Rita Mei-Wah Choy

A companion to "Read and Write Chinese", this book expands on about 800 characters, listing not only it's meaning and pronounciation but also a handful of combinations which build off that particular character. It also has a list of everyday phrases which formed the syllabus for our initial study of Cantonese. Another useful book I just can't bear to take off my shelf.
--J.

A nice little book that shows you how to write around 2900 Chinese characters, tells you how they're pronounced in Cantonese and Mandarin, and what they mean in English. (Note: the word "simplified" in the subtitle refers to the book itself. The characters are traditional.) Would that I had the time to work my way through the book and become literate in Chinese! Ah, well, it's nice to have the book on my shelf in case that day ever comes.
--J.

Excellent reference, probably the most used book on my shelf. Many bugs in the index though, and many of the Mandarin pronunciations have wrong (or at least, uncommon) tone usage.