(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best reference books

The decision is up to you, and your final choice should pertain to your situation/interests, but if you do choose to learn Japanese, then I can give you some pointers:

Learning Material

Start by learning Hiragana and Katakana. This should take you 2 weeks tops. You can learn it through apps like Dr. Moku (apple and android), and practice with Drag-n-Drop.
After that, use the Genki textbooks I and II (make sure that it's the 2nd edition, which has more features added to it), which are the most popular by far within the Japanese learning community.
Japan Times, the company behind the books, also made some pretty neat apps to side with the book. Available for apple and android. There's also a workbook, which is a bit of a drag to buy after buying two $50 textbooks, so I uploaded the PDFs here.


Supplement your studies with Anki SRS (Spaced-repetition-system), which is essentially virtual flash cards.
There's also Tae Kim's Grammar Guide, which is pretty good as a reference, but not so much a sole learning material. His website is another good reference resource.


Please realize that it's okay to forget words and grammar points, and you're definitely going to have to revisit some of them along the way.




I should probably mention Kanji. Kanji are characters imported from China during the 5th century, although many have divulged from their modern Chinese equivalent. Genki I+II will teach you 317 kanji (image for scale (sorry for bad quality!!)), and Tobira (the textbook I'm about to mention) will teach you another. There are officially 2136 "Jouyou Kanji", or kanji used in everyday life (e.g. a newspaper). Some people use Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, which I wouldn't recommend since it only teaches you the meaning (which it sometimes lies about), and doesn't even teach the reading or any words that use it. I'd recommend learning words and then the kanji that they use. That way you're getting more bang for your buck. While I personally don't use WaniKani to learn kanji, I have used it in the past, and it's really good. Sleek interface, gets the job done, forums for questions. All the good stuff you'd expect out of a kanji learning site. The first couple of lessons are free, and then it's something like $8/month. Despite WaniKani and all its greatness, the creator behind it (named Koichi) also made an "online Japanese textbook" called Tofugu, which I definitely wouldn't recommend. It waaaay too much around the bush, and half of it is just "motivational talk" (which I'm pretty sure is just trying to get you inspired for a night or two, pull out your wallet, pay for a lifetime subscription, and then give up once you get to the 〜ます forms).


Edit: I also feel the need to mention that, despite what pop culture might tell you, only a tiny portion of kanji are truly pictograph (e.g. 川 (river), 山 (mountain), 人 (person), and 大 (big)). The more conceptual ones have almost no tie to their actual meanings, which is why kanji teaching resources that use mnemonics fall apart pretty quickly. After being written with a chisel on turtle shells (called "oracle bone script"), imported to Japan 1500+ years ago, written 1,000,000s of times from people in prefectures miles away, and reformed numerous times, almost all of them lost their original pictographic quality. Just take a look at 働, 色, and 起. What do you think those mean? The answer is: to work, color, and to get up (in the sense of waking up).

Edit 2: Learn the stroke order for the kanji, since it makes them much easier to break down in the long run. For that matter, learn the radicals, or parts, of the kanji. There's a list here.


To clear up any more misconceptions, Japanese is not like Chinese in the sense that a character alone can be a verb. The kanji "起" doesn't mean "to wake up" on its own; only when you add the "き" and "る" hiragana does it turn into the verb. This is called "おくりがな" (okurigana). There are also many different readings for each character, unlike Chinese where there's usually only one or two. For example, the character "日" (day, sun) can be read ひ (or び), にち, or じつ. One kind of reading is called 音読み (onyomi), literally meaning "sound reading" because when the Japanese came into contact with the Chinese, they didn't yet have a writing system (their language was called "和語" (lit. "native Japanese language"). So, they "borrowed" their characters and transcribed the Chinese pronunciation based on their phonetic system. The other kind of reading is called 訓読み (kunyomi), which literally means "riverside reading". This type of reading is native to Japan and was prescribed to the kanji that corresponded with the meaning. On the more extreme side, some kanji can have 10+ readings. Don't sweat it though (心配ないよ！), as you'll learn all of these different readings through context in your vocabulary.

Now to bridge the gap between "beginner"-ish to "intermediate"-ish, use Tobira (which literally means "bridge"). The book assumes you to have a certain level of knowledge, some of which might overlap with Genki and other words/grammar that you may have to look up. It's an uphill battle, but you'll come out triumphant in the end.


On a side note, I'd recommend Jisho.org as your go-to online dictionary, even if some of the example sentences are riddled with errors. "Imiwa?" is a great Jp<->Eng dictionary for android and iOS. If you're really serious, then get "Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary".
Also check out /r/learnjapanese. There's a lot of great questions/resource links on there, and you can ask any questions you might have.


Duolingo has opened up alpha testers for its Japanese course as well. I'm so-so on the quality of Duolingo, since it doesn't even really teach you grammar, but just in case.

There are a lot of great resources posted up on the Kanji Koohii forums, which is where I found ヨミちゃん for Google Chrome.


To go further, read 4chan's /int/ guide.
Oh, and in case you didn't know, stay away from Rosetta Stone!!

Native Material

After Genki II, give a go at よつばと！ (Yotsuba!), a simple children's manga with furigana, which is kana above the kanji (intended for little kids). There's quite a bit of slang in it, and almost always uses the casual form. Even in a simple manga like Yotsuba, there will still be words and advanced grammatical constructs you haven't even touched yet. You can get the "Yotsuba Learning Pack", which consists of an Anki deck and vocabulary list here.


You can practice speaking with native speakers on a wonderful app called HelloTalk (available for apple and android). It's pretty great.


There's also iTalki, where you can write journal entries in your target language (so you can do this for Italian too) and have them be corrected by native speakers. You can also correct journal entries in English.

About the JLPT

The "Japanese Language Proficiency Test [Number X]", commonly referred to as "JLPT N[X]", is the standard Japanese test. N1 (Number 1) is the highest and most advanced, while N5 is the most basic. You can see how ready you are for each one here. Honestly, N5 and N4 are so easy, they're really not worth the money you have to pay to take it. N3 is a good warm up to N2. Passing N2 will look pretty damn good on any business related Japanese job. I wouldn't worry about these tests until a good way into your studies.

Conclusion

While Japanese might not be the easiest language for an English speaker to learn (far from it, it in fact), and quite daunting due to the scores of kanji you're required to learn, the rewards are numerous. For one thing, you get 130,000,000 more people to converse with on this planet. You're also opened up to the world of anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese cartoons), and the original language of the haiku (俳句). Not only that, but you're also introduced to the literature world Haruki Murakami and other such Japanese writers. Most importantly, you should enjoy it. After all, nobody who doesn't enjoy learning something gets very far into it. If you ever feel incredibly discouraged, take a break for as long as you need. Revisit the material when you feel ready. Never study something if it pains you to do so. PM me if you have any more questions.

Just to give you a benchmark, the words you listed are ones I would consider low-intermediate level. Think about what age American children learn words like 'smile' and 'art museum'. Then think about the English vocabulary you learned in middle and high school - I would consider those 'high intermediate' and 'low-mid advanced' respectively. I would guess that your grammar is pretty close to the same level, maybe a bit higher, compared with your vocabulary. Also, It's easy to overestimate how much we understand when listening or reading in the target language. Try translating what you hear in real time and you'll get an idea of where you are. If you really want to be sure, take a practice TOPIK test and see how it turns out.

The reason I tell you this is to try to give you a realistic outlook about your level and give you an idea about what kind of resources you might look into.

If you're enjoying TTMIK and it's not too boring, I would definitely keep up with that. You'll breeze through the beginner stuff and correct any small errors along the way, and then be able to slow down once you get to stuff closer to your level. Generally their material is really natural, accurate, and useful. I would give anything for a resource like that in Romanian or Finnish ㅠㅠ

I also recommend the Korean Grammar In Use series to brush up on grammar. It's easy to use and effective. I suggest starting with the beginning level just because that's my preference as a language learner and as an ESL teacher - review almost never hurts, and can help a lot, filling in gaps and increasing fluency and confidence.

For other textbooks I recommend:

• the Korean Made Easy series, although this will be majority review for you (you might just want to check out the intermediate book if you're in a rush)
  
• the Practical Korean series by Cho Hang-rok, published by Darakwon (make sure you get the right book series - there are several called "Practical Korean" by other authors). You could probably get away with starting at Basic 2 if you like, although of course you know my position on review. ;)
  
• The Integrated Korean series is written for university students and can be pretty dry at points, but it's definitely the most comprehensive curriculum I've found and will make a big difference for you. I recommend starting at the beginning levels because there will certainly be a lot you haven't been exposed to.
  
  So that's grammar, usage, and guided practice covered. As far as vocabulary, I can't recommend using a flashcard service enough. I really like iKnow because I can create my own courses and I like how it quizzes you on audio, reading, spelling, you name it. I haven't looked at many other options though so you may want to investigate. I strongly recommend inputting every single unknown word you come across in your Korean study into this program and using it as often as you can (daily if possible). Listening to the news, reading practice, etc. are also valuable but you don't need to include vocab from that yet unless it's a word you're particularly interested in for whatever reason. Once you're at the advanced stage where you're comfortably reading newspapers, textbooks, etc. I would start in with that kind of advanced vocab study. Also, starting now, consider using it for grammar/sentence practice and not just vocabulary - sometimes I find that's the best way to drill new constructions into my head, although it can be a bit time-consuming.
  
  Unlike the majority of language teachers it seems, I do NOT recommend trying to be more productive with the language than your level allows. Writing when you're not sure of the correct grammar or vocab, forcing yourself to speak, etc. is not the best path to increasing skill or fluency - only familiarity and drilling are. That said, it's definitely not useless, and you should try to practice when you're with native speakers. But I would recommend against putting too much emphasis on that. The epidemic of Koreans who can pass English tests but not speak is not due to lack of practice, as is common belief there, but more due to the fact that the majority of their English study is geared toward multiple choice tests and very narrow language use rather than natural language. You can tell that's true because they also have trouble understanding TV/movies, reading novels, etc. in English. As a native English speaker and ESL teacher with a degree in linguistics, I would not be able to get a perfect score on their English exams. So don't believe the myth that "conversation practice" is an essential component to fluency - it's valuable, but not the main component.
  
  Once you get through TTMIK and the textbooks I listed, and have made vocabulary practice a regular part of your life, you should be at least a low-advanced level, which is likely more than enough to communicate most things in your daily life with family etc. In the meantime you can also practice translating songs, young adult novels, etc. from Korean into English. Once you've reached the advanced level I would recommend investing more in your conversational skills, perhaps hiring a tutor, doing a language exchange, taking a trip, etc. as well as doing some of the TOPIK textbooks (just an example; haven't tried that one) and doing more advanced vocabulary.
  
  OH! And as for slang and independent vocabulary work, spend some time playing around with endic.naver.com. Probably the best source for natural language, although of course there are still some errors and mistranslations. But for the most part that will be your best bet.
  
  I really hope this has been helpful for you! If you have any other questions or would like any other advice just let me know. :)

I wrote a PM to someone yesterday who essentially asked me the same question. It may not apply to you exactly, since I wrote it for someone else, but I think it will help you regardless. Here it is:

I'm assuming you're studying by yourself, so most of my advice is geared toward that. However, if you actually are taking a class, or decide to take a class in the future, my advice will still be valid. Also, if you use an instant messaging program of some sort (AIM, MSN, Skype, Steam, whatever), please add me and I can help you in real-time rather than through private messages. I hope I'm not being creepy by repeatedly asking this, but I honestly love talking to people in and about Japanese!

Where are you learning grammar? When I started, I bought Genki I and used that for quite a long time. It has some problems, like teaching mostly the polite form and very little casual Japanese, and that example of poor explanation of grammar I posted earlier, but it's overall a great book for beginners. You can also find it for free at some places if you can't afford it, or want to try it out first. You only need the actual textbook if you do plan on buying it; the workbook isn't needed and the CD with listening exercises was really expensive, so I just downloaded that.

I also started using Tae Kim's grammar guide, a free online guide to Japanese grammar, about a month or two after I had started using Genki. It's not complete enough to learn solely from it, but what it does have is very well explained. The only drawbacks are the relatively small amount of examples for each individual grammar point, and no example exercises to check what you've learned.

You should, in my opinion, be learning katakana and hiragana simultaneously. Since each character directly correlates to another one, just like the English capital and lower case characters (though the usage is different, it's the same idea), it makes it easier to remember both. I highly recommend writing them out by hand. Writing something by hand helps with memorization via muscle memory and recall rather than just simple recognition, and I guarantee you that you will some day want to be able to write Japanese by hand, so you might as well get started with that on day one.

What I did to memorize kana was print out this Hiragana chart and this Katakana chart, courtesy of Wikipedia, and hung them up on the wall above my monitor. Then I would try to write down the five or so characters that I wanted to memorize that day a dozen or so times, spaced apart maybe 30 minutes to an hour. For example, let's say I wanted to learn あ い う え お... I would grab a notebook and look at the chart once for each character to see how to write it, then write that character a couple dozen times, and repeat this for all of the ones I wanted to learn that day. I would then go do something else for half an hour or whatever, long enough to have the shape of the character gone from short term memory, then try to write them all again without looking up how to write them. If I could successfully write them again, say, five times in a row without needing to look them up, I considered the character memorized and moved on. This took me maybe a week and a half to memorize both types of kana.

As for kanji... you should start on kanji immediately after getting down hiragana and katakana. It's a little difficult to explain how I studied kanji in the laggy environment of PMs, so I'll just point you toward the website I started off with (and am still using) to study kanji, located here.

>watch a few select animes (Death Note is freakin awesome!)

Anime is good for listening comprehension, but only if you watch it without English subtitles. I guarantee if you're watching it with subtitles, especially if you're only a beginner, you won't learn anything. You'll feel like you're learning stuff and maybe understanding it, but the second you turn off the subtitles and watch something you haven't seen before, you'll realize you're not actually learning or understanding anything. I know because I've been there myself.

You also need to be careful about what you learn from anime, because the characters in anime are, well, characters, and not real people. The guys use very masculine and aggressive speech, and the women use very feminine speech. That's actually yet another difference in Japanese from English! There are certain words and pieces of grammar that are masculine and feminine, and to use some of them makes you look more manly or girly or whatever. Note that I'm not saying "You can't learn from anime!", because that's not true: You just need to actually understand what is being said so you don't end up saying something rude or weird.

If you end up contacting me via an instant messenger, I can even give you a couple basic grammar lessons to help you start off. I absolutely love the language: I enjoy learning it, I enjoy speaking to anyone in it, regardless of skill level, and I enjoy teaching what I already know to those who may not know it yet.

がんばってください！

I didn't mention it in the PM, but another great way to practice is manga. One of my favorite manga for this purpose is 「よつばと」 (yotsuba to; often translated as Yotsuba&), for several reasons: It uses very simple but realistic, every-day Japanese, has furigana, and most importantly is actually good; I would read it even if it had nothing to do with Japan because it's honestly a really, really good manga.

Hey you can use any or all of the below mentioned resources:

WEBSITES:

1. Khan Academy; Official partner of the College Board. It consists of videos & questions related to each & every section of the SAT Test with detailed explanations & performance tracking. And it's totally free!
   
2. UWorld; This websites boasts of having a collection of more than 1800+ questions. with detailed explanation, detailed rationales for incorrect answers, performance tracking, vivid illustrations, track time to improve your speed, compare your results to peers and a lot more. PAID.
   
3. 1600.io; Offers multidimensional online instruction for the SAT. In addition to it also offers course-by-course basis preparation. It covers about 3,000 real SAT questions in 200 hours of video instruction. Although I don't have an experience with this site but it's highly appreciated by other test takers. PAID.
   
