Spanish Books - Page 4

Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet In Spanish And English (Spanish Edition)

Alma Flor Ada

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Celebrate Latin Heritage and Honor the Work of Farm Workers 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Right away, one can see that this is much more than your run-of-the-mill alphabet books. Two extremely talented people, author Alma Flor Ada and Simon Silva, collaborate on 28 short poems that celebrate the pride of the Latino familes that work the fields as migrant farmworkers. In fact, this book is dedicated to the memory of Cesar Chavez. Alma Flor Ada has written extensively on what it is like to be a Latina immigrant in such books as "Me Llamo Isabel," and Simon Silva has illustrated such like-themed books as "La Mariposa" and "El Campo."

The poems tell of the harvest, from Arboles (trees) to Zanahoria (carrot), with C and Ch telling the story of Cesar Chavez. The poems are both in English and Spanish; in both languages, the verse is rendered with great sensitivity. The beautiful illustrations convey not only the hard work of the fields, but also beauty and hope, not to mention a strong and serene sense of family. The people give thanks to the wind, sky, rain, sun, field, flower, and Earth for all the delicious fruits, while extoling honor, both in hard work and caring in the family. I can think of few other books that tell of these things, which most people take for granted, more beautifully.

Editorial Review:

In simple words and sun-drenched paintings, Alma Flor Ada and Simón Silva take us into the fields and orchards, and into the lives of the people who work them. Simple poems in Spanish and English, one for each letter of the Spanish alphabet, describe the wonder of the vegetable and fruit farms. Together, the poems and the rich illustrations celebrate the glory of nature and the hearts of all who dedicate their lives to working the land.

The Spanish Tragedy

Thomas Kyd

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent edition, excellent play 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

J.R. Mulryne's edition of *The Spanish Tragedy* is without a doubt the best that may at present be bought: informative, helpful, intelligent and accurate in introducing the text, presenting it, and glossing difficult words and phrases where necessary. The play is among the most exciting and artistic of its period. Kyd writes, and constructs his plot, with a level of skill comparable to that of Shakespeare, who was much influenced by *The Spanish Tragedy*, particularly in writing *Hamlet*, which is possibly yet "richer", but undoubtedly less clear and focused. Kyd shows us in an extremely sophisticated way the workings of revenge, both at an earthly and at a supernatural level. From the beginning the audience knows, in a way that the characters do not, that the supernatural world will insist on revenge. The pain of those who suffer injustice here on earth and clamour for revenge is painful to behold. Ultimately, however, in a baffling way, evildoers are punished: Hieronimo, the main character, manages to take matters into his own hands after exhausting all other possibilities, and thus ironically enacts the wishes of the higher powers. The FORM of Hieronimo's revenge is extraordinarily interesting: under the cloak of art - of a theatrical plot - he manages to kill his evil opponents quite easily. The tension between "art" and "life" is thus handled by Kyd in a very innovative fashion which still shocks modern spectators and readers. The role of language, too, is called into question: much of the play demonstrates that in real life finally action does speak louder than words, which often do not make their point or simply get ignored. Any reader who wants to get a notion of the superb quality of plays written by Shakespeare's contemporaries is certain to admire and enjoy this striking work of art. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

Editorial Review:

New Mermaids are modernized and fully-annotated editions of classic English plays. Each volume includes:

• The playtext, in modern spelling, edited to the highest bibliographical and textual standards
• Textual notes recording significant changes to the copytext and variant readings
• Glossing notes explaining obscure words and word-play
• Critical, contextual and staging notes
• Photographs of productions where applicable
• A full introduction which provides a critical account of the play, the staging conventions of the time and recent stage history; discusses authorship, date, sources and the text; and gives guidance for further reading.

Edited and updated by leading scholars and printed in a clear, easy-to-use format, New Mermaids offer invaluable guidance for actor, student, and theatre-goer alike.

Romeo y Julieta (Spanish Edition)

Pablo Neruda, William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Classroom Resource 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought these for three new students who cannot yet speak English. Thier literature class will be reading the story in a few weeks. Using this version, the students can participate.

Editorial Review:

Shakespeare Classic

Selected Poems

Jorge Luis Borges

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

When Viking published Borges's Collected Fictions last September, the book received nationwide acclaim. Richard Bernstein in The New York Times hailed the publication as "an event, and cause for celebration." The celebration continues this April with the next installment in Viking's projected three-volume set of the Collected Work: a new selection of Borges's finest poems edited by Alexander Coleman.

