Spanish Novels: Short Stories for High Advanced Learners C2 - Grow Your Vocabulary and Learn Spanish While Having Fun! (La última apuesta) (Spanish Novels Series nº 24)

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 High Advanced Learners (C2) Both Fun & EasyLa última apuesta is the book number 24 of the Spanish Novels Series. This High Advanced Spanish Reader is intended for learners who already have a very good command of the language. At this level I assume you are comfortable reading longer texts that express ideas, feelings, and other abstract things. You are also able to follow more complex plotlines and grasp subtle nuances of the language.Diego is a lifelong gambler. He bets money on everything and anything, but always ends up losing much more than what he earns. Deeply in debt, he will play his last poker tournament in Las Vegas to save his family.This Spanish Book for High Advanced Learners 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 Spanish book will definitely help you work your way up toward even more advanced readings.Why Spanish NovelsEveryday dialoguesMultiple genresEngaging storiesStep by step approachContextual learningA High Advanced (C2) Spanish Reader in EVERYDAY LanguageFrom the First ¡No va más! -dijo el croupier, mientras giraba la rueda de la ruleta. Diego acababa de poner todas sus fichas -unos 40000 dólares- al color rojo. Esta era la tercera vez en el día en que hacía la misma a todo o nada. O doblaba la cantidad de dinero o se iba con las manos vacías. Nunca le habían gustado los términos medios. Si ganaba quería ganar a lo grande, y si perdía también. Prefería mil veces irse rico que irse con solo “un poco de dinero”. Lo tenía perfectamente si perdía esta jugada no iba a tener más remedio que pedir otro préstamo. Pero esta vez ya no sería para seguir apostando, si no para pagar su viaje de regreso a México. No sería la última vez que hubiera tenido que pedir dinero para regresar a su país después de haberse gastado hasta lo que no tenía en apuestas. La rueda de la ruleta giraba lentamente, con una paciencia infinita. Diego miraba al croupier y a la rueda, una y otra vez de forma alternada. Tenía la seguridad de que el croupier sabía el resultado de antemano. Aunque Diego apostaba en casinos desde los 18 años, aún no había acumulado tanta experiencia como para leer los rostros inexpresivos de los empleados de los casinos. No había forma de obtener la menor información a través de sus gestos. La rueda de la ruleta empezó a desacelerar poco a poco.

Genres: Spanish Literature

188 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 19, 2017

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

[Ian Jones]

This is another great novella from Paco Ardit. It’s at C2 for high advanced learners, so unless you want to be dipping into a dictionary or grammar every two minutes, you will need to have a pretty good understanding of the subjunctive, conditionals, gerunds and the various past tenses. If you’re a bit shaky with the pluperfect or conditional forms, you might be better off reading some of Paco Ardit’s books at B1, B2 or C1 levels before you tackle this one. I found an average of about one word or phrase per page that I had trouble guessing or had no idea of the meaning. Also, be aware that the novel is set in Mexico and the USA, so Latin American usage is going on somewhere, although I didn’t really notice it.
I won’t give away too much of the plot. Diego has inherited a fascination for gambling from his father. In fact, while his wife toils away as a schoolteacher and his daughter dreams of being a biologist, his job is “investing”, i.e. betting on the horses and playing online poker. He and his friends dream of getting through a series of online poker tournaments so they can earn places at the big international poker championships in Las Vegas, with the possibility of winning serious $$$$.......There is a lot of the subjunctive in this book as Diego ponders not just the possibilities of the cards and the roulette wheel but also the possibilities for himself and his family if he can overcome his gambling addiction.
This is the first C2 book of Paco Ardit’s that I have read and be aware that it is a big step up from the C1 books. The C1s are generally twenty chapters of five or six pages, making about 120 pages in total. The C2s are ten chapters of sixteen or seventeen pages, making over 160 pages in total. You will sweat if you try to read one chapter at a single sitting, but if you can do that, you must be getting close to reading “real” Spanish literature.
I will now read Paco Ardit’s other C2 books (there are two other C2s at the moment besides this one). By then I think I might be ready to read some “real” Spanish and Latin American literature. And that’s not to cast any aspersions on Paco Ardit. I would recommend this book to anyone who has a good feel for Spanish grammar but isn’t quite ready for “real” Spanish novels. His books are a great way to improve your ability to read Spanish, especially if you follow them from A1 to C2 at a steady pace – if you set out to read two a month, you could finish all 26 in just over a year and you would see a tremendous improvement in your Spanish reading skills.

[Cabecass]

Fun way to learn

Definitely more advanced level as expected but it's easy to follow and I enjoyed it while learning new vocabulary so I'd recommend it to anyone learning Spanish. It's one thing to sit in a classroom and learn a language but books like these expose you to way the language is actually spoken by natives.

[Joachim]

After reading a bunch of lower-grade books of his, La última apuesta didn't pleasantly surprise me. It seems to have been written hastily, both stylistically and in terms of content. It's sloppy all the way through. There're many typos in the books, extra words, and grammatical mistakes. Then there're a plenty of continuity errors and contradictory descriptions of the main character. A slight spoiler of the content that I criticize: The whole poker tournament lacks in credibility, such as the description of the final round not following proper poker rules. After all, the whole story is implausible, since Diego is clearly not a great poker player and thus is unlikely to win a major poker tournament he didn't even qualify for (he bought his way in, or rather his friend covered the entry ticket).

That said, it's one of the better books in the B2-C2 tier, probably owning to the fact that it's longer and thus has more space to develop the characters (also the genre -- "realistic" fiction -- leaves less space for blunders). Yet the storytelling is lacking in creativity and imagination: show the reader what's happening in the present tense, and don't try to force in elaborate past tense structures that distance the reader from the situation. Also, why do I leave the book without knowing how to say each card suit in Spanish? It's frustrating at times, to be honest, and I'm not prepared to read the following two C2 books anytime soon. But I might try some children stories for natives, and see how that goes.

[Tom Strotman]

Page turner

Enjoyed the story. Disappointed with ending. Could practice using the imperfect tense. Great practice using the subjunctive. It's a great story to read to help maintain your Spanish abilities.

[Cary Bullock]

Good reads

Interesting stories. Reinforce vocabulary and grammar. Recommend for people learning Spanish or just keeping the facility current when not ysedd.