Follow up and the benefits of reading----
I did some searching in other newspapers that I read and as expected I found some good articles about Mario Vargas Llosa regarding his Nobel Literature Prize award. Now this one answers the questions I had in my previous post about why this year, 2010 and not previous ones when in my opinion he was a very strong candidate. This article explains what the 'conflict' / concerns have been per se about him being selected however, he finally defied the odds. I also find it interesting that he is only the sixth Latin American author to win the award given the strong literary contribution of Latin American authors in general. It’s really tremendous if one knows about the scope of their contribution.
Muchas eran las especulaciones acerca de los motivos por los cuales el escritor no pod?a acceder al premio; entre ellas, la principal: su postura pol?tica, liberal, cr?tica con la socialdemocracia, que no era considerada coherente con la l?nea de la Academia Sueca. En la apuesta de aspirantes hisp?nicos al galard?n para este a?o, adem?s de Vargas Llosa, figuraban el argentino Juan Gelman, el mexicano Carlos Fuentes, los espa?oles Javier Mar?as y Juan Mars? y nuestro compatriota N?stor Amarilla, entre otros.
El Premio Nobel de Literatura y Latinoam?rica (Other Latin Americans who won this award- the now elite six)
Mario Vargas Llosa pasa a formar el grupo selecto de los seis latinoamericanos ganadores del prestigioso galard?n.
1) Gabriela Mistral, Chile, 1945, la primera mujer de letras de Am?rica Latina premiada por la Academia Sueca.
2) Miguel ?ngel Asturias, Guatemala, 1967.
3) Pablo Neruda, Chile, 1971.
4) Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez, Colombia, 1982.
5) Octavio Paz, M?xico, 1990.
6) Mario Vargas Llosa, Per?, 2010.
Premio Nobel de Literatura 2010. Mario vargas llosa - SEMANALES - ABC Digital
Regarding reading (in general)
To support the need to read in Spanish and a broad range of material (whether it’s to one's liking or not), I always take note on a daily basis how I come away with something new after reading the newspapers daily. Be it a word, an expression, a term, something colloquial etc reading gives me this exposure that is impossible to get since the language is so broad and diverse.
In today’s
List?n Diario in the food section there is an interesting article about the indigenous foods of Costa Rican cuisine. Sometimes traditional foods become less prevalent in a culture and often substituted for foreign fast foods, or local meals that are less time consuming to prepare etc. However, staple foods like rice and beans or rice and peas dishes are familiar to all islands of the Caribbean- English, Spanish and French. They are prepared according to local variations and specification but the similarities are striking. What I learned from this article, other than the extremely interesting detail about Costa Rican indigenous foods is the local way to call their rice and beans dish-
el gallo pinto (it sort of rings a bell, but I am not sure if I really heard of this before- the name)
El gallo pinto is a mixture of
'arroz y fr?joles' (or
frijoles depending on the country). Now for a person like me that eats rice as a staple food, and
arroz con gandules at least once a week this is key information for when and if I ever go to Costa Rica. Long live rice and beans!
Un libro recoge los or?genes ind?genas de la cocina costarricense - List?n Diario Digital
-MP.