Selected Poems brings together some two hundred poems--the largest collection of Borges's poetry ever assembled in English, including many never previously translated. The selection draws from a lifetime's work--from Borges's earliest work in the 20s, his debut Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final poetic work, Los Conjurados (1985). Throughout the volume, the brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched with luminous English versions rendered by a remarkable cast of translators, among them W. S. Merwin, John Updike, Robert Fitzgerald, Mark Strand and Alastair Reid.
"--In Borges's case I do not consider it rash to acclaim him as the most important thing to happen to imaginative writing in the Spanish language in modern times and as one of the most memorable artists of our age."-- Mario Vargas Llosa

History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Anatoly Fomenko

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Some people will swallow anything 1 out of 5 stars.
7 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Looking through this book reminded me of the movie "A Beautiful Mind". A brilliant mathematician constructs a fantasy world complete in every detail. The only problem is that it doesn't exist, and that he's as mad as a hatter.

Just two examples of the many "possibilities" suggested by our schizoid author:

(1) The Biblical flood and the Trojan War were the same event because Noah was Aeneas, who fled Troy to found Rome. (Noah and Aeneas had names that sound alike. Thus it is proven.)

(2) Nine kings fled the fall of the Tower of Babel and seven kings founded Rome. Therefore, Rome was founded by the kings who fled the fall of the Tower of Babel. (In the author's words, the Biblical figure of nine is "close enough" to the Roman figure of seven.)

Need I go on?

Editorial Review:

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Love Poems (New Directions Paperbook)

Pablo Neruda

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Shame on you, New Directions 2 out of 5 stars.
10 of 13 people found this review helpful.

James Laughlin must be turning in his grave. New Directions, one of the greatest presses in 20th Century literary history, has sunk to the wrong directions now in the 21st: they are letting marketing triumph over literary ethics and literature itself: This "Love Poems" is just a slick deceptive cover of Neruda's single book, "The Captain's Verses," which in itself is a great book, an important book in Neruda's oeuvre, with a good translation by Donald Walsh-- but to be so deceptive and re-title it as a marketing gimmick?

I returned this book to Amazon after I found out what was underneath the false cover.

They say "in later editions, these verses became the most celebrated of the Noble Prize winner's oeuvre" In later editions? This is one edition, and it's not true that it "collects Neruda's most passionate verses." It collects some of them, but with The Captain's Verses there's a bunch of mediocre poems. Neruda had a high batting average, but not every poem he wrote was outstanding. Frankly, I'm peeved at ND for this gimmickry. The great press under Laughlin that took risks and brought us William Carlos Williams, Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, Lawrence Ferlinghetti-- you want a vanguard press that would never succumb to commercialism over the inherent principles of literature-- Ferlinghetti's City Lights-- If you want Neruda's love poetry, check out his The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems-- it truly is the essence of Pablo, with some of his best love poems. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics)is of course one of poetry's great classics, but it only represents the voice of Neruda in his twenties, without the broad scope and some of his best love lyrcis throughout one of the most prolific careers in the history of modern poetry. 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (Texas Pan American Series) has some great Neruda love poems, but the majority, trully, aren't so great. And personally, along with others I know, feel that much of the inherent power of Neruda's poems in this book are lost in Tapscott's flat translations. If you do want The Captain's Verses, show New Directions that you can't judge--or change, for marketing reasons--a book by its cover, and get the original, The Captain's Verses

Editorial Review:

Sensual, earthy love poems that formed the basis for the popular movie Il Postino, now in a beautiful gift book perfect for weddings, Valentine's Day, Anniversaries, or just to say "I Love You!" Charged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda's love poems are the most celebrated of the Nobel Prize winner's oeuvre, captivating readers with earthbound images and reveling in a fiery re-imagining of the world. Mostly written on the island paradise of Capri (the idyllic setting of the Oscar-winning movie Il Postino), Love Poems embraces the seascapes surrounding the poet and his love Matilde Urrutia, their waves and shores saturated with a new, yearning eroticism.

Yerma (Hispanic Classics-Modern)

Federico Garcia Lorca, Ian Richard Macpherson, Jacqueline Minett Wilkinson, John Lyon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Asi Asi 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Esa obra no es el mejor de Lorca. La Casa de Bernarda Alba es el mejor.

Yerma 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 7 people found this review helpful.

When reading Lorca's plays you have to remember that they are in fact Plays and are not meant to be read but to be preformed. They weren't created to specifically entertain but were supposed to be a photographic representation of life in rural spain during the 1930's. Yerma is a story about a woman pressured by societal expectations to have children. When she finds out that she can not conceive (Yerma in spanish literally means desert, she is barren) it drives her into depression. Its a story about the unrealistic pressures and expectations of society on women during her time. The beauty in Lorca's work is in his use of symbolism and repetition. Its not a play to read for pleasure but rather education.

