of the nuance. By the end I had my own personal glossary in the back of the book. I will definitely continue with this author, but just a level down (for at least a little while).

[DavidO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro es bueno. Es sobre un hombre que es gordo pero su salud no es bueno. Trata correr un maratón. Su vida cambia completamente.

The book is not too hard and not too easy. It seems like it's about right for B2.

The characters have to deal with some real life problems. Sure they are resolved easily, but it's nice that they exist in an educational book.

[Adrián · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paco Ardit no me dcepcionó de nuevo. La forma en que escribe estas historias me mantenía extremadamente concentrado y, a veces, me reía de su absurdo. La historia en sí encarna una asombrosa mezcla de seriedad y humor, que luego da como resultado la creación de un hermoso troll.

[Saloni (earnestlyeccentric) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not me trying to keep up my Spanish whilst balancing medical school lol

Also, this book makes me want to run a marathon, if only my knees weren't so clicky :-/ (double also, not sure the health and marathon advice in this book is...reliable)

[Inks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was a lovely read just before bed! Now I’m onto llamadas perdidas!

[Cees · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leuk om te lezen. Ik heb weer een hoop woorden geleerd wat ook de bedoeling is natuurlijk

[أحمد جيو حسن · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gusta mucho este cuento y la verdaderia que podemos cambiarnos si queremos; solo necesitamos creer que podemos hacerlo.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good B2 level read.