Russian Short Stories For Beginners: 20 Captivating Short Stories to Learn Russian & Grow Your Vocabulary the Fun Way! (Easy Russian Stories)

The term beginner means different things to different people. When I first picked up this book my vocabulary was about 100 words. THEN I found the book VERY difficult. BUT, part of it was the way I was trying to use the book. The first picture shows me trying to record every word and meaning. That was frustrating. I put the book away and went back to memorizing words. After 200 words I have again picked the book up. I find now with a slightly different approach I can enjoy this book very much. First, I keep my phone with google translate next to me. Second, I study for a while the first 10 words in the vocabulary list. I do not memorize them. I look at them. I look into the words to see if they contain parts of words I might know. I sound them out to see if there might just be an easy association to make so I might remember the word. What I don’t do is stress over it. After 15 minutes of looking at these 10 words I start reading the story. Yes, I have to use my phone and look up many words. I fill in the words I know in two scentences to see if they will give me clues on words I don’t know. Again I look into the words to see if there is a clue. Then I look up the words I don’t know and write them above the sentence. Yes, I still spend at least 12 hours on a story. BUT, the stories are entertaining. I am not frustrated. I enjoy solving the puzzle of words. What am I learning? Ha, I’m not really sure. I am hoping that without really trying to memorize I will learn many words and this will become easier and do me some good. I can tell you that from page 1 and now at page 30 I have found a way to enjoy the book. I remember as a young child discovering the magic contained in stories. When I discovered that I never looked back. Now at 62 years I hope to rediscover this Russian!

I thought this book would have Russian on one side and on the next page English. A lot of these kinds of books I have bought in French and Spanish were like this. If I had known it was only in Russian with an English summary, I would have bought the Kindle version. Other than that I think it's pretty standard for this genre, not much to say about it really.Edit 1: A year after purchase, my Russian has improved enough to write a review of this book. Overall, I think it's really good. I also bought the competitor's books by Olly Richards and the writing in both of them is really different. These Lingo Mastery books have more every day life themes, the stories are shorter, but you get more of them, and more vocabulary is translated at the end of the story than Olly RIchard's books. The stories kind of remind me of something a high school kid might write but that isn't a criticism, it's a book for language learners. I do have one criticism though, there was one story that was a bit ridiculous. It featured a mother of 3 who had apparently never spent a few hours apart from her children before and cried because they were gone for a few hours. I just don't think this is a healthy vision of motherhood. I did appreciate the woman focus of this story and the writing was fine but again overall, kind of an annoying message and I think they could have done better for a country that has more women in STEM than western countries. I thought about docking one star but decided it against it because the other stories were fine and some pretty cute.Also a lot of the stories are written from the first person of different people and there are several short biographies of various famous Russian people. I bought the Volume 2 and will continue reading. Reading is such a great way to improve language.Edit 2: I forgot that I wanted to say that everyone in this book gets tuberculosis.

Good value for the upper beginner, lower intermediate student.

This is an attractive collection of SHORT stories, each about 2 pages in length, so very digestible. There is a helpful list of important words used in the stories printed at the end of each. Easily the greatest drawback for English-speaking readers is the lack of stress accents in the Russian texts to help determine proper pronunciation or in some cases to determine the proper meaning of words. Your list of the age of the consumer (ages 1-13 and then over 13) should clearly be understood as not suggesting that the term "Beginners" be construed as "For Children." Keep your dictionary nearby!