Editorial Review:

Translations of two Lorca plays by an authority on Lorca. An introduction and notes to each play are included. It is intended for A-level Spanish students, Drama/Theatre Arts students and undergraduates and general readers.

The Poem of the Cid

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The greatest Spanish epic 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This book should belong to the universal, or at least Western, canon of all times. It is the foundation of Spanish literature and national myth. And, for those who think classics, especially medieval, are boring, surprise, it is not at all.

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the Cid, is a great warrior who, because of political intrigue, is dismissed by his master. He leaves and continues his fight against the Moors, who are the masters of most Spain since the 9th century. He conquers Valencia and starts forging his legend, fighting not only the Moors but other traitors to the cause of unfying Spain. One of the best and most famous scenes is the marriage of his two daughters, Urraca and Ximena. The book is written in truly epic style, full of adventures, battles, duels and, especially all the Medieval flavor that makes it unforgettable. In a good translation, the grandiosity of many sentences should be neatly perceived. It's hard to stop recommending this great work of art, a true belonger to the best classic literature the West has produced.

Editorial Review:

Students of Spanish literature have long been familiar with this eight-hundred-year-old epic detailing the legendary exploits of the soldier-adventurer Ruy Díaz of Bivar, El Cid, and of his part in the long struggle between Christianity and Islam. The epic poem recounts the adventures of the Cid; of his peerless steed, Babieca, and of his two famous swords, Colada and Tizón; of his wife, Doña Ximena, and his two daughters, Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, who found sanctuary with Abbot Don Sancho in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña during the Cid's exile; and of the despicable and black-hearted princes of Carrión, Diego and Fernando González.

Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

fabulous 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 17 people found this review helpful.

Do yourselves a favour and read the unforgettable poems of the century's least acknowledged, but greatest, poet.

Fernando Pessoa 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Fernando Pessoa is surely the most important 20th century Portuguese poet. The critic Harold Bloom considers Fernando Pessoa (along with Pablo Neruda) the "most representative" poet of the 20th century. This is a considerable feat if one considers other 20th century poets like: T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Valery, Yeats, Lorca etc.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez considers Neruda the "best poet of the 20th century, in any language." I highly admire Neruda, but Pessoa has done more for me, has influenced me much more than has Neruda. Pessoa's invention of several "selves" is a feat of originality without precedent.

Perhaps what most characterizes Pessoa is his strangeness. His strangeness is partly explained by his own life: Pessoa has been called "the man who never was." This is accurate: he is one of the most solitary literary geniuses of modern times. This sense of estrangement is all-pervasive in most of his poems.

The Noble Laureate Gao Xinjiang recently called Pessoa "the most profound poet of the 20th century." I concur with him. ---

Concerning this selection: I suggest the reader buy both the Zenith and Hong translations. It would be best ofcourse if one read his poetry in the original Portuguese. P.S: (Pessoa's complete poems can be found online, in both English, Spanish & Portuguese...)

Editorial Review:

anthology ed & tr Edwin Honig & Susan M. Brown

The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Good, loud poems 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 16 people found this review helpful.

My husband used to read me this book when I was pregnant with my only child. The sound of the poems made her kick. Maybe the poems, but probably it was just the way he read them--in spanish--louder than he ever said anything. My husband never yelled, even when he was angry he just stayed by himself a bit, but he really used to get into these poems. From his childhood, I guess. He tried to translate them himself, but he wasn't very good at it. He would probably say these aren't very good either, no translation is your own after all, but I don't speak spanish, and to me these are close to the way he used to make me feel when he read them. Very lovely, and a little alarming.

I tried reading them to my daughter--she's having a baby in the summer--but it didn't really make anyone feel alarmed. I guess I need to learn to develop my own versions.

Editorial Review:

A reissue of a landmark poetry volume with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner W. S. Merwin. Bilingual.

The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca has introduced generations of American readers to mesmerizing poetry since 1955. Lorca (1898-1937) is admired all over the world for the lyricism, immediacy and clarity of his poetry, as well as for his ability to encompass techniques of the symbolist movement with deeper psychological shadings. But Lorca's poems are, most of all, admired for their beauty. Undercurrents of his major influences—Spanish folk traditions from his native Andalusia and Granada, gypsy ballads, and his friends the surrealists Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel—stream throughout Lorca's work. Poets represented here as translators are as diverse as Stephen Spender, Langston Hughes, Ben Belitt, William Jay Smith, and W.S. Merwin.