   BOOKS:
   
   

• Mathematics: Personally I don't fine this section on SAT abstruse so I think following books are more than enough to ace the SAT-Maths section;
  
  

1. The College Panda's SAT Math: Advanced Guide and Workbook for the New SAT; The best thing about this book is that it focuses on every particular section of SAT making it easy to comprehend & more helpful than the books that randomly talks about all the topics at once. Practice questions are incredible and are backed-up with Nielson's very simple & easy to understand answers & explanations. Also, there is a Website and any errors made in printing are mentioned on it.
   
2. The College Panda's 10 Practice Test For The SAT Math; Running out of Practice test? Want something more? Well this book has some relatively realistic versions of the SAT's mathematics sections (both calculator and no-calculator).
   
3. PWN The SAT: Math Guide; Still not satisfied with your SAT preparation? Longing for something more? When you're done with this book you'll be able to approach the SAT with confidence - very few questions will surprise you, and even fewer will be able to withstand your withering attacks.
   
   

• Writing:
  
  

1. The Ultimate Guide To SAT Grammar, 4th Ed; It isn't about drilling as most of them (books) are. It's about the philosophy of the SAT. Author backs up her advice with relevant questions from Khan Academy in each chapter & provides comprehensive coverage of all the grammar & rhetoric tested on the redesigned SAT Writing & Language Test. Two things that you'd miss - lack of enough practice questions & its overpricing (Especially for International Students). She had a Website where you can look-up for Errata & other college related information. You'll also get a practice question each day prepared by Erica herself!
   
2. The Ultimate Guide To SAT Grammar WB, 4th Ed; Fall short on practice questions? Need something to execute what you've learned so far? This accompanying workbook to The Ultimate Guide to SAT® Grammar contains six full-length tests in redesigned SAT format, each accompanied by thorough explanations designed to reinforce the concepts and strategies covered in the main grammar book.
   
3. The College Panda's SAT Writing: Advanced Guide & WB, 2nd Ed; This one is truly geared towards the student aiming for the perfect score. It leaves no stones unturned. It has clear explanations of all the tested SAT grammar rules, from the simplest to the most obscure, tons of examples to illustrate each question type and the different ways it can show up, hundreds of drills and practice questions to help you master the concepts and a lot more. AND, THREE PRACTICE TESTS.
   
   

• Reading: Probably the "hardest-to-score" section on the SAT test.
  
  

1. The Critical Reader, 3rd Edition; Intended to clearly and systematically demystify what is often considered the most challenging section of the SAT, this book provides a comprehensive review of the reading skills tested on the redesigned exam for students who are serious about raising their scores. Meltzer's explanations and tricks are very descriptive and include hints to easily discern the correct answer through process of elimination. Major drawback? Well, it lacks enough practice questions & is highly overpriced!
   
   

• ESSAY: For this section I'd say Khan Academy + these 2 books are more than enough. If you work with these modestly I guarantee you can easily achieve a perfect score on SAT Essay;
  
  

1. The College Panda's SAT Essay; The writer covers all of the main facets of the new SAT Essay, including the scoring, structure and key elements of a rhetorical analysis, combined with more strategic advice regarding such topics as paragraph structure, transitions, vocabulary usage, length, writing speed, quotations, examples, and the elements of persuasion. Author's high-scoring essay from the May 2016 exam is included where he shares everything from what he did right as well as the subtle things he initially missed.
   
2. SAT Vocabulary: A New Approach; Covers key vocabulary for the Reading Test, Writing and Language Test, and Essay. This book offers an approach that is aligned with the new SAT’s focus on vocabulary in context. The concluding chapter on the Essay is short but outstanding. The chapter features a particularly helpful presentation on 6 persuasive devices, a list of 25 top Essay vocabulary words, and best of all a real Level 24 essay written by a real student on the November 2016 SAT.
   
   Hope this helps. If liked, please don't forget to up-vote. And all the best for your preparation and test.

Hi (or should I say こんにちは?),

I'm an American took Japanese for a year in middle school, 4 years in high school, and around 2 years in college. I've also been to Japan but never lived there. I haven't kept up with my Japanese and as a result have started to forget a lot. I'd be a terrible conversation partner but I can give you some advice as to where to get started.

One of the main issues beginners have with learning Japanese is that the letters look all crazy and you can't even sound it out if you wanted to. You may have heard something like "Japanese has 4 alphabets" which is only partially true.

I highly recommend you start by learning the letters, make yourself some flash cards either with index cards or digital, and start coming up with pneumonic devices to remember them. There are plenty of resources out there that teach you the basics as if you're a kindergartener but don't let that discourage you, you are just learning the letters after all, its ok to be a kindergartener for a bit.

The first "alphabet" you'll want to memorize is Hiragana. It's what I used up above to write hello and it's the letter system the Japanese use for Japanese words. There are a few exceptions but for the most part if the word is Japanese, you write it in hiragana, at least when you're first learning. Every letter is a syllable so the first letter あ (a) is prounounced "ah" whenever you see it. い (i) is not pronounced "eye" but more like the English letter "e". お (o) is pronounced "oh" so if you put these together あおい - aoi is pronounced "ah-oh-ee"

The next set of letters to learn is Katakana. Its the same exact syllables as hiragana but the shapes look different. That is to say the same letter is still a prounounced "ah" but instead of あ it now looks like ア. Katakana tends to have more straight lines and jagged curves. This is the alphabet the Japanese use to write non-Japanese words. For example America or hamburger are both words borrowed from somewhere besides Japan and therefore would be written in Katakana. America is written アメリカ with the letters a, me, ri, ka, and pronounced "ah-meh-ri-ka" with 4 distinct syllables.

Those are the 2 main letter systems you'll be writing with when you first start. The other two are romaji and kanji. Romaji is simply writing Japanese syllables with English (latin) lettering. So あおい is written aoi and アメリカ is amerika. The trick to romaji is remembering to pronounce it in Japanese syllables, not how it would sound in English. Amerika looks like it could be pronounced the same as America to an English speaker but you need to make the ah, meh, ri, and ka distinct. You wont use romaji too much in actual writing but it will help you remember the pronunciations when first learning and it is used for typing Japanese on standard qwerty keyboards.


The last "alphabet" is not really an alphabet at all. It's called Kanji and it is extremely discouraging to your starting Japanese student. Borrowed almost entirely from Chinese Kanji is a series of literally thousands of characters that can make up entire words or parts of words. The nice thing about Kanji is that it uses many repeating parts called radicals from one character to the next and once you learn the most used pieces it becomes easier to recognize. The problem is that you can't sound them out if you've never seen one particular Kanji before and for very early beginners it is difficult to look up.

Kanji will often be mixed with other Kanji or hiragana to create a full word. For example 青い is "aoi" from above, same exact word but by writing the Kanji it saves a character and space. It may seem like much more work for 1 character of saving but kanji can sometimes represent several syllables and long words can be shortened into just 2 or 3 spaces. As a result many newspapers and comics heavily rely on Kanji and can be frustrating for beginners. Most Japanese classes will first get you comfortable with everything above before starting on Kanji and then only introduce the most basic ones a few at a time until you get the hang of them.

Just a couple pieces of miscellaneous advice:

1. First learn hiragana and katakana and don't worry about vocab until you've got a pretty good grasp on it. Do worry about pronunciation though. It can seem weird at the very start but it's better to get it right at the start than to have to break a bad habit later ("e" is pronounced "eh" not "ee" and "u" is "ooo" not "you")
   
   
2. For the most part hiragana and katakana pronunciation follows the same 5 vowel sounds. If you were reading off the alphabet it would sound like this "ah ee oo eh oh / kah kee koo keh koh / tah chi tsu teh toh / mah mee moo meh moh" etc.. notice how in the "tah" line what would be "tee" is now "chi" and what would be "too" is "tsu". That's one of the few exceptions but any decent hiragana guide will cover things like that. Also I was not writing in romaji there, I was just writing how the letters actually sound"
   
   
3. Don't let this massive guide get you down. Honestly you could learn hiragana and katakana in an evening if you crack down on it and in a week if you just look at it for a bit every day. From there you can start to work on vocabulary and grammar. The only thing that really makes Japanese hard is the letters and once you have the basics its really not that bad.
   
   
4. A lot of books, especially children's books or comics will have little hiragana letters over the kanji to help you learn or continue reading if you don't know the kanji. Once you get a decent grasp at grammar don't be afraid to muscle your way through a kid's book or two to get a feel for things. No one expects you to be able to fly through it but with a dictionary by your side and a notebook for translating its really fun to work your way through something like that. I wouldn't worry about that for a bit though.
   
   
5. Since I was taught in a classroom I don't know too much about learning online. I do know there are a ton of resources online if you know what to search for "romaji to hiragana, kanji dictionary, etc". I do know that it helps to have someone who speaks it work on your pronunciation, maybe live mocha could help there. I'd avoid using anime for pronunciation advice because you'll end up with the voice and mannerisms of a cartoon character. :)
   
   
6. The book my university used for people who didn't speak a single word of Japanese was Genki and I highly recommend it. It has a lot of English in it and works you through basics of grammar and vocab at a good rate. Plus it has a mini dictionary in the back of words it teaches you and a hiragana and katakana chart which is handy to have in a physical format. If you do like the book they have several more in the series that gets you to fairly advanced stuff in an easy way.
   
   Sorry about the wall of text but I hope it helps point you in the right direction. If you have any questions feel free to PM me and if anyone who speaks Japanese has better advice let me know! Like I mentioned at the top I've started to forget a lot from not using it and I've never taught it so maybe there are better resources out there. Good luck and have fun!

This is a great question.

Quick background: My name is John Green. I write books, which currently sell really well, and also make videos with my brother that are very popular on YouTube. My brother and I also organize this huge annual charity project called The Project for Awesome, in which people donate money and then together as a community we decide which charities should receive the money. It's basically a huge exercise in crowdsourcing philanthropic prioritization. And we've also crowdfunded some of our projects, so this is a very interesting question to me!

First off, I agree with you that celebrities walk on thin ice when they start their own charities and then try to administer them, because those people are often very busy and also there are existing charities that are already really good at delivering services in many fields. But if a celebrity is running an effective organization, or partnering with an effective one, there are a lot of good reasons for that wealthy person to solicit donations:

1. It works. I personally donate a significant percentage of my money to charity, but I do so privately, because I think making a spectacle of your donations is weird and doesn't accomplish much. But I also ask people to donate to charity, especially during the Project for Awesome, because it works. We raised over $750,000 last year, and much of that money was raised because people wanted perks (signed posters, books, etc.) that you could only get from the Project for Awesome, and so we raised much more money than I could ever have donated on my own.
   
   
2. Many celebrities are not as wealthy as they seem. For decades, celebrity and wealth were more or less interchangable, but there's a reason that almost no celebrities can be found on lists of the 1,000 richest people in America: Celebrity is not as lucrative as it once was, and the vast majority of concentrated wealth in the United States goes to entrepreneurs, investors, and people work in finance. (A famous example of this is that 50 Cent's wealth is mostly due to his investment in Vitamin Water, not his platinum selling albums, but I think it's broadly true as well.) But celebrities do have a platform, and if they use that platform to encourage donations to worthy, well-run organizations, I think in the end we as a community end up giving more (and more effectively) than we would if celebrities were quiet about their philanthropic efforts and interests.
   
   
3. In the case of the kickstarters: First, I don't think Zach Braff had the money to finance a movie on his own. Movies are insanely expensive, and whatever money Zach Braff has made may have to support him for a very long time, because acting and writing are not like law or medicine: Your future income is not guaranteed, and usually goes down as you get older.
   
   But the biggest benefit to the kickstarter is that it convinces people in Hollywood that there are real people who really want to see the movie in question--want to see it so much that they'll PAY IN ADVANCE. It creates a community. The $2,000,000 or so after expenses Braff raised for his movie will only pay for a tiny portion of the actual film, but that community of people will be the most important evangelists for the movie if it's good. They'll be the people telling their friends to go see it on opening weekend. And that's very important for a film's commercial success.
   
   3a. My brother and I have done this with our educational program CrashCourse, which is partly funded by voluntary monthly subscriptions at subbable. I understand your argument that we could pay for Crash Course ourselves, but we couldn't pay for it ourselves for very long, because it's very expensive to make and even when educational video gets tens of millions of views a month, it just can't be made sustainable by advertising alone. We need it to be financially sustainable so it can grow and continue to be a thing for decades.
   
   3b. To me, asking (not requiring! just asking!) people to pay for something like Crash Course is similar to asking them to pay for a subscription to a magazine like The Economist. A lot of people are doing full-time work to create Crash Course, and while it (like The Economist) could theoretically be funded by a wealthy individual at least for a while, it's a more sustainable and probably higher-quality project if the audience funds it, because that makes the project responsive to the needs of the audience rather than responsive to the needs of the some billionaire.

Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games.

So on fun fact to note is from here on out you are in charge of developing your relationships with the Gods / Your higher power / Whatever. There’s no dogma. Even if you decide to go with a group or tradition or go it alone there’s no hie holy book or judgmental spirit that will damn you or tarnish you. There’s only the path you choose, and every direction holds lessons to learn if you’re open to it. Specific traditions do have rules you must adhere to to be a member, but you’ll also find there’s a lot of creativity. You don’t need to buy any expensive ritual gear or altar stuff, keep weird herbs or bedazzle yourself in pentacles and Birkenstocks (that’s still a thing right?)

So what to do now?

First thing, you read books. You’ll find plenty of reading lists (like in the side bar). When deciding on a book, check the index and look at the sources and probably the amazon reviews too. There seems to be a switch that flips in half of 5 year pagans where they decide to write a book about Wicca/magic and some actually succeed. Some have poor scholarship and others are just bad. Like I said there aren’t ‘rules’, but folks like to fudge historical facts. Paganism in general often involves learning mythology & the stories of the Gods, and lots of folks like to romanticize the history of Wicca, so you want books that have good scholarship. A book I still recommend to beginners to read first is Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. It was last updated in 06 but still is useful in learning about the modern pagan movement and many of its flavors. It’ll start you off.

Learn the basics of the different types of meditation. Most rituals have a time where visualization is used, and group rituals often use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_meditation](guided meditation) as a technique. You decide how much or how little you do it in your own practice, but it’s a thing pretty much every tradition has in one from or another. It’s good to be aware of anyway.

Go for walks in nature, at least once a week if you can. Paganism and Wicca are nature based so, go outside.

I personally suggest you dig outside of pagan books for reading material also. I know, a lot of reading right? Wicca some say is called the craft of the wise, and since we drive our own spiritual busses we have to be proactive in knowing stuff. To point you in a direction there I’d suggest you start with Joseph Campbell, especially his ‘hero of a thousand faces and power of myth series. If you dig you can find full lectures of his on YouTube https://youtu.be/bny-U3XlqxY

Last pagan groups. Well there are all kinds and they’re everywhere. http://www.witchvox.com is still a place to poke around outside of Facebook. Lots of pagans are kinda off the grid a little so sometimes they can be hard to find. If there’s a local pagan or new age shop, pay them a visit. The clerk may seem standoffish, don’t take that personally. Lots of wackadoodles visit those places and become a huge annoyance or time suck for them. Usually just mentally ill folk that are pretty much harmless. All religions attract crazy people, but Wicca/pagans attract crazy fringe people that support each other in their delusions. It’s not anything to worry about,, just many shop folk have learned to be a midge guarded. Most are cool, and if you ask how to find resources and groups in your area they will point you in the right direction. Just don’t expect them to be gurus.

