Editor's Picks:
Recommended Reading for San Miguel Visitors

Berlitz Latin American Spanish Phrase Book & Dictionary: My parents used this when they visited Mexico for the first time and were delighted by its ease-of-use, page edges color coded by topic categories for quick look up, and the phonetic spelling pronunciation printed below the Spanish phrase. By far the best for novice speakers of Spanish.

Random House Latin-American Spanish Dictionary: Everything you'd desire in a paperback dictionary. Don't make the mistake of not getting a Latin American Spanish dictionary -- Mexico has been evolving their version Spanish for 500 years. This dictionary does a good job of identifying a lot of those differences. My personal copy is so dog-eared it won't even shut properly!

501 Spanish Verbs: Fully Conjugated in All the Tenses: The mother lode for students of Spanish. Though a little weighty, ounce-per-ounce there's no refuting that this has most clout. Impress native speakers with your command of tenses that even they aren't sure how to use!