Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving

     I'm not even half way through this book, but I'm not sure I'm going to finish it.  That says a lot about it already, right?  It actually isn't a bad book and I may finish it still.  It is really long and it's not going to be useful in homeschool so it's not getting my priority right now.

     How it came about goes like this:  I really wanted to read a book from Spain that was written in Spanish.  I started Don Quixote in English so that if I read it in Spanish it would be easier to follow.  Oh yeah, I don't speak a lick of Spanish so this was an experiment.  I couldn't stand Don Quixote.  His delusions were more than I could handle.  I decided to read Harry Potter in Spanish instead.  While looking for other books I became very interested in Spain and then I came across Tales of the Alhambra.  There are a few other books by Washington Irving on my list of books to read so I thought this would be just what I was looking for.  I had heard of the Alhambra, but I did not know it was in Spain.  From reading this book, I have learned so much about Spain and Granada.  I remember hearing about Granada when we studied Christopher Columbus, but I had no idea where Granada was.  This book clarified everything.  I love historical fiction and this book has a lot of fascinating information about Spain in it.  I wish there was a way to read a book like this about every country in the world.

The only negative things I can say about this book are that there is absolutely no dialog.  For me, dialog makes or breaks a book.  If I was reading this purely for entertainment I may not have gotten as far as I did, but I'm glad I kept going.  Another thing is that I still don't know the name of the main character.  I must have missed it in the beginning and it hasn't repeated it since.