Note on that. Remember you are ultimately your own teacher, and never to accept the word of anyone blindly, even if it sounds good. No writer, teacher, coven leader, or grand poobah has ‘the way’. Anyone who says they do, ignore them. I personally have never ran into any cults in the last 20 years of being in the pagan community, but there are shysters that will take advantage of the naive. The Isaac Bonewits cult o meter (also a pagan author) is a handy tool for groups. In all things though follow your gut. Someone or a situation feels creepy, trust that. If someone asks you to do something, like give you money or pushes you to be naked in rituals when you aren’t comfortable with that, know you don’t have to and you have the right to say no. I have not ever ran into that personally but it has to people I know. Pagan culture likes to challenge people to be themselves and will tap at comfort zones because in challenging ourselves we grow, but pagans are also HUGE on consent. Trust your instincts. You have them for a reason.

I don’t mean to squick you with warnings, most folks are cool. The neopagan movement is a vast group with a mishmash of different subcultures, and Wicca is a mishmash of different traditions within paganism. Nobody is in charge, so sometimes you find assholes, as you would in any group. Only with paganism you get dicks who claim they’re a powerful shaman taught by some sorcerer Native American chief who is also the reincarnated soul of Alister Crowley n they have a coven that uses ritual circle jerks to increase their psychic powers to to battle on the ethereal plane where they fight demons and shit. Also for them to be your high priest/ess you need to give them 10 bucks. I’m mostly joking, but yeah ther are some weirdos out there.


Anyway. Lots to chew on. Enjoy the rabbit hole! Most folks are pretty awesome really. You’ll never find a group more accepting. Good luck.

> Is this really offensive? If it is, please explain it to me. It's not enough to tell me it is, I've got to know why.

For some it will be, for others not so much.

If you asked me if you could approach paganism, but dropping the "supernatural" stuff from it, I'd say "Hell yeah!" because I do just that. I don't really have much use for divination or crystals or anything like that, so I just don't use them in my practice. I can see why some would use it and I understand how some use them practically, but I just don't feel the need for it.

For me, Paganism is really about the Natural world. The Earth is my Mother (My goddess, if you might like to say so), and the Sun is my Father (My god, if you will). I know a lot of other pagans do this do, but not all. Some pagans use pantheons for deity, but deity is not a necessity in paganism.

I still like ritual, though I don't do much pagan ritual in my personal practice, because the symbols used in it represent natural forces and things going on in the world. A "supernatural non-believer" could find use and spiritual meaning in ritual (as well as gods and crystals and magic), because to me (and surely others out there) they're just symbols, but symbols have a lot of personal power. They can help you change your mindset, help you understand things better.

Some will find calling things "supernatural" offensive, because some pagans do believe "supernatural" things exist, and don't view them as "supernatural." This is perfectly okay, to me, it's just not my way of approaching things.

TL;DR It will vary from person to person, and can be a sensitive topic for some. Not for all, though.

As for books without too much of a supernatural inclination about Paganism, I'd try out Ronald Hutton. His Triumph of the Moon is more about the history and roots of paganism, but he's very detailed and descriptive, as well as academic.

Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon is of the same vein as Triumph of the Moon. Both are pretty heavy and tome-like, but are filled with invaluable information.

If you're looking into Wicca theology, I found Bryan Lankford's Wicca Demystified to be a great in depth explanation, especially for an "outsider." A lot of the "beginners" books on Wicca you'll find are heavy on ritual and magic, and seeing how you don't have much fondness for it, I think Lankford's book might be better suited for you.

And I haven't read it, but Dana Eiler's Practical Pagan might be of interest to you. It seems to have the less "magicy-supernatural" and more of a mundane, practical approach to paganism. Not sure about it, though. You might find some good info in the amazon's review section of the book.

I feel like there's another book or two that I've read that taps into what you're looking for, but I just can't think of it. There are some cool anthologies full of essays of paganism in the real world, which I find are invaluable for their information, and not so heavy on the "supernatural side," like Pagan Visions for a Sustainable Future and Celebrating the Pagan Soul.

PS

>I'm use to kinda being primed to attack fundamentalism in Christianity and I've got little good to say about Islam at all.

I wouldn't be so dismissive of Christianity and Islam in general. Interfaith can be a very important. You don't have to agree with what they believe, but personally I know a few Muslims who are very kind and generous, and if they give credit to their religion for their kindness and generosity, I wouldn't say there's nothing good to say about Islam. But that's neither here nor there.

Fruit by Stuppy and Kesseler is packed full of gorgeous scanning electron micrographs (and other pictures too) and a lot of very detailed but very readable information. I can not reccomend it highly enough. Seeds and Pollen are also very good. I have not read it (just found it now, going straight on my wishlist) but The Bizzare and Incredible World of Plants, also by Stuppy is almost certainly excellent.

It's a bit technical and dry, but Plant Form, by Adrian Bell is one of my favorite reference books of all time. The information is fascinating, and the diagrams are gorgeous. There's a free online copy available (legal, I think) if you would like to have a look, but I would highly recomend a physical copy, and it's pretty cheap as far as reference books go. Flip through the section on Tree Architecture starting at page 296 for a sample of how cool it is. Read and understand that section and you will be amazed at the things you will start noticing about plants around you.

For plant ID, I can not reccomend Botany in a Day highly enough for a quite comprehensive tutorial in how to recognize plant groups (which makes it orders of magnitude easier to come up with a more specific ID). It's a classic, and is a required text for just about every field botany class.

Getting a good guide to your local plants that is based on dichotomous keys and diagrams rather than photos and learning how to use it is an absolute must if you want to move past the basics for IDing plants in your area. Without knowing your location, it's impossible to give good recomendations, but the Jepson Manual is a good example of what you should be looking for, and by far the best guide to California plants. Unfortunately these sorts of books are usually fairly pricey, and can be pretty impenetrable without practice (helps a lot if you already have a general idea of what it is), so you might hold off on getting one until a much later date. You can get older editions for cheaper, but at least in the case of Jepson's, most of the changes involve more diagrams and easier to use keys, so it might not be worth it.

There are loads of others that are slipping my mind at the moment, I will add them later if I remember.

Thanks, good additions as well.

Iron John - https://www.amazon.com/Iron-John-Book-About-Men/dp/0306813769

> Perhaps a love and affection they have never experienced, but can only imagine? As one would imagine heaven. Or some other end state, when there are no end states.

Yes absolutely. For me, as an INFP personality type, I have an inner knowing of an idealized form of love. It's like a union of the divine masculine/feminine. In orgasm, it's like touching the void - getting a glimpse of heaven. I'm also attracted to BDSM where they are consciously exploring altered states of consciousness through sex. So perhaps NiceGuys are just more sensitive/intuitive type of men who through nature/nurture have a proclivity to want a more transcendent experience of love.

> They do seem to have an intense need to be seen as better than other men. But at the same time they are men, so they are not better than other men, in a generic sense. We are all men. We all share male desires. Lacking or pretending to lack male desire, does not make you better than other men. It makes you a eunuch.

Yes. It stems from a belief that they are flawed and not good enough as they are (like most humans). Once he begins to accept his own darkness, normalcy, and most hated parts of himself, he will begin to ground himself in reality. It won't actually remove his idealistic nature of love, it will actually just make him a lot less anxious and needy. He won't need a woman to validate his existence, but he can still enjoy their company.

> Fall from grace? The grace of denial?

Yeah that's one way of describing it. To accept their inner evil so to speak. I'm still healing from this fall which started happening years ago. So I can't say what it looks like on the other side. But I just know it will be ok.

Adult Dystopian Recommendations:

• Oryx and Crake – Jimmy/Snowman coasts through life fueled mainly by ennui. His only rebellion is to be mediocre when his advantages in society (white, upper (maybe middle) class, Western male) have him poised for success. Glenn/Crake deliberately turns himself into the Big Bad in order to correct the wrongs he sees in society. Whether his main issue is with human nature, sucking the planet dry, socially stratified capitalist society, willful ignorance, or insatiety and curiosity is unclear. Oryx sees it all and accepts them all, knowing that she’s too unimportant to do anything except pick up the pieces and provide comfort in the meantime.
  
  
• The Year of the Flood – The world and especially capitalist society is stacked against you, but resourcefulness and an open mind will serve you well.
  
  
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Quiet rebellions like memory and record-keeping can be subversive also. But it’s only actions that set the stage for change. And the people you (maybe?) save will interpret everything differently from your intentions anyways.
  
  
• Never Let Me Go – Is it truly a dystopia when only a small group is affected? If you’re thinking of reading this, do not under any circumstances watch the movie trailer. The slow build to “something is not quite right” is part of the charm.
  
  
• Into the Forest – Literary fiction. More about acceptance and regression to a [“natural”](#s "and feminist, which apparently means incestuous but Deep! and Thematically! incestuous") state.
  
  
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Historical fiction about Chinese reeducation camps, but still pretty dystopian. Bourgeois teenage boy questions his educated, upper-class roots and teaches peasant love interest about Western literature. [She](#s "abandons him for a capitalist dream because the lesson she took from it was that love was worthless. Basically, they both take away the worst parts of each other’s starting philosophies and smash them together.")
  
  
• Wild Ginger – If historical fiction is happening, why not another Cultural Revolution one? If you keep your head down, you might just survive long enough to grow up and really see the hypocrisy – stuff even greater than what you saw as a kid.
  
  
• 1984 – Isn’t this more about how the system will break you and leave you a husk of your former self if you trust anyone completely? So you should be smart and skeptical and never assume things are in your best interest just because someone’s telling you so.
  
  
• Brave New World – Have to admit, at 12 this had me thinking that maybe fascism wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The despair and existential crisis aspects weren’t hitting me then: I just noticed how happy almost everyone else was.
  
  
• The Road – All about bleakness and futility and carrying on because the hope of family’s the only good thing left?
  
  
• Fahrenheit 451, where the people in charge are corrupt specifically concerning that thing you're fighting against.
  
  
• World War Z – I’m almost hesitant to call this dystopian, because even though it’s about a freaking zombie apocalypse, it’s uplifting to hear all the stories of human resourcefulness and ingenuity and the mental strength you didn’t think was there. Of course, some of the stories covered are “logical responses” gone bad.
  
  YA-ish Dystopian Recommendations:
  
  
• Feed – It doesn’t work out for the only [person](#s "(Violet)") who truly fought the system (she’s beaten down so horribly that it’s heartbreaking that even the reader wants to look away), but she does technically inspire one other person to at least notice what’s going on in the world, even if it’s probably too late.
  
  
• Hunger Games – Katniss is really only involved because she has nowhere else to go. Side characters have real motivations for being involved, but she really is a figurehead along for the ride and that’s OK. The story is about that and how she copes.
  
  
• The Selection – cough Popcorn cough. America is highly motivated by money (For her struggling family, of course). Ignoring the love triangle stuff, her ideal is to move from serfdom to literally any other [political system.](#s "And this never happens. The political buildup you see in The Selection and The Elite is stomped all over in the vapid cheesecake of the love hexagon finale.")
  
  
• Incarceron & Sapphique – Finn’s rebellion is that he just wants out to someplace that must be better. Claudia lives in artificial luxury and rebels mostly just for personal rebellion, not anyone else’s sake.
  
  
• The Giver – Probably more MG, but how did running away from one collective society automatically become “capitalism is best?” Jonah runs away because he’s learned enough to make his own moral decisions about one of the helpless members of his society (and artificial protection sounds socialist to me). I can’t remember reading the sequels.
  
  
• The Book Thief – Again, MG and historical fiction about a bombed out German town in WWII, but I think a setting like that qualifies it as dystopian. Technically, Liesl fights the system by stealing (possibly forbidden) books from the wealthy and by not reporting the Jew in the basement, but that last one is just showing loyalty to her new family. Her entire upbringing predisposed her to not trust the System, especially a War System, anyways.
  
  Other Dystopias:
  
  
• Matched and Delirium will be considered together because they are the same damn book, right down to the Boy-Who-Could-Have-Been-Chosen-If-Not-For-Rebellion! and the protagonist’s government-approved hobby. Delirium has better writing. Matched is easier to read and has more likable characters. We get it, teenagers should be allowed to date who they like and mommy and daddy non-biological guardians shouldn’t say no. Also, it sucks to have a guidance counselor Make A Schedule for you in order to prepare you for an office job equivalent that’s full of busywork but one of the few respectable positions left. The horror! Seriously, in what world is that rebelling against socialism? You know, that thing that promotes trade schools and equal rights for everyone, even the people you don’t personally like?
  
  
• Divergent – I’m going to let someone else handle that one because urgh. I know a lot of people like it, and it’s YA, so someone else, please support, qualify, or refute.
  
  I’d also be curious to hear what /u/bethrevis has to say about the societies on Godspeed and elsewhere and where they fit into this opinion piece.
  
  Guys, I think I just wrote an English essay. And probably put more work into it than I did in high school. And I won’t even get an A because it’s the internet and we deal solely in lolcats.
  
  But tl;dr: Adult dystopias (that I’ve read) tend to be about the futility of existence or the necessity of self-sacrifice to get a result. The YA dystopias I liked were a little more hopeful (usually) and didn’t support this opinion piece’s thesis. The ones I didn’t like made me understand the hate for dystopias.

Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century by Peter Hall

>In order to give you some good context and historical background on how the field came to be the way it is now, I would suggest picking up Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century by Peter Hall. It will give you a really good foundation on urban planning theory and the different approaches planners have taken. Then, see what concepts in that book tickle your fancy and pursue some classic books in that particular sub-field.

>Here's the link to it on Amazon, but I'll bet your local library has a copy.

"Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream." By Andres Duany

>Despite its title, this book is written by one of the premier planners in the US. He outlines planning theory, practice, and history utilizing stories, maps, and plenty of examples. It was the best planning introduction book that I read (including Cities of Tomorrow, Death and Life of the Great American Cities, and many others).
It's not a tough or jargon-y read, but it has enough meat to it to get an idea about what planners do, how planning is implemented, and the influence that planners have on society. You can probably get it pretty cheap online used. Seriously. http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-American/dp/0865477507/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350348976&sr=8-2&keywords=duany

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

>I strongly recommend The Practice of Local Government Planning, sometimes called the Green Book. It offers an easy to read history and overview of the field, and chapters on subfields within planning, such as environmental, transportation, land use, and urban design.

>As others have said, Jacobs and Hall are good too. The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a great starting point. Jacobs writes in a style that is most appropriate for a general audience, and Peter Hall's Cities of Tomorrow could be the perfect next step to dive deeper.

>In my opinion, first hand interaction can be the best source of information. If you're near a university with a planning program, find an admissions person, student, or professor to chat with, or a local government planner where you live. We're pretty aproachable people for the most part. :)

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you can't learn a language without learning its grammar. Your request is like someone who wants to be a surgeon saying he doesn't want to bother with studying anatomy. It just doesn't work like that.

Sure, with Duolingo or Youtube or a smart phone app, you could probably pick up some vocabulary and maybe even a few stand-alone phrases. Without understanding the grammar, though, you'll never be able to put those words together into meaningful sentences and arrange those sentences into meaningful conversations.

It would be like listening to someone in English who always says things like "Me want store please to go." Sure, a native English speaker will probably understand that you really meant "I want to go to the store, please." However, after two minutes of a conversation like that, the native speaker will be mentally exhausted.

So, as someone who himself didn't start learning German until he was 18, please believe me when I tell you that you will be doing yourself a huge favor in the long run if you take it slow here at the beginning and don't try to jump ahead until you get a firm grasp on the grammar. This won't necessarily be easy, and it won't necessarily be thrilling, but it *is* necessary. Having a large vocabulary and knowing cool slang words don't mean anything if you can't put them together correctly to make sentences.

