Any ideas for beginning literature?
Spanish Children’s section at your public library.
Well, yes, thanks. No, not quite that beginner.
How beginner? The children’s Spanish section at my library has everything from “See Spot Run” to Spider-Man in Spanish. If you’re beyond that, you’re hardly a beginner. Try Don Quixote. It won’t be exactly the same as modern Spanish, but Spanish hasn’t changed to anywhere near the extent English has since it was written.
Isabel Allende, writer of “House of the Spirits”, has a series of young adult books. I don’t know how good they are, I haven’t read them. She also wrote “Cuentos de Eva Luna”, an anthology of short stories. Another short story writer, slightly similar to Edgar Allan Poe, is Horacio Quiroga. He wrote several books of short stories. Warning: Most of his stories are depressing.
Telling someone starting to read Spanish to read Don Quixote is telling someone who’s just starting to learn English to read Shakespeare (or whatever harder writer you have). I mean, not even native Spanish speakers give that to their kids as an “easing you into reading” books. It is THE book they give out in Spanish literature in high school, though, along with A Hundred Years of Solitude. If you want to try it, go for it. I’d rather start with the short stories and move into bigger and more complicated stuff.
The recent thread about “AHYOS” had some suggestions as to other writers and their works, including short stories.
Young adult, relatively short novels that I had to read in junior high included Miguel Delibe’s El Camino (didn’t like it so much), Gabriel García Marquez’s Crónica de una muerte anunciada, and Isabel Allende’s Casa de los espíritus (that was the longest). I had to read other plays and poems, but they were either local writers (from Puerto Rico) or more modern plays. Or even, a Spanish translation of the Brazilian novel “The Alchemist”.
Beyond “Dora the Explorer”, there is an film set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War: La lengua de las mariposas, which I think is released in the USA as just “Butterfly”. I thought it was very touching story and the pace and language is usually not that fast.
I know this isn’t exactly what was asked for in the OP, but have you tried watching American films with Spanish audio? These are almost guaranteed to have a minimum amount of slang and ‘street language’. I was studying in Spain last summer and I went to see dubbed versions of Kung Fu Panda and Hancock in theaters. Not exactly masterpieces of film, but certainly helped to expand my vocabulary.
I was thinking more “young adult”. I need something fairly easy, but that also holds my attention. But, thanks for the answer.
I always see cool old copies Don Quixote in used bookstores and thought I would try it, but I just assumed it would be the Spanish equivalent to Shakespeare.
Oh. Yes, I think I shall put that off for a bit, then.
I guess I was looking for specifics, of which there were tons in that post. Thanks KarlGrenze! Looks like I will be making a trip to the bookstore today.
This is the best way to get through shitty movies. If I am being forced to watch it, I will often ask to put up the Spanish subtitles which is also helpful.
You’re welcome! There is a wide range of difficulty between children’s book and Don Quixote in Spanish literature. 
It is not that the vocabulary itself may be hard, just like not necessary the words in Shakespeare’s work are bad, but the situations may be complex, some things are best picked up after studying and analyzing the text, it is sometimes helpful to have a historical background, etc.
With the short stories, the same things may apply, but they are usually shorter, easier to digest, less complicated (you don’t need to remember a promise or something being made ten chapters ago coming back to center stage).
Now that I remember… there is this series of books, written by a member of the RAE. Las aventuras del capitán Alatriste… I don’t know exactly how to explain it… It has swordfights, war, sex, detective work, royal intrigue, religious persecution, etc. Set in Spain during the early to mid colonization of the Americas. Good, captivating, fun.