I'm currently reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Good book (so far) but every couple of paragraphs there is a phrase in spanish (which I don't speak). I can usually take a stab at what the word means (based on context) and i can see the point of the author doing this (the characters would speak a mixture of english and spanish) but i can't help feeling i'm missing out. i guess i could go on babelfish but it's not really an option on the train.

has anyone else read this book? if so, what did you think? there must be similar books where a foreign language is regularly used as a literary device - examples?