Finally, you mentioned that you don't know English grammar very well. This is part of the problem, too. How can you learn the grammar of a foreign language if you don't have a frame of reference via the grammar of your own language? A grammar guide that was used in the German department where I studied might be helpful. It's relatively inexpensive on its own, but you might even be able to find it for free at a local public or university library, if you have access to one.

Finally, don't hesitate to ask grammar questions here (but help us help you by not asking 20 different grammar questions in the same post).

Viel Spaß und viel Erfolg!

Hey! I’m also 16, I’ve been learning Chinese for 3 years now and I absolutely love it!!!

Don’t know much about online courses, I was lucky enough to take it at my high school. We don’t usually use our chinese books, but if you want to start there, the type we sometimes go off from is Integrated Chinese: Simplified Characters Textbook, Level 1, Part 1 (English and Chinese Edition) but man, that price is ridiculous! I’m sure you can find some better ones at a book resale shop or even a local goodwill, I’ve found plenty of good chinese language related items at Goodwill’s near me, whether it be movies, informational stuff, or made for learning. It just depends on what you find, sometimes you can get stumble across some real treasures!

Sorry to go so far off topic, but yeah, my advice would be to start with whatever cheapest learning book you can find and then see how you like it. But I also can’t stand learning things on a computer, so that could also be personal preference. Sorry I’m not much of help!

I do like the site FluentU a lot, they post lots of helpful videos and I believe that have many more learning tools you can utilize!

Here’s a link on their list of best textbooks and from there you can scour the site for whatever else you can find.

Best of luck, and you can do it! 加油！Oh! BTW, you should download the Pleco app, as there’s a quite large consensus among Chinese learners and teachers alike, all attesting to the notion that it does wonders. It’s literally my Chinese Bible—as in, it is a Chinese dictionary. Much better than Google Translate, (although Translate can also be useful when used the right way and not as a crutch) and Pleco also gives helpful context clues and sentence examples to make things make more sense.

>I'm not quite happy with my dating life, but I'm not sure there's a way for me to be happier. I still feel like I'm doing the best I can... Which is a sad thought, as I'm not doing very well, of course...

If you want to improve your outcomes, you need to change what you're doing. But I think before you get to that point, you need to adjust how you relate to yourself.

>I try to be honest with myself. I don't quite understand why I would "live in the present," when I know full well that there is a tomorrow. I knew since high school that I wanted to go to law school, and I did it, and it seems to be going well for me. I plan. It's who I am. I'm critical of myself when I have something to criticize, because if I'm not, that's dishonest, isn't it? I should know my weaknesses, and account for them, right?

This is what I mean by intellectualization as a defense mechanism. I know it well. Here's an analogy that helped me. Think about how most really hot girls live their lives. They get by on their looks. They focus on their looks. They invest in their looks by going to the gym, curating an impeccable wardrobe, tanning, spending hours on makeup, growing their hair out, etc.

Sure there are exceptions, but in general most people that are gifted in a specific area, tend to over rely on that talent. This is equally true of intelligent people, who place too much importance on being smart, and not enough importance on being themselves. And there is a distinction between your conscious, higher mind, and you as a person.

Getting in touch with your whole self (your sexuality, your unconscious, your body, your emotions) in the present isn't dishonest. Always living the future is. Because it's an escape from where you really are.

Some good books on this are:

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

Healing Your Aloneness

Iron John

Anyway, I know how hard this stuff can be. I've worked on it for years and will likely never be finished. And if you are a smart person it can even be harder because your mind will be able to invent very compelling rationalizations for avoiding growth.

• 1. The First 100 Japanese Kanji: A great first step into the world of kanji. Basic, but at first you just need something to help you dip your feet in the water.
     
• 2. Berlitz Essential Japanese: Better than I expected, by why bother with non-academic textbook if you're a serious learner?
     
• 3. Genki I: This was my real first foray into Japanese. Great series, especially for self-study. Holds your hand but covers a lot of territory. It helps to read it, then go back and read it again. I used the workbook on a few occasions, but not much. NOTE: The link is to the old version.
     
• 4. Genki II: The follow-up to Genki I. Goes into more complicated grammar. Again, a great book. I used JGram and Tae Kim's a lot to reinforce my learning with the Genki series. NOTE: The link is to the old version.
     
• 5. N3 Speed Master Series: I really liked these, however I didn't use them for long before moving on to N2 materials. It wasn't well edited, though, and some placeholder text was repeated a lot in the grammar book.
     
• 6. 合格できるN3: This is just practice problems. Really useful for the N3, though.
     
• 7.　絵で見てわかる 日本語表現文型 初中級: This was recommended by a friend. I love it because it was my transition into using primarily Japanese to study. It's a list of grammar points from high N4 to low N2 level, with related phrases lumped together. There are example dialogues and pictures along with a few sparse English notes. It's not perfect, though (some sentences don't give you a very good understanding of the grammar points).
  
• 8. Remembering the Kanji: I dropped WaniKani to study faster, and used RtK as my new curriculum. I used Reviewing the Kanji more than this book, though.
     
• 9. Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese: Okay, so I only ever used the CD (not the book). Still it's great. I realized my listening was weak and conversation skills were even weaker so I found this. Starts slow, builds up. Funny and interesting. Transcribing the sentences helped my ear a lot.
     
• 10. 新完全マスターN2 Series: These are amazing for intermediate Japanese and preparing for the N2. The Kanji and vocab books are probably the weakest and least necessary. The others are essential for N2 study.
      
      I know there's been a few others but I can't think of them right now.

Good job learning plant families! That's an excellent and valuable start. Next I would recommend finding a taxonomic key (flora) for your area - it's a comprehensive, organized guide to all the species. Learn to identify plants by the key, and you'll be well on your way to being a pro! If a flora is hard to come by, see what kinds of field guides you can get your hands on. Often they are cheaper, but not as comprehensive.
 
If you don't already grow plants, start a little garden of your own. You can learn different propagating methods (cuttings, layering, dividing rhizomes) as well as seasonal phenology. If this isn't an option, get in the habit of observing the same plant every day (ex: your favorite tree by your house or work).

 

Keep a journal of phenology events in your garden/routine: when did your tree leaf out in spring? When did it flower? How big were the fruits?, etc. Note how much rain/snow fell, temperature min/max, or what insects you observed. Over time, you'll see patterns develop which will be invaluable to seed collecting, planting cycles, or just damn interesting! There is so much to botany, but being able to see the changes that occur throughout the season is a critical skill. It's all the more personal when you grow your own plants, and if you're into ethnobotany I'd say being in touch (ha!) with the plants is paramount. :)

 

One more thought: if there are any native plant societies, consider joining. Small, local chapters usually have nominal fees, are a great way to meet other botanists, and depending on the organization you learn some really neat, detailed stuff that you might not get from a book (examples: local uses of plants, genetic diversity of alpine communities, important pollinators in your area).

 

Check out these resources:

• [Alper Ertubey's Flora of Turkey] (https://www.floraofturkey.com)
  
  
• [Flora of Turkey, Davis et al, 1966-85] (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-flora-of-turkey.html) - pricey! I don't know where you are in Turkey, but try to go to a university library to see if they have a copy you can browse.
  
  
• [Plant Identification Terminology] (https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Identification-Terminology-Illustrated-Glossary/dp/0964022168) One things for sure, botanists love their vocabulary!
  
   
  
  Hope these ideas get you going! :)
  Good luck!
  
   
  
  Edit: added thoughts & resources; formatting

>I don’t regret having one, just extremely ashamed of being sexual and communicating it to girls and also showing it to the world. Attracting girls’ attention and whatnot isn’t very hard but progressing things to dating, holding hands and eventually sex is impossible. I can’t even call them or message them on Facebook or Whatsapp because I just feel like an idiot for doing so. Making a move in clubs and bars is also difficult although I once got close to leaving with a girl but she didn't want to. I got made fun of a lot growing up for not having a girlfriend and this made me feel like i do not deserve one. It doesn't matter if I've got the green light to go ahead I just feel really ashamed do it. Even something like looking at a fit girl wearing a short skirt makes me feel bad for checking her out and that I shouldn’t be doing it.


I know what you mean. I've been there myself, but even when I was there I was entirely self-aware of my shame and I was skeptical of the validity of my emotional reactions; I realized they were ingrained. Being aware of your emotional reactions allows you to be emotionally proactive. Your sex-negative problem is mostly an emotional issue, and not much else, right? I've been there. I wouldn't doubt that you are also decent looking and have both latent and actualized social skills. Most intelligent introverts have a lot of potential to be who they want to be because they know themselves more deeply than others. You must use your introverted nature to your advantage and recognize the differences in others and yourself. In all honesty, there are an infinite number of unwritten rules; everyone's abstract/emotional logic is different. Many of them are foundational and predictable, however; including yours and mine. Like anything else, being emotionally predictable is not a black/white issue. It is a grey area, and you have to balance your reliability with creativity.


Being made fun of for not having a girlfriend is just as sexist as being made fun of for not having a boyfriend; gender equal too. Were you ever shamed for not having a boyfriend? It's clearly a matter of groupthink and extroverted style; not for everyone. Dating relationships, for extroverts especially, are often attention-getting and showy. They wear their relationships like trophies won. Usually introverts prefer a more private relationship because they have less social desire and are often shamed because of it. Introverts are “themselves” more often in private. Extroverts are “themselves” more often in public. There is no shame deserved either way, regardless of popular opinion. Both styles have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should try to introject some of the traits that you enjoy in others; regardless of type. That is how you become balanced.


>I’m receiving counselling from a pastor who advocates the whole “no sex before marriage” thing and believes that people should only date to get married and sex is only for making kids which is stupid IMO because I do not plan on getting married anytime soon.


Counseling from a Catholic pastor? Watch out, that is one of the most notorious sex-negative societies out there. They own the abstinence-only charade while they parade horribles. Marriage is not the answer to anything; it is an institution of the state. Anything else attached is sentimental.


If you haven't already, I recommend doing an in-depth study of animal sexual behaviors; especially the most intelligent animals. All animals have sex for pleasure, but some animals are only driven to have sex at certain times of the year; humans are on a 24/7 system.


>I’ve tried the no fap route and gotten very high days counts but that hasn’t really helped me at all.


Sexual frustration doesn't help anyone. If you are mindful, then you can use your libido to further your goals, but it is not an all-cure.


>Got any sources to help overcome sex-negative perspectives? I’m interested in recreational sex not baby making sex.


Absolutely. I recommend starting with actual sex science and learning about male and female psychology and neurology. Then work your way into reading about sex culture. You should also study developmental psychology as you will probably need the clinical context in order to objectively self-evaluate your childhood influences; it is necessary for self-therapy. The best therapy will always be self-therapy; no one will ever know you better than yourself.


Evolutionary Science and Morals Philosophy:

The Selfish Gene

The Moral Landscape

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?


Sex Psychology, Science, and Neurology:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

The Female Brain

The Male Brain

Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love

What Do Women Want

Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)

Sex: The world's favorite pastime fully revealed


Behavioral Psychology and Abstract Economics:

How Pleasure Works

Freakonomics

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking

Thinking Fast And Slow

We Are All Weird


Developmental Psychology:

Nurture Shock

Hauntings: Dispelling The Ghosts That Run Our Lives


Empathy Building:


Half The Sky

The House On Mango Street

Me Before You

The Fault In Our Stars

Also check out James Hollis' Understanding The Psychology of Men lecture if you can find it.



Movies: XXY, Tom Boy, Dogtooth, Shame, Secretary, Nymphomaniac, Juno, Beautiful Creatures, and The Man From Earth.



All of these things are related, but it is up to you to make the connections; pick and choose which material suits your interests best. These are the things that came to mind first, and they have all influenced my perspectives.

Andres Duany is an authority in American urban planning that has strongly influenced my perspectives on all of this. He co-authored one book that explains how we got into this mess (Suburban Nation), and another that gives a good overview of what we should do to fix it (Smart Growth Manual). The first is full of good, hard facts and data to back up the claims he makes in the book. Both can be purchased for about $25 on Amazon.

A Jacksonville, Florida newspaper also did a very good comparison of exactly how cheap a streetcar system could be constructed (The Little Rock River Rail) with the bloated inefficiencies that stemmed from the overenthusiastic plans for a tram in Jacksonville (that still hasn't been built).

This site offers a continuation of the debate using the same two examples

Here's a list of rail transit systems in the US if you want to compare and contrast. I figured you might find it interesting.

Houston is a good example of what happens when we fail to distinguish 'good' growth from 'bad' growth. I always joke about how suburban Houston follows a template of a Kroger, and HEB, a Walgreens and Super Target that seems to be stamped onto the landscape at every major intersection. Its hard to imagine converting the mess into more urban communities, but if we use these clusters of commercial development to anchor higher-density residential growth along the edges that are tied together with designated pedestrian and public transit corridors, we will free up large quantities of land to further intensify development when parking areas are no longer needed and when big-box stores reach the ends of their life cycles (which usually top off at about 25 to 30 years). Remember that most commercial growth in suburban areas is, more or less, disposable. We can use this to our advantage to allow redevelopment to take place in an orderly and incremental manner.

The development of pedestrian corridors is not as expensive and complicated as you would think. The biggest problems are the single-use development patterns and the meandering streets that developers use to create a sense of depth to the subdivisions. In suburban areas, the house located behind yours may be over a mile away by road. The good thing about pedestrian corridors is that they don't really require large rights of way and they can be squeezed into areas where roads can't be (between houses). Geographically, most homes in the suburbs really aren't that far away from activity centers (as I like to call them), but the collector/distributor road systems employed can turn that short trek into a very time-consuming ordeal. If pedestrian corridors could offer a sort of short-cut to these, the time required to walk somewhere could compete with the time required to drive there. Once you get people moving on their feet, you'll really start to see changes to the landscape.

Within suburbia, I think the areas in close proximity to activity centers will enjoy the best chances for survival in the future. I think that the rest of the periphery will turn into less-desirable and low-income areas. But the saving grace in all of this is that household sizes in poor areas are usually larger than those in more affluent areas, so my prediction is that density in suburban areas may actually increase with an influx of poor people being pushed out from gentrifying inner-city neighborhoods. And since the reliance on public transportation would be carried with them, I think an increase in transit use in suburban areas would follow as well. So in the end, the urban shake-up may actually have the unintended consequence of dramatically improving the efficiency of the suburban landscape, but that's just my opinion.

Because this is such a HUGE topic, check out my other posts on this thread for some additional ways we could further modify these areas to make public transit and pedestrianism more viable. Sorry it took me so long to respond to your post. Let me know if you want me to clarify anything further.

This is a very broad topic, and difficult to encapsulate in a few lines, but I'll give it a go. I spent about eight years of my life dedicated to this pursuit. I got a degree in bio and worked as a field botanist for years. I tutored it, etc etc.

There is a lot of conflicting information out there, even within the confines of structured and scientific botany. Species aren't neat little packages that many would like to believe, there are hybrid complexes and recent, yet unstable, specialization events that lead to distinct morphologies but the ability to interbreed.

Practically, you want to discern species A from B so that you may harvest one for a particular purpose. Some groups of plants are easy to ID (e.g. Brassicaceae), and relatively safe to utilize, where others (e.g. Apiaceae) contain both extremely beneficial AND deadly toxic species.

Yet, to get to the level of comfort and mastery where you can discern a poisonous plant from a nutritional plant that differs only in the number of stamens or the position of the ovule, it takes years of dedication. Ask yourself how committed to this you are? The consequences of mis-identification can be severe.

Now, past the disclaimer.

To begin this pursuit, you must, odviously, start with the basics. That is learning plant groups. Start coarse and work your way into more fine distinctions. Begin with this text book. It is well written and gives you all of the primary info. It is well written and concise and one of the few text books you that is highly readable. Botany is laden with terminology, and this book is invaluable for that.

