Short Stories in Italian for Intermediate Learners: Read for pleasure at your level, expand your vocabulary and learn Italian the fun way! (Coffee Break Series) (Italian Edition) Bilingual Edition, Kindle Edition

I had already read the authors other two books of Italian short stories for beginners and listened to the corresponding audiobooks, so when this book was released, I bought it right away. These stories are definitely more challenging, as they use more sophisticated vocabulary and there is much more frequent use of the remote past tense. I read the whole book on plane home from the Virgin Islands, about five hours, interrupted periodically by the beverage services and a chatty child sitting next to me. I would guess that's the level is about B1-B2. There are more adult themes than in the prior two books, not that the book deserves any sort of a parental advisory, but there is action, violence, relationship struggles, and stalkers. The introduction explains how these books are to be read, a simple six step process to promote maximal comprehension and absorption of the language. I plan to go back and re-read these stories a few times in order to get the most of this book, but with the exception of two chapters near the end of the book where I had to do a little re-reading because I didn't quite grasp the beginning of a story. However, the first two books had so improved my reading in Italian that I found these intermediate stories to be at just the right level, the chapters in short, digestible chunks, and the vocabulary useful to me at this point in my learning. I hope a set of advanced stories comes out next, I would eagerly buy such a product!

I bought the 2016 version 2 years ago and truly enjoyed it. Wanting to read more of Olly's stories I bought the 2019 version, it does not say it is a new edition, and was disappointed to find that 6 of the 8 stories are the same as in the 2016 version. With this book I got only 2 new stories, but I paid for 8. The author should indicate that this is a new edition with the same stories. I will not be buying anymore of his books.

One of the signs that you’re making progress in learning to read a foreign language, I’ve heard it said, is being able to recognize when you’re reading something bad.I think that’s true, and I’m here to say say the books in this series have helped me advance rapidly. The stories are bad, some of them very bad.It’s clear that the approach is to buy the rights for some stories from somewhere (a bright middle-schooler might have written some of them), hire people to translate them into different languages, then slap on some quiz questions and a vocabulary list compiled more or less at random, with no feeling for what a foreign reader would find difficult. Some of the stories name a place and try to set the action in Italy (to change the country, just change a couple of names), but none of them is really connected with anything interesting about the country’s culture.

Was not sure how useful this book was going to be. I wanted to read more in Italian so I was commiting myself to additional work. The book has been a very important addition to my continuing my mastery of Italian. The addition of new vocabulary, the ability of the stories to hold my interest and the brief length of the stories makes working with the material very beneficial.

The stories are compelling, funny , charming. Easy to understand. Vocabulary is challenging but then translated and explained.I found it a fun, interesting way to continue my comprehension and reading skills in Italian. I HIGHLY recommend this book and I an going to look for others by Olly Richards

It's my third book by Olly Richards, I read also Italian gor beginners 1 and 2. That's the most fun I had learning Italian. My level is not enough to read Italian books, but the adapted stories of my level are very boring. This book is both fun and adapted to my level. The quality of stories is good , it's proofread very well (have to emphasize this because i've bought similar book by another author and threw it into trash after 3 pages, such bad was the quality of writing). Totally loved this book and would recommend to those who start learning Italian! The stories are all different and interedting, with unexpected twists so it is interesting to read, and the method when you just read it like in your own language without checking each word in the dictionary is really great!!! Thank you Olly Richards! Please publish more stories!

There are a bunch of short stories in here across several genres. The language level is more advanced than previous beginner books and they are great study and practice for Italian.

Good grammar, good stories all in Italian. Now I wish they had them in Greek as well

The idea behind this book is excellent, and I needed it for a serious purpose. But the Italian voice is very unfortunate. Spoken Italian is beautiful - this is not. It is lyrical - this is not. The reader has a nasal, almost mechanical, monotone.I dont insist that he roll his 'rrr's, but his tone is suggestive of a disobliging minor official who, stationed at a 'HELP' desk, seems distant and unwilling to be helpful.

Having previously enjoyed both volumes of Italian Short Stories for Beginners, I set myself the challenge of reading this Intermediate volume. These stories offer the right kind of challenge for people who've been studying at the intermediate level for a while and who want to pick up new vocab in context as well as everyday conversational sayings. I definitely got a sense of achievement through reading these stories because I found that I could follow the story quite well, and was then able to focus on vocab rather than grammar. Olly has suggestions at the start on how to get the best from these stories, but I soon found my own groove through reading the e-book and listening to the audio version at the same time. I bought the audiobook separately from Amazon Audible, and it's great because you can slow the speech right down if you want to focus on pronunciation, and read along with the narrator. Or, you can choose to only listen to the audio to work on your listening comprehension. The Kindle's 'look-up word' translation feautre, along with the highlighting and note-taking features, proved to be invaluable. I took guesses at what words might mean in the context of the sentence, of course, but it was great to be able to check the translations immediately with the Kindle and make a note of the translation. My aim is to re-read the stories until I'm able to understand the words I've highlighted without looking at my notes. This is one of my favourite ways of learning vocabulary, and Olly's stories are ideal for this. Olly's provided the reader with stories from a variety of genres, and I particularly enjoyed the 'Thriller' style of La Chiesa. Don't expect complicated characters, nail-biting narrative and exquisite prose; these stories are designed to help you improve your Italian. Olly's books have certainly given me confidence in my abilities (as well as being a great self-assessment tool in judging what areas I needed to improve - Hello Passato Remoto!) and a taste for reading more books in Italian via the Amazon Kindle/Audible combination. I've just started La Ragazza del Treno using the same method of close reading I used for Olly's stories. Grazie Olly.

I've read many of Olly's Italian short story collections and found them to be a great aid to improving language. I pre-ordered this second bookin the intermediate series. Very disappointed and angry to find that 3 of the 8 stories are taken from his previous book. Ok it's not the stories themselves that are the main point of the learning objectives but still. At the very least it is lazy.

I found this book pitched just right after I had read the beginners stories. The vocabulary lists are helpful and the stories are definitely odd, but so what ? It is difficult to pitch content correctly for adult learners. There is plenty of varied vocab and tenses to practice on, and a few idioms too. Thank you Olly

These stories are great for learners as you can read them successfully without having to continually dive into a dictionary. The fact that they are short is also good if you don't have a lot of time for reading - you can read a story in full inside an hour and the unusual content makes them interesting and entertaining.