You can easily load up on books that don’t help you much: 501 Verbs, for instance, and all those cute introductory grammars.

Here is a small shelf of books that are skeleton keys to familiarity with Spanish and Mexico. Click the links below each blurb to a site with more information on that book and the option to purchase from amazon or the publisher.

First of all, you need a good, solid Spanish/English/Spanish dictionary. The U. of Chicago paperback is the one. It’s a small, lightweight pocketbook, but packed with words. It also has a few characteristics that set it apart from the pack. One is a list of idioms in the center between the Span-Eng and Eng-Span sections. Another is a really great guide to pronunciation and use. But the single best selling point of this sucker is the fact that all verbs that don’t conjugate regularly have a number that refers to a list of irregular conjugations. Conocer and parecer, for instance, share the same number and conjugation pattern.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DICTIONARY

If you remember from school, grammer books are a pain. The smart alternative for travelers (and residents of the tropics) would be a single page of laminated information that has all you need to know about grammar, but weighs nothing, takes up no space, and can’t be harmed by moisture or impact. The barchart laminated study guides are all that. The info on conjugation, syntax, usage, is packed in, but easy to understand. A total beginner might need a quick web tutorial or talk with a teacher to get started, but it’s a ready reference that’s easy to keep around. They have several guides to vocabulary, conversation, and grammar. A must have.
LAMINATED GRAMMAR CHART

One of the best ways to learn Spanish is by reading comics. Not books, which are too long for starting out and certainly not the newspapers, that use weird, confusing words and construction. Comix use everyday language in simple situations. They have short, one page episodes so you can take it slow but still get the jokes. Start reading and looking up words in your dictionary. Write the meanings in a steno pad, which you will periodically review. If you run into a phrase you can’t figure out, ask somebody and write down the meaning. This is a really great learning method.

I would highly recommend the Condorito comics, a cute little Condor with Bugs Bunny attitude available in newstands all over Latin America. Or in this collection if you are in the states.
CONDORITO BOOK COLLECTION

There is no character more dear to Latin America than Mafalda, a little girl in an Argentine strip from the sixties. It’s like Peanuts, but with adults…and much better. People who get familiar with Mafalda will find something in common with almost everybody they talk to. A wonderful, endearing, cynical, wise strip with unforgettable kids.
MAFALDA COLLECTION

One thing Spanish students often find frustrating is the lack of intermediate books. You get the basics down, then where do you go? There is one best answer for that: an elegant, excellently executed paperback that takes you past the beginner stage and dictionary words into the heart of actual local speech. Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish is the way all language books should be and indespensible for anybody serious about living in Mexico.
BREAKING OUT OF BEGINNER’S SPANISH

A different sort of comic is the work of Rius, the most famous cartoonist/social gadfly in Mexico. His work is a sort of underground bible of the Mexican subconscious. He is a virtual commie, a virulent anti-American. A feminist, atheist, and social critic. But he is funny and has a real sense of what Mexico is all about. He’s most full of it when discussing the US or Cuba, at his most reliable debunking the Catholic church or telling Mexican guys to eat better. You want to know Mexico, Rius is a good place to start. He has lots of books, this link is to a collection.
TODO RIUS

There is much more to any language than is taught in school. The “real Mexico”, like the “real USA” speaks an idiomatic, slang-laden dialect that you can’t figure out with dictionaries or classrooms. Anybody who wants to live in Mexico needs to know the basics of how people really talk…if for no other reason than to know what people are saying about you. This is the best-selling book on Mexican Slang, a cheap pocket-sized guide you can carry around with you. Learn and get a few laughs.
MEXICAN SLANG 101

Culture, society and language go hand in hand. Learning about a country involves picking up new words, learning the deeper meanings of many words give insight into the country itself. ANYBODY thinking of living in Mexico, much less doing business here, should read the single most powerful book on Mexican society, culture, history, politics, economics…everything. Written by the Mexico City correspondent for the New York Times, “Distant Neighbors” was simultaneously published in Mexico as “Vecinos Distantes” and most Mexicans will tell you that THEY learned a lot about their country from reading it. It changes your whole awareness and orientation of Mexico.
DISTANT NEIGHBORS

You can’t really talk about “understanding Mexico books” without mentioning the classic “Peoples Guide” by Carl Franz. A rambling, VW bus-powered rollick across the country, this is the book that so many learned about Mexico–from hippy camping to vocabuary. A fun read, a great resource.
THE PEOPLE’S GUIDE TO MEXICO