Next, you need a flora. Just a quick search (i live in a different biota) yields this website / information. This is a group that you can trust. If you live near, you may attend some of their field trips or lectures. This is the inner circle of botanists in your area and the ones that probably have the info you are looking into. But, most botanists are in it for intellectual masturbation, so keep the uses out of the discussion or you will be shunned (some are more accepting than others).

A couple of other books that are credible, exhaustive, and useful for your purposes are this and this. Lets face it, the indigenous cultures of this continent knew what they were doing long before we Europeanized the landscape. Also try this and this is the definitive guide for European transplants (many of which are naturalized and invasive but nonetheless useful to us).

Any questions, I'd be happy to answer to the best of my ability.

I totally love the Christopher Alexander books. Definitely check out his The Timeless Way of Building which is a great companion piece to A Pattern Language. You should know that his works, while great in my opinion, are sort of considered idiosyncratic and not really in the mainstream of architecture/urban design.

Here's a short reading list you should look at:

The Smart Growth Manual and Suburban Nation by Andres Duany & Jeff Speck. Another set of sort-of-companion works, the Manual has a concrete set of recommendations inspired by the critique of modern town planning in Suburban Nation and might be more useful for your purposes.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs is probably the most famous and influential book on city planning ever and contains a lot of really original and thoughtful insights on cities. Despite being over half-a-century old it feels very contemporary and relevant.

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler is similarly mostly a critique of modernist planning principles but is both short and very well written so I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Makeshift Metropolis by Witold Rybczynski: I can't recommend this entire book, but it does contain (in my opinion) the best summary of the history of American urban planning. Really useful for a historical perspective on different schools of thought in city design over the years.

The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup is the book on parking policy. It's huge (700+ pages) and very thorough and academic, so it might be harder to get through than the other, more popular-audience-oriented titles on the list, but if you want to include parking as a gameplay element, I really can't recommend it highly enough. It's a problem that's thorny enough most city games just ignore it entirely: Simcity2013's developers say they abandoned it after realizing it would mean most of their players' cities would be covered in parking lots, ignoring that most actual American cities are indeed covered in parking lots.

Finally there's a bunch of great blogs/websites out there you should check out: Streetsblog is definitely a giant in transportation/design blogging and has a really capable team of journalists and a staggering amount of content. Chuck Marohn's Strong Towns blog and Podcast are a great source for thinking about these issues more in terms of smaller towns and municipalities (in contrast to Streetsblog's focus on major metropolitan areas). The Sightline Daily's blog does amazing planning/transpo coverage of the Pacific Northwest. Finally [The Atlantic Cities] (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/) blog has incredible coverage on city-issues around the world.

I hope this was helpful and not overwhelming. It's a pretty big (and in my opinion, interesting) topic, so there's a lot of ground to cover even in an introductory sense.

Hi, not Wiccan, but eclectic druid, which is also a subset of Paganism. There are loads of online communities to check out! Firstly, I'd say browse the r/wicca, r/pagan, and r/druidism (shameless plug lol) subreddits, as they're filled with loads of info and opinions. Be warned on r/pagan, since there are LOADS of different types of pagans, you'll get some wildly different opinions. There's plenty of other subreddits (r/witchcraft, for example), but those were the ones I started with.

I also love the Pagan channel on Patheos, which if you haven't browsed before, is a really interesting conglomeration of religious blogs. While I don't use it very often, WitchVox is also referenced as a really good online hub for finding local groups.

For books, this one is a fucking fantastic introduction to Paganism as a whole. It was my first real read on the topic. For Wicca in particular, Scott Cunningham is typically the one people point to for learning how to practice solitary. I also found Wicca for Beginners to be a super quick but useful intro. If you want a more general history of witchy goddess nature-worshipy religions, I am currently reading Drawing Down the Moon and love it.

Finally, if you have any Unitarian churches in your area, reach out-- they frequently have pagan or earth-centered study groups you can always visit!

Like I said before, I'm way more druidy, so if you want suggestions for learning about that (or just want to talk pagan-y things to admittedly a baby pagan), lemme know! :)

I'm currently using a couple of things -- The trick is to find what works for you the best :D (And these work for me, but yea everyone is different :D)

-----

• TextFugu -- http://www.textfugu.com/ [Not a free Resource after the first season $20 USD] [Will also provide Anki lists for you to work with as well as worksheets and a really great forum base]
  
• Human Japanese 2.0 (Software) --http://www.humanjapanese.com/
  
• JapanesePod101 (Podcasts) --- http://www.japanesepod101.com/
  
  
  I have heard good things about the Genki Textbook series (http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/) -- I don't personally use it, due to the fact I am studying Japanese at university and we use Total Japanese Series instead (http://www.amazon.com/Total-Japanese-Conversation-Kimiko-Okano/dp/489358278X)
  
  
  -------------------------------------------
  
  
  
  Also this site has a good resource list to start from: http://www.japanese-irc.net/index.php?title=Japanese_Resources
  
  http://www.tofugu.com/2012/08/28/japanese-reading-practice-for-beginners/
  
  I also recommend Anki Flashcards
  
  --------------------------------------
  
  Also you will be able to find some help at this subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/
  
  And if your are interested, someone is running a UofReddit Course on Japanese:: http://ureddit.com/class/43183/japanese-101 [Subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/uofrjapanese]
  
  ------------------------------
  -----------------------------
  
  
  Good Luck With your learning :)
  がんばってください

Okay - then to start, I will recommend Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood, both by Margaret Atwood. They're part of a trilogy, the third book is due out this fall. Atwood defines them as speculative fiction; they're set in the not-to-distant future, and follow the downfall of civilization. I like Year of the Flood better, but both are pretty awesome.

For fantasy, I really like The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's a blend of celtic mythology, fantasy, and arthurian legend. Some people don't like that it's basically an homage to LOTR, but it's one of my absolutely alll-time favourites.

For YA dystopian fiction, I'd suggest Divergent and Insurgent - also a trilogy, not sure when the third one is due out, off-hand.

One of my favourite sci-fi series is Phule's Company and the following books, by Robert Asprin. I also love Time Scout by him and Linda Evans. His writing is ridiculously clever and witty, and he's one of last century's greatest writers, in my opinion.

And finally, I love anything by Terry Pratchett - his Discworld series is amazing. So very very British and hilarious.

Hey! Good to see someone interested in East Asian languages! The CJKV writing system normally throws a lot of people off.

CJK Writing System

I wrote a short little rant a while back on how the characters are constructed that you might want to read.

There are methods of learning the characters that make use of their structure. Heisig's RtK and RtH books (Amazon link) are the most well known books I think. Fansites such as Reviewing the Kanji and Reviewing the Hanzi also exist which you might want to take a look at.

Not sure if you like RtK? Here's the sampler. See if you like it after learning 276 characters~

Chinese-Specific

The only thing headache inducing about any Chinese dialect is the writing system and tones.

Note that though we call them "dialects", it is a matter of politics as most of them are mutually unintelligible. A Cantonese or Mandarin speaker is unlikely to understand a Hokkien speaker at all, for example.

Written chinese, on the other hand, is in Mandarin and only in Mandarin -- the other dialects do not have writing systems. Well... the notable exception is Written Cantonese, but that's can be seen as a variant of standard written chinese.

Oh! There are have two variants of the standard writing system: Simplified and Traditional. I had learnt the former in school, and I can read the latter after learning about the simplification process, so just pick one and stick with it.

I personally find Mandarin grammar to quite simple. This might be because it's an isolating language.

• Zhongwen.com -- I love the way he arranges related characters together in a tree.
  
• nciku.cn -- Online Chinese Dictionary
  
• Unfortunately I don't have that many online Chinese resources, and the physical ones I have are hard to obtain here in the UK.
  
• Reviewing the Hanzi has a nice list.
  
  Japanese-Specific
  
  Japanese folk have an easier time with Chinese characters. While 6000 Hanzi is roughly college-level (I think?) in Chinese, 6000 Kanji in Japanese is probably more-than-you-need-to-know-ever. There is a Kanji Aptitude Test which is pretty much the only reason one would learn that many.
  
  However, Japanese also have two syllabaries you'll need to know (~50 syllables each). These are phonetic, so they shouldn't pose much of a challenge; most who learn Japanese learn both of them in one or two weeks.
  
  Essential:
  
  
• Denshi Jisho -- Online Japanese dictionary (Basically WWWJDIC with a pretty interface)
  
  Beginner resources:
  
  
• TextFugu - An Online Textbook
  
• Tae Kim - Another Online Textbook, slightly more well-known. Free, unlike TextFugu.
  
• I would also strongly recommend grabbing Remembering the Kanji as soon as possible.
  
• Genki -- Textbook. Some will say to avoid this completely, but just for starting off I don't think it's /that/ bad. Get rid of it once you're past the beginner stage though.
  
  Books to get:
  
  
• Writing - Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Kana
  
• Speaking / Listening - Shadowing Book 1, Shadowing Book 2
  
• Grammar - Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar
  
• Grammar - Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication
  
• Yes, I recommend both books.
  
  Mixed collection of Online Resources:
  
  
• Reading material - A list I posted a while back
  
• Listening material - Another list, though Koohii has a better one
  
• On Japanese flashcards
  
• Random learning resources from Koohii

There's a lot more to foraging than just identifying the plant. Plants look different at different parts of the year. Also there are many plants that only have certain parts that are edible some of the time. Processing and making these wild edibles into a meal is another big part of of the puzzle. It can take years to really learn even a couple dozen plants deeply.

If you want to learn how to identify plants using pattern recognition I recommend the book Botany in a Day Its really well organize and easy to learn from.

I recommend this book too. It has a number of wild edibles that are very common and goes into great depth about how to identify them and when to harvest, how to process and even recipes. I also recommend the you tube channel Eat Your Weeds

They say that if you are as sure you know what a plant is as you are in identifying an orange then you can eat it. If you aren't absolutely sure then take the plant to someone who is.

One thing that I think is really cool about learning plants is once you learn to recognize a plant you begin to see it everywhere. I love foraging and identifying plants. Its a great hobby and the knowledge is really empowering. Good luck, have fun.

For Reading: https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Reader-3rd-Complete-Reading/dp/0997517875

For Writing: https://www.amazon.com/College-Pandas-SAT-Writing-Advanced/dp/098949649X/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=college+panda+sat+writing&qid=1563901164&s=gateway&sprefix=college+panda&sr=8-3 or https://www.amazon.com/4th-Ultimate-Guide-SAT-Grammar/dp/0997517867/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2/133-6279214-8476330?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0997517867&pd_rd_r=b1b3ba1b-4d03-4aef-8534-fb724df88793&pd_rd_w=tVeGd&pd_rd_wg=AG0DL&pf_rd_p=3ecc74bd-d08f-44bd-96f3-d0c2b89f563a&pf_rd_r=S0E4J8G00TRD6F0ZY1ZK&psc=1&refRID=S0E4J8G00TRD6F0ZY1ZK

For Math: https://www.amazon.com/College-Pandas-SAT-Math-Advanced/dp/0989496422/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2/133-6279214-8476330?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0989496422&pd_rd_r=6bc275dd-8dee-497b-aa49-17576266463e&pd_rd_w=YjIig&pd_rd_wg=Pc71l&pf_rd_p=3ecc74bd-d08f-44bd-96f3-d0c2b89f563a&pf_rd_r=P3X7H8SAQZT59M5F6FNV&psc=1&refRID=P3X7H8SAQZT59M5F6FNV or https://www.amazon.com/PWN-SAT-Guide-Mike-McClenathan/dp/1523963573/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?keywords=pwn+sat+math&qid=1563901232&s=gateway&sprefix=pwn+sa&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1

For Essay (if you’re taking it): https://www.amazon.com/College-Pandas-SAT-Essay-Battle-tested/dp/0989496465/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=college+panda+essay&qid=1563901277&s=gateway&sr=8-3

For General Strategy: https://www.amazon.com/SAT-Prep-Black-Book-Strategies/dp/0692916164/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?keywords=sat+black+book&qid=1563901330&s=gateway&sprefix=sat+bla&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1

For Practice Tests: https://www.amazon.com/Official-SAT-Study-Guide-2020/dp/1457312190/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=college+board+sat+2020&qid=1563901505&s=gateway&sprefix=college+board+&sr=8-3 (NOTE: These practice tests are available online but I prefer having them on paper, which is why I bought this book.) and https://amp.reddit.com/r/Sat/comments/9544rw/all_qas_tests_and_scoring_in_pdf_form/

Good online resources include Khan Academy, UWorld, and 1600.io. Also, I recommend taking a timed practice test often to follow along with your progress and see what you need to work on. Make sure to do the practice test all at once (don’t break it up into section) and try to do it in the morning like you would in the real SAT. Then, go over your mistakes very carefully (this is VERY IMPORTANT) until you truly understand the mistake so that you won’t make it again in the future. This is the most important step. If you skip this, it’s unlikely that you see any meaningful score improvement. Also, It’s up to you which resources you buy/use based on what sections you need help with. Good luck!

It's not the 214 Kanxi radicals per-se, but for my first 1500 characters I used method in the book Remembering Traditional Hanzi. There's also a Simplified version of the book. I find this method makes it really easy to memorize characters (well enough to write them), but actually one of the biggest benefits of the book I found was the order in which the characters are presented, making them even easier to remember.

Beyond that, if you really just want to memorize the 214 Kanxi radicals, I'd recommend using SRS flashcards like Mnemosyne or Anki. You can use these to memorize anything. Before I moved to Taiwan for instance, I compiled a list of all of the street names in all of Taipei and used Mnemosyne flashcards to memorize them all. It was unbelievably useful to make it easier to remember addresses and to speak to Taxi drivers while I was there.

There are lots of flashcard decks for the Kangxi radicals. Here's one I found with a very quick Google search. I'm sure there are others. Good luck!

the books that I have are:

Hammer's German Grammar and Usage - it's a huge comprehensive in-depth look at everything grammatical, breaks everything down completely. good as a reference book but not really to go through and study

English Grammar for Students of German - it's a really brief overview comparing English grammar to German grammar with examples, but doesn't get really specific

Berlitz Self Teacher: German - some of the vocab is a little outdated but it's a cute concise book that's really good to carry on the subway or whatever and read in short spurts. there's special parts dedicated to helping you "think in german" which is important for fluency. it's a pretty good book for beginners I think.

I also have Barron's 501 German verbs but I actually haven't started looking through it yet.

and then if we add an audio section to this list is highly recommend Pimsleur's audio courses, though they're pricey so you may want to try and obtain them ahem another way.

Make sure first that the resources you are working with are top-notch. According to the sub, the best online resource to learn concepts (across all the sections) is Khan Academy. In terms of Reading, this means doing the practice with the various passage types (fiction, social studies, and science). In terms of Writing, this means learning the various conventions of the English language. Feel free to also download the free official SAT Question of the Day App for daily questions (every other day will have an English question).

If you are a book person and willing to spend some money ...

The best Reading resource, according to the sub, is Erica Meltzer. My personal recommendation is that you stick with official practice sections for this one because, quite simply, no one makes questions like the CollegeBoard. Mark off select practice tests for use as full-length exams ... the other tests' sections can be used individually. In the case of Reading, use those for practice. If you're afraid of running out of official material, maybe start with PSATs, which are also easier and can ease you in. Make sure you do deep analyses of your errors (know HOW you picked the wrong answer, HOW to avoid doing that again, WHY the correct answer is right, and WHY the incorrect answers are wrong ... you must do all of those things to really obtain value from your practice) and also examine the questions you were not super confident in. Even take a second look at questions you got right to see if you could find a faster way of arriving at the answer. Note down any vocabulary that might have impeded your ability to understand the passages/questions/answers. Make sure to keep a log of all your analyses.

