This is certainly a better collection than Spanish Short Stories 1. It includes (wow) 1 woman, and represents a wider range of countries than the first collection. Like the first collection, the text is carefully spaced side-by-side to make it easy to double check your understanding or to find the meaning of a new word. The footnotes, though, don't add a lot of information. Most of the footnotes just say "slang" and you wind up wondering how the word "chupa" which means "suck" also became slang for "lose weight." Huh???

The stories themselves are all from literary masters: Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar etc. Most of them had twist endings and were very psychological. I enjoyed them, but didn't love them. I also noticed my reading in Spanish is very different than my reading in English. When I read in English, my mind goes all over the place. I think about other things that are similar to what I'm reading. I pick up nuances. I predict what is going to happen. In Spanish, nuances? Ha! As for making connections and predictions, little of that happens. I'm too busy working with the language and my limited vocabulary. Pronouns confuse me! I'm constantly getting tripped up by words that sound like other words I know, and if the author was going for a double entendre, hey, it went over my head. I have a feeling that if I keep working on my Spanish skills, when I read these same stories a year from now, I will come to love them. ( )