Quote:
Originally Posted by Faveladweller
By the way, is there a name for these types of verbs?
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Not that I can think of. These are just verbs that take an indirect object.
In English, the sentence 'I like books' has a subject (I), a verb (like) and a direct object (books). Another way we could say the same thing in English is, "Books are pleasing to me." This latter structure is what you are using in Spanish when you use verbs like '
gustar'.
Me gustan los libros. -or-
Los libros me gustan.
(The subject '
los libros' can either follow or precede the verb in Spanish.)
Students of Spanish are often taught that '
Me gustan los libros' means 'I like books', but that makes it difficult to correlate the parts of speech. This is mainly because there is no correlation.
'
Los libros' is the subject in the Spanish sentence. They, the
plural subject, '
are pleasing'. To whom are they pleasing? Why, the indirect object. That is the person who is pleased by the books.
So, I hope you can see that it is really misleading to say that 'I like books' is translated as '
Me gustan los libros." The better translation is 'Books are pleasing to me.' That way, everything has a correlation.
Applying the same logic to the other verbs that are like '
gustar'
('
encantar', '
molestar' , '
fascinar', '
doler', '
interesar', '
parecer', '
importar', '
quedar', '
faltar'
y otros)
will help you to make better sense of them, too.
Here's one
site that examines this verb and lists others like it.
Puede tener una función reflexiva: 