For Writing, the best resources are Erica Meltzer (if you prefer a very dense writing style) or College Panda (if you prefer something more to the point). Meltzer also has a separate workbook of practice tests. Work through either of these by chapter. After every couple of chapters, do a practice section for a mixed review to see if you can handle dealing with the concepts when you no longer have the benefit of being told what to look for. Keep in mind that Writing isn't all just grammar ... there is a reading component to it in which you must think about adding a relevant detail, shifting a sentence, or replacing a word in context ... this is where your Reading skills should blend in as well.

For explanations to the official tests, use 1600.io. Only the first four tests are free, but the site is quite highly regarded. Give that free trial a go, and see if you think it's worth the money.

Be aware that you'll likely see quick gains with Writing, but I promise that once you get the hang of Reading, that score will also see similar improvement. It just takes some time for most people to grasp it. The main thing is accepting that the correct answer is always supported by something in the passage ... you cannot rely on outside assumptions.

Good luck!

I recommend to you Divergent.

It's about a girl named Beatrice in a dystopian society. When they turn 16 they are allowed to choose which part of society they will join. She was born into Abnegation (those who are selfless, live their lives taking care of others ahead of themselves) but chooses the Dauntless (these people are brave and do a lot of crazy stunts, such as jumping off of trains while they are still moving). It turns out that she is Divergent which is a dangerous thing to be in their society.

I love this book because I could not put it or its sequel down. They have the perfect about of action, romance, drama, and mystery to them. The second book in the series is just as great and the third is coming out soon too. I recommend this book to everyone I can because it was just that good.

Item.

Here's a few tips, although this is without knowing your level and your aims:

1. Naturally, there are plenty of choices of schools. I happen to run LTL Mandarin School, which is located in the French Concession but can also send teachers out to students' locations. A class like this once/twice per week, focusing on specific points of interest, can be a good start for acquiring new knowledge/vocabulary/grammar/etc.
   
2. For further practice of listening comprehension, listening material such as the stuff they have on [FluentU] (http://www.fluentu.com/), the ChineseClass101 Audio Blogs or Youtube channels like this thing I used before are very good.
   
3. For writing and memorization of characters, there's Skritter, as well as Heisig's Remembering Hanzi book
   
4. For vocabulary memorization, simple: Anki
   
5. For reading, I personally like using subtitles of movies I know (helps also with review and learning of new vocabulary). A good resource for this is Zimuzu and Zimuku. Also, you would need a dictionary to use - Unfortunately, it does not work on the Mac, but for Windows users, Wenlin is an excellent dictionary, even though GUI-wise, really bad.
   
6. For speaking... You just need to speak with people. If your level is not up to the task of speaking in a comfortable speed yet, get a Chinese person who agrees to sit with you every week and listen to you botch his language for some sort of payment (otherwise, he will very quickly tire of it and find excuses for why he "doesn't have the time" and so on).
   
   There you go, hope this helps! 加油！

Thanks! I'm living in the UK at the moment, and about to move to a new city. I think i'll be able to find some chinese students there (it has two universities), so this should really be useful in practicing my mandarin!

Someone earlier recommended this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1CVOOAPOKFUGL&coliid=I3KK8RBNU3V7L0

I've been reading the sample version on amazon, and it seems to have a very well-thought out approach to learning chinese symbols; basically showing you the basics first (sun, mouth, companian, old, etc.) and then suggesting how they might alter the meaning of symbols when they form part of a symbol. Then it builds on chapter on chapter. It also comes with neat little stories! Is this the kind of thing you were suggesting?

And your general advice on writing chinese is very good! Once i've nailed a few basic phrases and greetings, i'll give the webchat one a go!

My plan of action is currently to take a listening course. Chinesepod seems to be the one that comes highly recommended, whilst at the same time working my way through the book of characters I posted earlier, and trying to find chinese friends to talk to!

In january I hope to start a proper chinese course at a local college.

Does this sound like a reasonable aim?


Thanks so much for your help. I have been quite overwhelmed by the level of enthusiasm and commitment on this subreddit!

Sarah Dessen's books are good summer reads. She just released a book recently, but I would start with The Truth About Forever.

The Divergent series by Veronica Roth was also really good and has a similar feel to The Hunger Games.


I love reading books! If I happen to win, I would love a paperback version of The Giver. Thanks for the contest! :)

Hi there... Well Of course I'm going to have to recommend Divergent. Why? Well because I liked it. If you are a fan of dystopian novels and enjoyed hunger games this is one for you! Bonus, when you are done you can go watch the movie...


Ok- so there is a high chance that you might have already read that one. So I wanted to suggest another too just in case. If you have not read For one more day, you absolutely must! However I warn you bring some tissues! Seriously, read it! It is amazing. Also on the plus side it is relatively short so I'm sure you would finish it within only a few hours of your flight and can pick up another one! :)

Thanks for the contest! Have a great flight and have lots of fun!

This is a really difficult question to answer, but it's still a totally fair question.

As others have said, paganism is an umbrella term for several specific traditions, and there are many different lenses through which to view and practice paganism. Some pagans are drawn to their religion out of concern for the environment, others want to connect with specific Gods, while others are seeking to honor their ancestors, and still others want to develop a variety of magical skills. Without knowing your specific interests it's hard to make any really specific recommendations. However, regardless of your interests I can pretty confidently recommend Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler and Seeking the Mystery. Both books give broad overviews of the history and world view of paganism writ large.

Thing is though, Paganism is about more than just reading books. I'd also recommend that you start trying out some simple rituals and meditations (Google is your friend here). You can make yourself a very simple alter with stuff you've probably got lying around the house. Finally, if you find that this is something that you want to continue to pursue, I'd strongly recommend trying to find some like-minded people in your area. Search meetup.com, or if there is a metaphysical shop in your area just go there and start asking around. There are pagan communities absolutely everywhere, and it's worth getting to know the pagans around you.

That area will develop really quickly, I imagine. Especially as nearby Boston Landing takes off in the next few months (they're building 1100 housing units, plus restaurants and retail, plus fun activities like bowling, ice skating's already happening, plus office space, plus a hotel). It's all near the new 1A train station (which opens later this month, and YES, that is the same cost as the T. It'll take you to South Station in 10 minutes) and there's lot of frequent bus activity that takes you to Harvard Square in 10 minutes.

Continuum's also getting a grocery - Trader Joe's. That'll help.

All this stuff is like.. in between actual neighborhoods of Harvard, Lower Allston and Brighton. It'll fill up, I 100% assure you.

It's expensive but if noone rents/buys, they'll drop the prices until they do. I imagine a lot of Int'l Harvard Students will go there first.

Just as an FYI, any housing project approved by the city has to have a certain percentage of apartments be 'affordable housing units'. Mixed income areas are good for development because you diversify customer's competing for resources. It's nice to have options, like a Whole Foods and a Market Basket, ya know?

If you're interested in city planning, I'd highly recommend reading Suburban Nation by Jeff Speck. Or googling some of his youtube lectures. Very eye opening.

Or the videos by James Kunstler - like 'The Tragedy of the Suburbs'. REALLY interesting take.

-a hammock because the outdoors is awesome

-this sharpie is amazing

-these pens, although a little pricey, are AMAZING. Additionally, you can get refills for them on Amazon and those are inexpensive

-best coloring pencils imho

-Some really awesome book series one, two, three and four

-for math, here's some sodoku

-Some movies: Overboard, When Harry Met Sally, Burlesque

-Telescope

-Picnic basket

-Spirituality book

-some incense and an awesome fairy burner to go with them

I'll try and add some more later :)

Thanks for the contest

I really really want it! ( $5 and $10

you sound young a naive, not receiving or perhaps accepting the respect and acknowledgment of your families love - not realizing it yet, that love of the self and life. Really loving life. Maybe because you have not come close to death, I mean really close to cold, dark, death. More so, you sound like all fresh and stupid young boys do right when they leave high school; assured of their understanding of the world, an understanding that drastically changes every three to five years. Until one day, thirty years from now you look back and say, "I knew nothing when I was young". It's then that you realize this was all a feeling. One long feeling you had, that lasted days and years, as time seemed to slip by so painfully slow. Where a gut feeling of needed mobility took over and forced your fate into a position that only forgiveness and toughing it out can save for. A feeling of longing; Longing for adventure and a chance to prove oneself - a man's journey or hero quest. This feeling in men (and women) has been known since ancient times, only they had positive ways of promoting such innate human drives. Today, we have fraternities and the military, the factory or gangs. All shadow concepts of masculinity, all captivities shaded in brotherhood and silly concepts of sacrifice.

This is what the US military hopes for, besides all the other young and stupid children who knocked up a girlfriend and need money, or inner city kids who need a direction outside of gang life. The world you live in has been designed this way. To take the poor and wanting, and to place them in the machine. You're not going to fight for freedom, that fight belongs at a poll, and in protest, in letters to senators and special interest groups. The only freedom you'll find toting a gun in some foreign land is the same freedom men from constitutional nations always find, a small stipend to spend while corporations colonize foreign markets and people who would never sit by you at a table bank on your ignorance and hard work. You will be yelled at and broken, all for bits of ribbon or a tab. Told you're finally a man now, that you have found discipline, that you gained 'leadership skills'. All the while these traits were inside you, never on the outside, waiting to be emboldened and brought out of you; waiting for a moment of maturity and expression.

The only thing you seek in the military is a chance at expression, for something that is already there, just waiting for an outlet. If you don't want to die, don't be a soldier. If you're patriotic, then your nearest fight for liberty is at home against corruption and greed. If you want to be a man, become one of peace - because I assure you wholeheartedly, there are plenty of ex soldiers who are now men in pieces. Broken, berated and disturbed by the horrors that is war and a tighter bottom line.

Coast guard, if you must. But remember, all your life you will be searching for some semblance of inner peace, and that will never be found holding a weapon.

Works to consider: http://www.amazon.com/King-Warrior-Magician-Lover-Rediscovering/dp/0062506064

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Belly-Being-Sam-Keen/dp/0553351370/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373858243&sr=1-1&keywords=fire+in+the+belly

http://www.amazon.com/Iron-John-Book-About-Men/dp/0306813769/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373858269&sr=1-1&keywords=iron+john

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373858285&sr=1-1&keywords=on+killing

When you say you have studied Japanese for 2.5 years that's really not enough information. Have you been to Japan? Have you been there for an extended amount of time (e.g. several months?). I doubled my number of Kanji while I was staying in Japan, whenever I saw a sign / something written on my milk carton / my aircon remote, I would look it up and learn it that way. While in the subway I would take my time to look up random Kanji I saw in the advertisments.

I would use Kanji flashcards of the kind you can by in 500 box sets and go through a couple of them after a day of life in Japan: some characters I would have seen today but maybe would not remember, so going through the flash cards would help me remember them and clarify their reading. I would not learn with flash cards of Kanji I hadn't ever seen before - a useless exercise for me, I can only remember characters I've seen used in a real-life context. I don't "learn" Kanji programmatically taking them from some list and remembering the on- and kun-readings, I will only ever care about what I need to know in order to understand the text I'm working on. A children's book, song lyrics I got from the internet, texts for learners, Wikipedia articles, NHK news. The real lesson is: in order to get good at reading, you have to read a lot. Today I got a copy of a printed newspaper (読売新聞), you can buy those internationally, I got one from my local retailer at a train station in Germany. Reading an article takes an hour and a PC with a Kanji search by radical and a dictionary site, but I can do it.

For refreshment, I use resources like the amazing etymological dictionary "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters" which will tell you the historical evolution and proper decomposition of Kanji, some stories can be really interesting. With this help I can tell that when seeing a character such as 緒, it consists of thread (糸) and the pronunciation しょ/しゃ(者), hence "the word meaning together (=bound by a thread) pronounced kind of like 者)". Next to etymological help you can also use pure visual clues.

When you read real Japanese texts, you quickly realize that 2000 Kanji is not enough. Even children's literature would use characters outside of that official list. 3000 is more realistic. You should have material (dictionaries, flash cards etc.) that covers more than the official list. Don't despair though, actual Japanese native speakers take their time learning them, too! The more Japanese you come in contact with every day, the better.

I'm sticking to short books that may be slightly above her reading level, but to be honest I think most kids read "up" anyways, and if she's bored she might like the challenge. These are all fast-moving, narrated by a first-person narrator with a great voice that hooks you, and they all have that "what happens next?" quality I think is really valuable in keeping you turning pages.

True Grit - yes, it's a Western, but it's a fast, funny book that is narrated by a 14-year-old girl who is a total badass. I didn't expect much from it and it hooked me like heroin.

Kamikaze Girls - a translation of a Japanese book about a super-high-fashion girl stuck in the sticks and her biker gang best friend. Really mean, really funny, and totally different from what you'd expect. The world it takes place in is so real, so detailed, but so alien to the US (but also kind of familiar - we all sometimes hate our hometowns) that it sucks you in.

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - I agree with the other poster who says this is a good one. It's really sad, but the story sucks you in.

The Fault In Our Stars - great YA book that is funny and sad and all about cancer which feels Very Important to read about when you're 12. But super-gripping and the narrator has a great voice.

The Following list is taken from the Witches & Warlocks FB page. (This is Christian Day's group)

Witches and Warlocks Recommended Reading List
This is a collection of books recommended by our admins and participants in the group. Books must be approved by the admins so if you'd like to see one added to the last, please post it in the comments at the bottom of this list and, if it's something we think is appropriate, we'll add it! We provide links to Amazon so folks can read more about the book but we encourage you to shop at your local occult shop whenever possible! :)


BEGINNER'S WITCHCRAFT BOOKS

Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft
by Raymond Buckland
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0875420508

Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America
by Margot Adler
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143038192

Grimoire of the Thorn-Blooded Witch: Mastering the Five Arts of Old World Witchery
by Raven Grimassi
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578635500

The Inner Temple of Witchcraft: Magick, Meditation and Psychic Development
by Christopher Penczak
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738702765

The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition
by William Walker Atkinson (Three Initiates)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1585428744

Lid Off the Cauldron: A Wicca Handbook
by Patricia Crowther
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1861630328

Mastering Witchcraft
by Paul Huson
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0595420060

Natural Magic
by Doreen Valiente
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0919345808

Natural Witchery: Intuitive, Personal & Practical Magick
by Ellen Dugan
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738709220

Old World Witchcraft: Ancient Ways for Modern Days
by Raven Grimassi
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578635055

The Outer Temple of Witchcraft: Circles, Spells and Rituals
by Christopher Penczak
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738705314

Power of the Witch: The Earth, the Moon, and the Magical Path to Enlightenment
by Laurie Cabot
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385301898

Solitary Witch: The Ultimate Book of Shadows for the New Generation
by Silver RavenWolf
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738703192

Spirit of the Witch: Religion & Spirituality in Contemporary Witchcraft
by Raven Grimassi
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738703389

Witch: A Magickal Journey
by Fiona Horne
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0007121326

Witchcraft for Tomorrow
by Doreen Valiente
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0709052448

Witchcraft Today
by Gerald Gardner
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0806525932
The Witches' Craft: The Roots of Witchcraft & Magical Transformation
by Raven Grimassi
http://www.amazon.com/dp/073870265X
The Witching Way of the Hollow Hill
by Robin Artisson
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982031882

WITCHCRAFT HISTORY AND RESOURCE BOOKS

Aradia or The Gospel of the Witches
by Charles Godfrey Leland
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982432356

Encyclopedia of Mystics, Saints & Sages: A Guide to Asking for Protection, Wealth, Happiness, and Everything Else!
by Judika Illes
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062009575

The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca
by Rosemary Ellen Guiley
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0816071047

