Learn Spanish with Books (part I)

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had listened to a lot of songs in order to learn Spanish once I had picked up the basics in a few Spanish classes in Ecuador.
Unfortunately, while this meant that I had a rather hip, street wise way of speaking (at least in my head) it meant that I wasn’t really that great in carrying out serious conversations with normal people who didn’t end every sentence in a rhyme. Once I managed to get hold of a job working in a bank in Spain I decided it was time to brush up a little on a more formal way of speaking before I offended or confused some people.
I guessed that reading a few classic books would be a good idea of learning a more appropriate way of talking to customers and colleagues in the bank and of gaining a wider range of words. These are the books I chose together with a note of how useful I found them to be.
El Alquimista – Paolo Coelho. This is an excellent choice for anyone with a basic grasp of the language who wants to improve their knowledge and vocabulary with a book which is fairly easy to pick up and get started on. The grammar is really simple and it is written in a way which I reckon makes it one of best books for someone just starting to learn Spanish, which I think might be because it’s been translated from Portuguese. It also has some very good messages in it and it is well worth looking for.