For those interested, let me tell a little about the books I bought and why. I used to think that reading Spanish or Portuguese translations of English books was a good idea; after all, if they're books I wanted to read anyway, why not just read them in Spanish or Portuguese and kill two birds with one stone? I've since realized that this is foolish and self-defeating; even assuming a good translation, translated texts lack the flow and texture of the original text, assuming the original text had any. Worse, if the original text was in English, you always find yourself guessing what the original phrasing was, and this is very distracting. So if you want to read something in a foreign language, read original works by skilled authors; it is not only more enjoyable, but you will learn more because of their style. Since I lived in the shadow of the university (Salamanca) of which Miguel de Unamuno was president, but had never read any of his works, that is what I was looking for. The Librería Nacional in the malls charge Cp$30-40k ($13-18) for a basic paperback, so I went to to the used book shops downtown and got much better prices.
If you are studying a foreign language, you should aim to move up to a monoligual dictionary as soon as possible, and I have never found a better monolingual Spanish dictionary for students than Clave: diccionario de uso del español actual, (ISBN 843487606X) . It is a remarkable balance of completeness and simplicity: rarely does it not list a word a student is looking for; it tells you briefly but accurately what you need to know about the word; and gives a sample sentence for most definitions. It's a little hard to find a copy these days, but the Librería Nacional said they could order it for Cp$135k ($60?) in paper or CD-ROM format, about twice what it costs in Spain. In a used book shop I found an unused hardback for a fraction of that and bought it for a friend. Amazon has it for $41.17, and you might find one of the reader reviews strangely familiar.
I also wanted to find some books, other than reference grammars, that dealt with language usage, and managed to find several good ones. The first four were by Roberto Cadavid Misas, who was a civil engineer by trade but had a passion for the Spanish language and Colombian culture, and spent the last thirteen years of his life writing newspaper columns on these themes. After his death in Medellín in 1989 his best columns were compiled into two books called Gazaperas [boo-boos] gramaticales, tomo [volume]1 (ISBN 958-709-212-0) and tomo 2 (ISBN 958-709-251-1). I also bought his book Refranes y dichos (ISBN 958-709-203-3) and Cursillo de historia de Colombia: de la conquista a la independencia (ISBN 958-709-134-5), a 300-page history of Colombia.
Since I'm on the subject of books, let me jump ahead to what I found at the bookstore at Universidad EAFIT: Defensa apasionada del idioma español (ISBN 84-663-0505-X), by Spanish journalist Álex Grijelmo. Grijelmo writes about the beauty of Spanish and the danger of it being destroyed by lazy usage and by undue acceptance of influences from English and other languages. He isn't against accepting contributions from other languages when appropriate, but there are many cases where accepting outside influence, poor teaching, or lazy usage destroys the meanings of Spanish words and renders them unusable. For example, it has now become common to use the word "ignorar", because of influence from English, to mean "to ignore", instead of "not to know". There are perfectly good words and phrases in Spanish to express "to ignore", but since many Spanish speakers have begun to use (erroneously) the verb "ignorar" to mean "to ignore", it can hardly be used in its correct sense now because there is too much chance of creating misunderstanding. An engrossing book so far. Also by Álex Grijelmo: La punta de la lengua: Críticas con humor sobre el idioma y el Diccionario (ISBN 958-704-134-8). Grijelmo uses the book to expand on previous themes and give more examples. In the introduction he writes, "Talvez este libro no añada gran cosa a quienes hayan leído Defensa apasionada del idioma español o La seducción de las palabras. A esos lectores sólo les supondrá un entretenimiento (si juzgan interesantes los comentarios que aquí se van a suceder) o una ampliación de los ejemplos y de las reflexiones que suscitan, o una actualización de los desmanes que han llegado al Diccionario. Es más: este libro debería haberse escrito antes que los dos anteriores; pero la vida toma sus propias decisiones, y hay que acostumbrarse a negociar con ella."
Just two more books to mention: Minucias del lenguaje (ISBN 968-16-3718-6) and Nuevas minucias del lenguaje (ISBN 968-16-4856-0) by José G. Moreno de Alba. At the printing of the first book, the author was director of the Biblioteca Nacional de México and member of the Academia Mexicana. Both books are collections of short newspaper columns about Spanish usage, written with scientific rigor by an academic but with a minimum of tecnical jargon and directed toward non-specialized but sophisticated newspaper readers.