Etruscan Roman Remains
by Charles Godfrey Leland
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1494302519

The God of the Witches
by Margaret Murray
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195012704

The Weiser Field Guide to Witches, The: From Hexes to Hermione Granger, From Salem to the Land of Oz
by Judika Illes
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578634792

ADVANCED BOOKS ON WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC

Blood Sorcery Bible Volume 1: Rituals in Necromancy
by Sorceress Cagliastro
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1935150812

The Deep Heart of Witchcraft: Expanding the Core of Magickal Practice
by David Salisbury
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1780999208

Teen Spirit Wicca
by David Salisbury
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1782790594

Enchantment: The Witch's Art of Manipulation by Gesture, Gaze and Glamour
by Peter Paddon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1936922517

Initiation into Hermetics
by Franz Bardon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1885928122

Letters from the Devil's Forest: An Anthology of Writings on Traditional Witchcraft, Spiritual Ecology and Provenance Traditionalism
by Robin Artisson
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500796360

Magical Use of Thought Forms: A Proven System of Mental & Spiritual Empowerment
by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowick and J.H. Brennan
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1567180841

Magick in Theory and Practice
by Aleister Crowley
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500380679

The Plant Spirit Familiar
by Christopher Penczak
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982774311

Protection and Reversal Magick
by Jason Miller
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1564148793
Psychic Self-Defense
by Dion Fortune
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578635098
The Ritual Magic Workbook: A Practical Course of Self-Initiation
by Dolores Ashcroft-Norwicki
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578630452
The Roebuck in the Thicket: An Anthology of the Robert Cochrane Witchcraft Tradition
by Evan John Jones, Robert Cochrane and Michael Howard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1861631553

The Satanic Witch
by Anton Szandor LaVey
http://www.amazon.com/Satanic-Witch-Anton-Szandor-LaVey/dp/0922915849
Shadow Magick Compendium: Exploring Darker Aspects of Magickal Spirituality
by Raven Digitalis
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VS0N5K
The Tree of Enchantment: Ancient Wisdom and Magic Practices of the Faery Tradition
by Orion Foxwood
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578634075
The Underworld Initiation: A journey towards psychic transformation
by R.J. Stewart
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1892137038

HERBALISM, CANDLES, INCENSE, OILS, FORMULARIES, AND STONES

A Compendium of Herbal Magic
by Paul Beyerl
http://www.amazon.com/dp/091934545X

Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs
by Scott Cunningham
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0875421229

The Enchanted Candle: Crafting and Casting Magickal Light
by Lady Rhea
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0806525789

The Enchanted Formulary: Blending Magickal Oils for Love, Prosperity, and Healing
by Lady Maeve Rhea
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0806527048

Incense: Crafting and Use of Magickal Scents
by Carl F. Neal
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738703362

Magickal Formulary Spellbook Book 1
by Herman Slater
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0939708000

Magickal Formulary Spellbook: Book II
by Herman Slater
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0939708108


SPELLCASTING AND SPELLBOOKS
Crone's Book of Charms & Spells
by Valerie Worth
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1567188117

Crone's Book of Magical Words
by Valerie Worth
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1567188257

Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells
by Judika Illes
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061711233

Everyday Magic: Spells & Rituals for Modern Living
by Dorothy Morrison
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1567184693

Pure Magic: A Complete Course in Spellcasting
by Judika Illes
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578633915
Utterly Wicked: Curses, Hexes & Other Unsavory Notions
by Dorothy Morrison
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0979453313
The Voodoo Hoodoo Spellbook
by Denise Alvarado
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578635136

The Voodoo Doll Spellbook: A Compendium of Ancient and Contemporary Spells and Rituals
by Denise Alvarado
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578635543


THE ANCESTORS AND WORKING WITH THE DEAD
The Cauldron of Memory: Retrieving Ancestral Knowledge & Wisdom
by Raven Grimassi
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738715751

The Mighty Dead
by Christopher Penczak
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982774370

Speak with the Dead: Seven Methods for Spirit Communication
by Konstantinos
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738705225
The Witches' Book of the Dead
by Christian Day
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1578635063
_____
TAROT

78 Degrees of Wisdom
by Rachel Pollack
http://www.amazon.com/dp/157863408

Japansepod101 is great! But they are super spammers its true. Great product made to look terrible. Why???? Not as good as JFZ though.

George, I guess the reason people want you to recommend books is they trust you. You should be proud of that.

Books I'd recommend (even in you won't!) are:

Making Sense of Japanese by Jay Rubin (very funny and lots on interesting bits even if some of it was beyond me)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Sense-Japanese-What-Textbooks/dp/156836492X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486317692&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=don%27t+tell+you+about+japanese

Japanese the Manga Way by Wayne Lammers (Really terrific and great practice on your kanji too.)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Guide-Grammar-Structure/1880656906/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486317895&sr=1-1&keywords=japanese+the+manga+way

Actually I don't think these books compete with your ones in any case.

And finally I recommend this explanation of when to use wa and ga. Its a video thing and you can throw away all textbooks after watching this. (I suppose it is just barely possible there is more to it than this guy says but surely not).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU9rjYZe2P4

Oh, just realised George did a video on this subject I haven't seen. Well, I am sure they are both equally good . . .

TBH The easy news can be too easy, and it's not really going to launch you much further in reading comprehension. It's not a bad resource by any means, but if it isn't challenging you, look for something that will. Reading will require you to know a ton of kanji (RIP), so I advise just getting books and going to town. There's also several styles of writing, so academic/news/similar read pretty differently from manga/light novels/etc. I am personally quite fond of the Gakken elementary school books. They cover science, autobiography, folktales, so on. They run from 1st~6th grade on the Japan scale, so the content and furigana are all in line with what's expected at that grade level. For reference, the 4th grade list. The 5th grade book I'm reading covers why we have a belly button, why albino rabbits are different from non-albino, why humans can't breathe underwater, why stinkbugs stink, and a ton of others. It's pretty easy to read, and it definitely challenges my vocabulary. Plus, it's a lot of things I'm at least vaguely familiar with in English, so it's easier to catch on.

I definitely recommend the Tobira textbook. I much prefer reading from paper (computer eye strain 2 real), so I have a lot of books. Concerning Tae Kim, I haven't treated it as a text by any stretch of the imagination: I use the search function and ctrl+F to get what I need and close the tab.

Also, the JLPT is... a test. And if you get 50%-ish of the material, you pass. IMO, it's not really worth anything unless you need the N2 or above to get a job in Japan (or where ever). I just passed N3 and I was genuinely surprised at my results. It's a good resume builder, but it doesn't test your ability to use Japanese, just if you understand it. It doesn't really help you much with anything besides reading.

I think it depends on what you want to get out of it, honestly. Chinese is going to be more "practical" since more people speak the language. Also, I find that even just a little Chinese knowledge can be fairly interesting and exciting, such as being able to read a Chinese sign in the background of a movie, etc. There's a lot of Chinese study abroad students, so I'm sure that could open up some cool possibilities, like meeting people in on-campus clubs like the International Student Organization. A decent amount of Chinese customs could also be applied as customs in Korea, so in a way Chinese can provide you part of the culture background. On the other hand, Korean is very unique in the sense that there's a smaller base of people that speak it, however Korean modern popular culture has been slowly influencing a lot more people, in addition to it being such a newer language. It's amazing to see how much thought was put into Hangeul and it's impressive to look at in-depth from a linguistics point-of-view.

I'd look into both a bit. With Chinese, you're going to learn pinyin and also Chinese characters aka Hanyu. Chinese characters have a base pronunciation, and a tone associated with them. Chinese doesn't have any conjugations, and for the most part when speaking, you'll refer to a time that you're talking about. It does have the use of one particle for past-tense or indication that a situation has changed, but that's about it for any kind of tenses. Korean you'll have to learn Hangeul which you could honestly learn and memorize in an hour. However, Korean has a lot of grammar particles (는/은 for marking subjects, 을/를 for marking complements, etc) in addition to verb conjugation for tenses, etc.

If you really wanted to know which would be easiest, I would argue Chinese. While you'll have to remember many characters, you won't have to deal with conjugation. Oral quizzes in Chinese don't require you to know the characters since it's all spoken, and with written tests, if you can identify the character, there's probably a 60% chance it's printed somewhere already in the test in another question. Chinese grammar is a lot like English grammar, unlike Korean where the verbs are always at the end. While there's not too many resources for Chinese or Korean that are a complete course, KoreanClass101.com and TalkToMeInKorean.com can be used as independent-study aids in addition to a textbook like Integrated Korean.

Hope this wall of text helped. :)

Okay, (obligatory "this isn't a replacement for medical help/attention so pay attention to your needs/get professional help when you see fit") so he said Iron John is a "masterpiece of writing", and also said that Fatherless America is well researched. No one thing will necessarily work for everyone, but they could be a good place to start. He said that both deal with the consequences of not having a father around, so it may not flat out address coping skills/mechanisms, but I think that just having certain aspects of fatherlessness brought to light (like the psychology as you mentioned) can hopefully give you some closure/solid mental framework for you to build on. He's got a couple of good "handouts" that he used to use in his private practice that I can have him email me if you'd like; I was the recipient of countless handouts growing up, all covering various topics, and while I hated them at the time, they're nice to have now to reflect on every now and then. Some of them priceless through the ups and downs. So let me know and I can figure out how to get them to you. Best wishes!

1. I do indeed!
   
   
2. My mom takes great care of my family. She saw us all safely through living in Guatemala, Israel, Nigeria, and India (which is no small feat!) Now that we're back in the States she works part-time and still makes sure my 16-year-old sister and 7-year-old brother are doing well, and long-distance mothers me now that I'm at college. One of the little things I really appreciate about her: she puts a lot of emphasis on us sitting down as a family for dinner. It means a lot to me.
   
   
3. I would love to own The Lover's Dictionary or The Fault In Our Stars. Your pick! :)
   
   
4. Hey Bean! That's such a cute nickname and a fun way to remember your mom. My mom calls me Belle.

When you wish upon a star :)

My favorite Disney movies are probably The Lion King (It is just a classic and I love it!) and Mary Poppins (It is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Haha). Both of these movies are great examples of Disney's creativity, but also making unrealistic stories believable and relatable.

My favorite Disney song is probably I'll Make A Man Out of You from Mulan or Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid.

If I win I would like this book.

Thanks for the contest!

Of course! I really appreciate everyone's replies. You never really know what you are going to be greeted with on reddit in response to questions like this. Wikipedia had been an excellent friend. ;)

I am a botany undergrad, who just recently switched over from art, graphic design, etc. So speaking of friends, this book hasn't left my side. I am working on this paper with a professor and another student. It has been a great chance to get my feet wet, and figure out researching various literature in a way I haven't had to do before.

Anyways, I really appreciate everyone's responses!

I would definitely ask r/Korean as many people there are longtime Korean learners and can offer good suggestions. However, imho the Integrated Korean books are great, specifically Integrated Korean Beginning 1 is a good start as it teaches you Hangul, grammar, and new vocab words with every lesson. I myself use it for self teaching and it's been working great! I also recommend purchasing the accompanying workbook as it gives you more practice. Best of luck!

You have a tiny fraction of the bases covered, but you're better off than many people. Some people only read Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide and call it a day.

You really ought to learn of the history of religious witchcraft in the 20th century, the many layers of symbolism and tradition in Gardnerian and Alexandrian witchcraft of the 50s and 60s, then the spread and change of the newly arrived Pagan and witchcraft scene of the 70s and 80s in America, which leads to Dianic Wicca, Eclectic Wicca, and finally the form presented in Scott Cunningham's books and most, if not all books published in the past ten years (and continuously) by Llewellyn.

Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler: https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Down-Moon-Witches-Goddess-Worshippers/dp/0143038192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469827845&sr=8-1&keywords=drawing+down+the+moon

Then eventually learn of the history not of the religious traditions of witchcraft which have caught on by many, but the figure of the witch as a religious follower (as opposed to an evil baby-killer, a Halloween decoration, or something dreamed up in the minds of the Catholic church with no foundation in actual religion).

Aradia: Gospel of the Witches by Charles Leland: https://www.amazon.com/Aradia-Gospel-Witches-Charles-Godfrey/dp/0982432356/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469828055&sr=8-1&keywords=aradia

Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath by Carlo Ginzburg: https://www.amazon.com/Ecstasies-Deciphering-Witches-Carlo-Ginzburg/dp/0226296938/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1469828085&sr=8-4&keywords=carlo+ginzburg

The Witch Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray: https://www.amazon.com/Witch-Cult-Western-Europe/dp/1515244024/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469828141&sr=8-2&keywords=witch+cult+western+europe

and then, in a timeline-fashion,

Witchcraft Today by Gerald Gardner: https://www.amazon.com/Witchcraft-Today-Gerald-Gardner/dp/0806525932/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469828213&sr=8-1&keywords=witchcraft+today

Then learn how religious witchcraft, as presented by Gerald Gardner and his covens, was and is practiced, the meaning behind the practices, and why the meanings matter.

A Witches Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar: https://www.amazon.com/Witches-Bible-Complete-Handbook/dp/0919345921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469828310&sr=8-1&keywords=witches+bible

Also inserted in this section might easily be Buckland's Book of Witchcraft, but I don't personally recommend that book as it does stray from Gardnerian tradition in many respects, sometimes changing whole chunks of traditional texts to a more Pagan or celtic format, and conveniently brushes over the use and symbolism of an important tool, the scourge, in witchcraft. But there are many good pieces of knowledge in that book.

Its also important to read up on influential figures in the Craft movement, and their thoughts, opinions, and reasonings behind their beliefs.

Firechild by Maxine Sanders: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Child-Magic-Maxine-Sanders/dp/1869928784/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469828518&sr=8-1&keywords=maxine+sanders

King of the Witches by June Johns: https://www.amazon.com/King-Witches-World-Alex-Sanders/dp/B000NT7OYI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469828547&sr=8-1&keywords=king+witches+june

And there's so much more, probably more books than anyone could ever read and find all of.

And one of the best sources of knowledge of the Craft is an experienced High Priest(ess) within a coven that knows their stuff. Much of witchcraft's knowledge comes from its mysteries, which must be experienced to understand.

Good luck on your journey.

Take the academic route. Start by purchasing or pirating Integrated Chinese (from what I understand it is by far the most popular chinese textbook) and the equivalent workbook if you'd like.

Use this site's vocab and definitions (they correspond with the vocab in the book but provide more accurate definitions). The rest of the site is actually also pretty useful for learning grammar and practicing reading, listening, and pronunciation.

Then learn how to use quizlet's 3 way flash card option for Chinese (its really poorly implemented but it does work, allows you to study character->definition or character->pinyin and vice versa). If you're curious how the quizlet feature works (its really poorly explained online) it requires you to make a set with one side set to chinese the other to english, on the chinese side have the character/word you want, on the english side have the definition and the pinyin within parentheses (if you have any other parenthses it will screw up and break the whole set, so I use brackets when I want to clarify definitions)

For example the chinese card would read: 水

the english card would read: water (shuǐ)

here's a template for further clarity

Also www.archchinese.com is the best site for stroke order and audio

In terms of vocabulary this combo of resources is working really well for me, I'm currently in a 6 hour a week chinese class but all the vocab learning I do at home and this is how. This so far has allowed me to recognize any character I've learned in the past, but if you want to have it solid enough that you can always write any character from memory you might want to make your own anki and update it as you learn new words since you'll end up forgetting how to write some of the lesser used characters if you don't.

As far as grammar it'll be tough on your own but you can do it from Integrated Chinese and other online resources.

