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Spanish books for C1

At C1 long sentences no longer stop you. Vocabulary does: long bookish words come more often than at B2, and the old editions add old-fashioned turns and spelling. Here are thirteen novels, two collections of stories, a novella, four essays and a memoir.

C1

21 books

The level's books side by side

The boundary with B2 is set by vocabulary: a long word, 9 letters or more, comes one in ten in The Lady of the Camellias, A Wedding Trip and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll, and one in six in The Mediocre Man, while at B2 it comes less often than one in ten. Sentence length does not set the level: from 13 words in Valle-Inclán’s Tyrant Banderas to 34 in Sarmiento’s Recuerdos de provincia, while The Art of Love at B2 has 18. In the novels and the novella the difficulty is uneven, and each book’s page shows where the text gets harder; Ingenieros’s essay is even from start to finish. Blasco Ibáñez’s The Cabin sits with the novels: 21 words per sentence and a long word one in ten, most of them from the farms and irrigation channels of the Valencian huerta. His Blood and Sand, the bullfighting novel, has 17 words per sentence and a long word one in nine. Galdós’s Trafalgar, 24 words per sentence and a long word one in ten, many of them naval terms, and Pardo Bazán’s The House of Ulloa, 20 words and one in nine, sit with the other novels. Blasco Ibáñez’s Reeds and Mud (20 words, a long word one in ten) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (15 words, one in eight), and Palma’s Peruvian Traditions (26 words, one in nine, with colonial vocabulary and archaisms) complete the shelf. Pardo Bazán’s Love Stories (26 words, a long word one in ten) and Sarmiento’s Facundo (30 words, one in eight), an essay on Argentina and its caudillos, are the latest additions. Tyrant Banderas, a novel of an imaginary Latin American dictatorship, joins them with short sentences, 13 words, and a long word one in eight, in Spanish mixed from many countries. Rivera’s The Vortex, the Colombian novel of the jungle rubber camps, has 15 words per sentence and a long word one in nine. Unamuno’s Tragic Sense of Life, an essay on faith, reason and the longing not to die, has 25 words per sentence and a long word one in ten. Blasco Ibáñez’s The Cathedral (19 words, a long word one in nine) and Rice and Tartana (22 words, one in nine), Ramón y Cajal’s advice to young scientists (31 words, almost one in five) and Sarmiento’s memoir of his San Juan childhood (34 words, one in eight) are the latest additions. Clarín’s His Only Son (23 words, a long word one in ten) sits right on the line with B2.

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Before you read

How is C1 different from B2 in this catalog?

In vocabulary. At C1 a long word, 9 letters or more, comes one in ten or more often, and at B2 less often than one in ten. Sentence length does not set the level: The Lady of the Camellias at C1 has 17 words per sentence, and The Art of Love at B2 has 18.

Are these adaptations or complete texts?

Complete texts, not abridged or adapted: Pardo Bazán’s A Wedding Trip and Ingenieros’s The Mediocre Man in the original, Dumas fils’s The Lady of the Camellias in a 1912 Spanish translation, and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll in Emilio Soulère’s 1891 translation. Blasco Ibáñez’s The Cabin (1898) is a complete text in the original too. So is his Blood and Sand (1908). So are Galdós’s Trafalgar (1873) and Pardo Bazán’s The House of Ulloa (1886). So are Blasco Ibáñez’s Reeds and Mud (1902) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916), and Palma’s Peruvian Traditions in a selection of 27. So are Pardo Bazán’s Love Stories (1898) and Sarmiento’s Facundo (1845). So is Valle-Inclán’s Tyrant Banderas (1926). So is Rivera’s The Vortex (1924). So is Unamuno’s Tragic Sense of Life (1913). So are Blasco Ibáñez’s The Cathedral (1903) and Rice and Tartana (1894), Ramón y Cajal’s Advice for a Young Investigator (6th edition, 1923) and Sarmiento’s Recuerdos de provincia (1850). So is Clarín’s His Only Son (1890).

Is there a non-fiction book here?

Yes, José Ingenieros’s The Mediocre Man: a 1913 essay in ten parts about ideals, mediocrity and envy. It has no plot, so it reads best one part at a time; the easiest in vocabulary is part VI, “La envidia”. The second is Sarmiento’s Facundo (1845): a biography of the caudillo Facundo Quiroga and an essay on Argentina, civilization against barbarism. The third is Unamuno’s Tragic Sense of Life (1913), on faith, reason and the longing not to die. Two more: Ramón y Cajal’s Advice for a Young Investigator, by the 1906 Nobel laureate in medicine, and Sarmiento’s Recuerdos de provincia, a memoir of his family and his province.

When should I move on to C2?

When C1 books read without stopping at every paragraph. At C2 the catalog has twelve books, from Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Teresa of Ávila’s Book of Her Life to Rodó’s Ariel: in the prose, sentences average 38 to 51 words and more, against 13 to 34 at C1.