rng wrote:Russian: No clue what to use. I have a couple readers and beginner-level textbooks, but nothing particularly inspiring. [b]I am looking for suggestions. If you have one, please drop it in the thread below!
It's difficult to give recommendations because I think I'm a bit of an outlier in my preferences, being quite a fan of older-style textbooks. I'm also not sure at what level you'd be looking at, given you say you've done Russian before. But I'll give you some thoughts, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
I liked the Точка ру textbooks. I used the A1 and A2 books, but I see that they now produce a B1 book. Despite the coloured pages etc, I'd say these are quite traditional - there are some translation exercises, for example, and they very much follow the approach of having you learn nationalities, names of food, names of rooms in a house, etc. But there are answer keys, so I think they lend themselves quite well to independent study. There is also some audio, but not a huge amount at the A levels. The books are available in hard copy and in e-book form (direct from the publisher), and I found the publisher to be extremely responsive when I got in touch with them.
I used
Новый сувенир 3 next, which is supposed to be B1 level, but I didn't find it demanding enough, and it is (in my view) way too thin to give you anywhere near enough practice actually to make the A2-B1 jump. They have lower level books too, which I think were published under a different imprint though with the same author, so they might be of a different quality.
I have also used the Liden & Denz B1.1 book. The same people also produce books for the lower levels. I'd say the B1.1 is already pretty demanding, and from experience you don't need to know anywhere near what it teaches in order to pass B1 exams in relation to grammar/vocabulary. I haven't got round to the B1.2 book yet as I decided I needed consolidation first. The texts are pretty interesting, and I think that at least the book I have used was good in giving collocations that, if you use yourself, you impress people! There are answer keys here too, but I found the lack of transcripts for the audio to be a bit of a hindrance. Their website has a free level test if you wanted to see where they suggested you start.
I also quite like the books produced/used by UCLA in their Russian department. I have
Russian: From intermediate to advanced, which is pitched at getting you to a B2 level.
В пути is the one that comes before that, though I haven't used it. I also have their
Russian through art, which I'd say is a similar B1-B2 level, and is structured in a very similar way, though obviously with a limited focus on one subject area. The UCLA books (or at least the ones I have used) are good in having a lot of native audio (including video) as part of each chapter (available on the sister website). They also are very heavy on exercises, and very dense generally, which I find useful in terms of trying to hammer Russian into my head! The website contains the answer keys, transcriptions of the audio, and some online tests. You can sign up to the website without owning the books, which could help you to decide whether you like the approach.
For listening practice (no books provide enough, in my view), I'm a fan of
Russian with Max, and credit listening to those podcasts on walks with getting from the A levels in listening ability to being able to ace a B1 listening exam (conducted with a teacher only but under exam conditions). I'm using the podcasts with transcripts now to move forward - I think that going for a fuller understanding rather than just the gist and trying to learn words from them, makes these podcasts a worthy tool up to the B2 level too. But bear in mind that I'm not a TV/series fan, so am not inclined to work on my listening that way, which may well be more efficient.
For graded readers, I've tried a few, but here you're probably better off looking around for yourself. Litres.ru sell e-books. I think you might be US based, but the shops Ruslandia (in Finland) and European Bookshop (UK) have a large Russian stock, and you could browse their sites for ideas.
I could go on, but will leave it at that for now, and you can let me know if it was of any use!