blood cinema

Apart from the sheer nuts and bolts of learning Spanish, you might be interested in "reading around" the subject... maybe reading accounts by people who have travelled\worked in Spanish-speaking countries.... or perhaps reading about spanish literature\films\music\art ... or simply reading novels\detective stories\historical novels featuring Spain\Spanish-speaking people.

One of the pleasant things about learning Latin is the sheer abundance of stuff like that... and sometimes it is a pleasant change from the hard graft of trying to translate Virgil or Horace. There are loads of novels about ancient Rome, detective stories featuring Roman detectives ( obviously)( I recommend Lindsey Davies and her detective, Falco) , loads of writing about Latin texts, plenty of books about Roman Gods, accounts of travel through modern Greece and Rome with a historical slant... etc... you get the idea.

When I got interested in Welsh I was fascinated and encouraged by a brilliant book called Travels in an Old Tongue ( Pamela Petro). This is an account of a woman's travels all over the world speaking Welsh to Welsh people in China, Japan, Patagonia, the USA.... great stuff... and much easier than reading Welsh I can assure you.

SO...... what is there like this , but about Spanish? Well, I haven't actually got much of this sort of thing, but there are certainly plenty of books available about spanish culture, literature and films. I've put a selection of them up as photo's... most of these books are very highly rated.

Many of them are pretty expensive too... so I suggest you get them from your library... order them if necessary. This means you get to read them ,PLUS you are showing that there is a demand for Spanish books. I get Spanish stuff out when I go to the library, even if it is just to stop them saying there is no demand. Do it!!

NOW... can any of you out there recommend other books like these ?

I have also found that there is an increasing tendency for Oxfam bookshops not to display foreign-language stuff like they used to. Some keep them in the storeroom ( ask) but some just don't keep them at all. Complain!

Talking of doing it, here's something you might want to watch\tape.... at 4 a.m. in the early hours of Tue 2nd , "Talk Spanish"is on the TV ( BBC2 ) + Eurografters (Spain) straight afterwards. Well worth having.
Early the next morning ( 4am on Wednesday 2nd) they are showing Mi Vida Loca which is also well worth recording.

Here's Zoe with a rather dramatic, intense song, Luna.
There's loads of versions of this on the net, with or without words, live versions etc......



And here is a video of the words....



and, unusually, a video with the words in both Spanish and English...



now, to wind today's post up, here's a quote for you...

las personas son como polillas, buscan la luz para terminar girando alrededor de una bombella...