Useful Books for Learning Italian

[Kathryn]

I was thinking that it might be nice for us to share what books we're using and what we think of them in order to learn this beautiful language.

Italian for Beginners- I think this book is for kids, but I love the colorful layout and all the cartoons. I find that this is a really good resource for reinforcing what I learned in class. There are pages for all of the basics, introducing yourself, food, shopping, colours, numbers ect.

501 Italian Verbs, 3rd Edition- I love this book. It is a fantastic reference that I use all the time. It clearly lists out all various conjugations (although I'm still living in the present tense) as well as giving examples of varying difficulty of usage. This will be my go to reference book for ages I am sure.

Italian Verb Drills- This book has been very useful. The first 28 pages are almost all verbs that I happened to have learned in class already. The drills are very good at helping me practice conjugation and verb usage.

The Ultimate Italian Review and Practice - I've only just got this book. It looks like a really good over view of everything. There are lots of drills, but not really anywhere to write the answers, so its more text book like. I think that this will be very useful over the long haul.

Italian Vocabulary- I haven't done much with this book yet. It was bought for study help over Christmas. It's split into easy to find topics (work, play, shopping) and gives explainations along with drills. I think much of it is a bit more advanced that I am. However, I think that as I progress this will be more and more helpful.

[Claudia]

Thank you for your comments and recommendations, Kathryn.
If you would like to, please share what kind of books you would love to read/study. I am a publisher of bilingual books in Italian and English and love to publish books that can help people learn the language. If there is something that you can't find in the books currently available, please let me know.

[Kathryn]

What a cool job Claudia. Right now I'm constantly on the look out for really good practice books. I know that you can find verb drills all day long online, but I think the act of writing something down in a book (even in pensil so I can erase and do it again) is much more helpful than a website. I would absolutly love a mad lips type book. Maybe something that was super easy in the begining with basic sentencecs and even words to choose from that slowly progresed as the pages were completed.

[Kathryn]

I love the Practice makes Perfect books, I have two.

[Marianne]

I bought The Everything Learning Italian Book (2cd Edition) by Ronald Glenn Wrigley. 2003/2009 Adams Media. I still can't speak or write Italian but it has helped me with letter writing and also deciphering documents in my genealogical research.

[Claudia]

So many wonderful suggestion and so much interest in the Italian language! As a native speaker, I feel both pleased and surprised, considering that Italian is a language spoken in just two countries.
Thank you, Kathryn for indicating a mad lips type of book as something you might enjoy. I will keep your suggestion in mind.

[Debbie]

For improving grammar, demystifying expressions and building vocabulary I recommend Upgrade your Italian - Clelia Boscolo

[Kathryn]

I just got Pasta per due. I thought it would be a good book for me as its meant for the very early beginer and its even better than that. Its written by the same people that do the text book my class uses, Nuovo Espresso, so they 'know' what I know. I'm going to read a chapter a week once my next class starts in a few weeks!

[Marianne]

Just received a genealogical research magazine entitled "Tracing Italian Ancestors. The articles are basic and a good introduction to anyone interested in learning more about how to discover their ancestral roots. If interested, visit the website: www.internet-genealogy.com

[Karen]

Does anyone have recommendations for short libri in italiano?

My little group is intermediate level, and one of our members visits Chicago often and buys little libri gialli -- short Italian mysteries with exercises between chapters.

When I was in Puglia in October, I bought some small libri gialli (w/o any exercises between chapters) and we are starting to read one of those Thursday.

We read, discuss, try to figure out the idioms and words we don't know, and it is helping build our vocabularies and our understanding of grammar.

Thanks!

[[deleted user]]

I have found that Italian Now! Level 1: L'Italiano D'Oggi! is a very fun and helpful resource for learning Italian. I have been using it along with the free language learning website Duolingo.