I need to read a lot of teen lit for my job, so the most recent good book I've read is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

While I can't recommend anything similar to your preferred writing style, there are several book association sites out there (that you've probably heard of but I'll include anyways, just in case) like Novelist, Shelfari, LibraryThing, Goodreads, and, of course, Amazon.

Finding a good book can be such a wonderful experience. Best of luck with your next set.

OH MY GOODNESS they are so cute!!! :3 I have a little chihuahua/rat terrior mix named Pookie :)

Young Adult is great! I really enjoy dystopias as well! If you're interested in trekking down that path, a few good Young Adult/Dystopias are The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Giver. I also highly recommend Ready Player One and The Handmaids Tale :D

Niceness can often be an insecure thirst for approval from women that masquerades as politeness and thoughtfulness. It lacks courage, and sometimes even lacks a willingness to tell the truth brazenly with compassion or to ACT with integrity instead of eternally seeking permission.

I earnestly suggest reading the book Iron John for a wholesome, holistic, multi-culturally rooted sense of what real manliness means. (The book was truly helpful for me, at least.)

http://www.amazon.com/Iron-John-Book-About-Men/dp/0306813769

You're so lovely for doing this in her honor.

I love everything about my mom, she is one of the strongest, most giving people I have ever met. I love that she is the type of person who will never, ever turn down a person in need. Throughout my life we often had friends and family living with us for random periods of time because she will not allow someone she loves to not have a place to live/eat/bathe etc.

She has been wanting to read Divergent together so I added it to my wishlist. 2 copies for under $10!


Hey Bean!

Top score is a 1600, lowest score is a 400. Theres 3 sections (Math, Reading, & Writing/Language) and an optional essay (max score is a 24). The average score is a 1060, most colleges are okay with just about anything between an 1100-1300, though more selective colleges will have an average of 1350, and top colleges usually have an average of 1520 or so.

Practice is always the best way to prepare: The Official SAT Study Guide is the most realistic practice you're going to get. It includes 8 full-length tests (though you can get those for free on the CollegeBoard website) and review of all the topics on the test.

I'm going to be taking the June SAT tomorrow and I've been using Erica L Meltzer's Grammar and Reading Guides (which are worshiped on this subreddit, for good reason), as well as the QAS Released Tests on this subreddit (scroll down and you'll see "Prep Materials" on the right-hand side. They're real tests!)

One thing that helps is identifying my mistakes and reviewing them, making sure they don't happen again the next time I practice. Typically a (responsible) person will begin preparing for the SAT about 3 months in advance, and they'll take the test about 3 times.

I hope this helps!

​

Erica Meltzer: https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Reader-3rd-Complete-Reading/dp/0997517875/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3QJ7NNDCFZME1YAVRHE4

​

https://www.amazon.com/4th-Ultimate-Guide-SAT-Grammar/dp/0997517867/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2/143-3214858-8357969?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0997517867&pd_rd_r=a2f63509-83e3-11e9-b0f3-5fc5494b71c2&pd_rd_w=5Oxt6&pd_rd_wg=XSG76&pf_rd_p=a2006322-0bc0-4db9-a08e-d168c18ce6f0&pf_rd_r=961V20KBVK1215JA12QN&psc=1&refRID=961V20KBVK1215JA12QN

I love this post and your book recommendation! This is also a great book for beginners in the world of botany and plant i.d.:

botany in a day

I also like the peterson field guides.

In my experience, unless you can go to a class or team up with someone more experienced, it is really good to start with plants that are unmistakeable (i.e. not plants that have look-alikes.) I began with trying to identify all the plants outside my house, and this was a great way for me to learn! Then I started trying to find plants I was interested in out in fields/woods (which was really fun: like a scavenger hunt!)

I tried Rosetta Stone in Korean briefly. It sucked. Like really, really sucked. It wasn't just that it did a bad job of teaching things, it taught some things in a way that was incredibly misleading and would result in you speaking some pretty absurd Korean. If you didn't know any better (I did, but obviously a complete beginner wouldn't), it would actually be harmful to your acquisition process if you used Rosetta Stone. It doesn't go up to a very advanced level either.

So now that that's out of the way:

• If there is a Korean class available anywhere near you, take it. Korean isn't easy, and self-studying it certainly doesn't make it any easier.
  
• Integrated Korean is the most widely recommended textbook series I've seen. I've never used it myself, but you should get a textbook, and it seems that theirs are good.
  
• Talk to Me in Korean is a great site to practice listening. It has lessons starting from complete beginner (including a few Hangul lessons).
  
• To practice speaking, you should find real-life Korean people to practice with once you've studied it a bit and have something to work with. Unless the person is a Korean tutor/teacher, don't expect them to do much in the way of teaching you though. You can try Meetup.com or classified ads like Craigslist to help you find Korean people if need be.
  
• Here's a list of other various resources I use.

I have personally only used Meltzer's english book, CP's english book, and CP's math book and can vouch that all of these are amazing, but others on this sub also recommend other books. Here is a list of many of them. I hope they serve you well :] (Edit: I apologize for how huge this post is, lol)


English

• The Ulimate Guide to SAT Grammar by Erica Meltzer
  https://www.amazon.com/4th-Ultimate-Guide-SAT-Grammar/dp/0997517867/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519610454&sr=1-1&keywords=erica+meltzer+sat+writing
  
  
• SAT Writing: Advanced Guide and Workbook by College Panda
  https://www.amazon.com/College-Pandas-SAT-Writing-Advanced/dp/0989496430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519610514&sr=1-1&keywords=college+panda+writing&dpID=41iRh%252BJb19L&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
  
  
  
  Reading
  
  
• The Critical Reader by Erica Meltzer
  https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Reader-3rd-Complete-Reading/dp/0997517875/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519610443&sr=8-1&keywords=erica+meltzer+sat+reading&dpID=51cR4Uh0YBL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
  
  
  
  Math
  
  
• SAT Math Advanced Guide and Workbook by College Panda
  https://www.amazon.com/College-Pandas-SAT-Math-Advanced/dp/0989496422/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519610506&sr=1-1&keywords=college+panda+math
  
  
• Dr. John Chung's SAT Math
  https://www.amazon.com/Dr-John-Chungs-Math-Fourth/dp/197452602X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519610536&sr=1-1&keywords=dr+chungs+sat+math&dpID=51gqq9mu0XL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
  

I'm sorry to hijack this thread.

I'm heading to Japan in 11 hours for 4 months(Going abroad for my college), and I lived there for 10 months in high school. I study Japanese at my college.

My biggest fault in grammar. I've used a couple of resources to help me, so I'll start with that.

Japanese the Manga Way is one of my all-time favorite resource book. It's less boring, and has well written explanations. I've often used this book as a supplement to my other textbooks.

Genki is another favorite. I've used both 1 and 2 in my college class, and if well taught is extremely valuable. It teaches Kanji/grammar/ vocab at a moderate pace.

I've also used this grammar book in the past. It's good, but lacks in presentation.

Tuttle's Japanese Guide to Kana/Kanji provides good practice space for Kana/Kanji. The later Kanji's space can be limited, but if you write it in pencil you can erase and re-write at any given time.

I use the Random-House dictionary, but it's kind of 'old hat'. For online I use Jisho.org or Jim Brean's dictionary. There was another one I used to use that was very similar to Jisho.org that was made by a Redditor but I lost the link. If you have a DS I would recommend Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten, it's like have a full electronic dictionary w.o the full price (Though I wish you could jump from English -> Japanese words [You can do Japanese -> English words] but that's my only grievances against it).

Good luck!

I'm a big supporter of using media to boost your listening and reading comprehension, when learning a language, but as a 一年生 don't expect too much from this approach yet. This is more of a thing for intermediate students. Mediawise, it will be very hard for you to understand anything at your level, so maybe you should look into graded readers instead of manga and look into kids programs instead of, say, the more adult oriented anime, though there are certainly plenty of cartoons out there for kids. There are a bunch of ways, though, to maximize how much you learn from media, such as listening to the same clips several times, first with subtitles, second with a dictionary in hand to look up everything you didn't know, and third without anything to test how much you retained/picked up. If you're not focusing on how the media can improve your language skills, then you're only convincing yourself into just watching TV or just reading for pleasure. Neither of these things are bad in small amounts, especially as an occasional break from studying, but, don't make the mistake that sooooooo many others make when adopting television and comic books into their language learning regimen.

Also, check out Japanese the Manga Way by Wayne Lammers. It's a very good source of grammar information, and it gives you example sentences taken from real manga.

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Structure/dp/1880656906

I started learning to read and write Korean with Hangul Master, then the basics with the Integrated Korean series. Because Korean grammar can be no bueno, I used Korean Grammar in Use as well. All of those books were super worth the price and really helped me understand how the language worked.

If you're looking for something free, Talk To Me In Korean is always a good option, or if you wanna learn Hangul on your own, YouTube has a lot of good videos!

Good luck!

You are amazing! What a generous gift! I personally loved the Divergent series on the Kindle because I'm a sucker for dystopian young adult novels and this trilogy was as hard to put down as Hunger Games was. There have since been an explosion of these types of trilogies, but I can vouch for the quality of this one. I've actually gotten into arguments with my friends about my insistence about an almost inherent literary quality that dystopian novels possess simply from their ability to force us the think about how our current actions could lead to extreme results in the future. Probably more than you needed to know haha but thanks for the contest! :)

The Divergent series is great, a bit long but a great read. It's kinda like the Hunger Games in that it's targeted towards young adults, and its very actiony and has alot of emotional attachments, but it's a great read for anybody. Here's the first book.

Check out Drawing Down the Moon for a good primer on the history of modern witchcraft. Here's the description

>Almost thirty years since its original publication, Drawing Down the Moon continues to be the only detailed history of the burgeoning but still widely misunderstood Neo- Pagan subculture. Margot Adler attended ritual gatherings and interviewed a diverse, colorful gallery of people across the United States, people who find inspiration in ancient deities, nature, myth, even science fiction. In this new edition featuring an updated resource guide of newsletters, journals, books, groups, and festivals, Margot Adler takes a fascinating and honest look at the religious experiences, beliefs, and lifestyles of modern America's Pagan groups.

Keep powering on young man! You don't have to be successful to be great. Life's greatest challenges are picking yourself up again after falling down. And you seem to be doing that really well.

Can I recommend a book to you? It's called Iron John. It's an easy ready, but it's designed to help people find strength in themselves. Don't rush though it! Take each chapter slowly and think about it from your own perspective.

Edit: link to paperback on Amazon: less than $6 after shipping

https://www.amazon.com/Iron-John-Book-About-Men/dp/0306813769

It's not crazy. I'm a fluent English speaker who has learned conversational Korean over the course of two years, albeit in a classroom setting. I've found it to be a pretty simple language when compared to other East Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese. The best thing to do is get some books and learn the grammar patterns. I recommend [these] (http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Korean-Beginning-Textbooks-Language/dp/0824834402/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1419721377&sr=8-2&keywords=klear+korean) because they come with listening resources and teach you the basics well. Once you get the basic grammar patterns and memorize the elementary vocabulary I would recommend getting yourself to the intermediate level with the same line of books. Supplement your education by listening to Korean pop music and watching Korean dramas (super fun). There are also many websites and apps that are willing to connect you with people that speak Korean fluently.

My biggest piece of advice is to focus on reading fluently and getting grammar patterns down. Once you have this down you will only have to learn more vocabulary to expand your grasp on the language. Going to South Korea will also help you learn, although a lot of people will only want to speak English with you. You will have to actively seek out people that are willing to speak Korean to you. If you have any other questions about learning the language or going to Korea, then don't hesitate to PM me.

Matched and Delirium seem to be popular among that crowd, but I wouldn't get her both as they are the same damn book premise, right down to the MC's government-approved hobby. Delirium has better writing. Matched is easier to read and has more likable characters. Divergent is also popular, but it's awful.

On the other hand, Feed and Uglies, which were already mentioned, are excellent. I didn't care much for the Uglies sequels, but Feed is one of my favorite books.

If the theme is media in particular, Feed is the most relevant of those above. Little Brother is another dystopia that relies heavily on media involvement and should possibly be required reading, but it doesn't scream John Green to me.

If what you want to achieve is A1 and nothing beyond, you best bet would be getting one of the many course books:

• Schritte (http://www.amazon.com/dp/3190018510/). You may simply ignore the 1 stars review as they're irrelevant.
  
• Lagune (http://www.amazon.de/dp/3190016240/) and a lot more others. Actually it doesn't really matter which one you pick. Any one of them is sufficient.
  
  A arguably better alternative would be the free online course offered by Deutsche Welle (http://deutschkurse.dw.de/KursPlattform/WebObjects/KursPlattform.woa/wo/6.1). Do register and try it. Really valuable resource. Together with Deutsch – warum nicht? (http://www.dw.de/deutsch-lernen/deutsch-warum-nicht/s-2163) you can go far. (In case you didn't realise already, both the sound files and pdf notes can be found on the right, featuring four series.)
  
  Maybe the only problem you would encounter is speaking. The speaking test is actually like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGNd-6pDkEI), and you may panic if you don't already speak in German for a several hours. Try to find someone who speaks German and wants to do a language exchange with you. (http://www.language-exchanges.org/) is one of them. You may as well find one on Reddit.
  
  By the way, if you really want to have a strong command of German sooner or later, there are some good, though popular (popular doesn't always mean bad) books for foundation, apart from your already awesome German for Reading:
  
  
• German: How to Speak and Write It (http://www.amazon.com/dp/9650060359/)
  
• The Everything Learning German Book (http://www.amazon.com/dp/159869989X/)
  
  If you insist on getting a grammar book, a nice start would be:
  
  
• Essential German Grammar (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0340741899/)
  
• English Grammar for Students of German (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0934034389/)
  
  And eventually you may want to take down the boss:
  
  
• Hammer's German Grammar and Usage (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1444120166/)
  
• Duden 04. Die Grammatik (http://www.amazon.de/dp/product/3411040483/)
  
  Finally I recommend you to take a look at my favourite reading material when I started, Studien und Plaudereien (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22160), freely offered by Project Gutenberg.

You can check out what you'll learn right now if you'd like. The book is Integrated Chinese Level 1 Part 1 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887276385/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdo_t1_91RMAbTQJKWP1). There's also a pdf copy floating around the internet somewhere if you just want to check it out without buying. The beginner 1 class goes over the first 5 chapters and the beginner 2 class goes over the next 5 chapters. The entire book is equivalent of one semester long college class so it's a little bit of a slower pace than taking a class at A&M (which I kind of liked, since I didn't know anything going into it, it provided a no pressure environment).

For a large part of the beginner 1 class, we would start with like 5 mins of going over the tones individually and the teacher would correct us. The teacher was also usually pretty good about correcting our tones when speaking to answer questions. Our teacher also provided time at the end of class to answer whatever other questions we had. I guess the experience is entirely dependent on your teacher so YMMV.

I'm not sure of your background but here's some info in case you have no/little experience. Be aware that there are two sounds in Mandarin that aren't in English: the 'r' sound isn't quite the same, and we don't have the ü vowel. I don't know if you speak any other languages, but don't be discouraged if you can't get those quite right, it took me over a year and I'm still not confident I say them right (although I've been told I do). Also pinyin (the phonetic romanization system that tells you how to pronounce characters) isn't a direct mapping to English spelling. For example, "hui" in pinyin is pronounced more like "hway". The app "Pleco" is free (with paid add-ons) and shows you characters, pinyin, definitions, and example sentences, and it can read everything out loud for you so you can mimic the pronunciation. It's a must have.

If you have any other questions, I'd be glad to help out!

I have always used the Chinese Link textbooks. I also see Integrated Chinese everywhere. Also, I highly highly highly recommend all of the Demystified books! I have both the Chinese and German and they are fantastic! Also Heisig's books are really popular and they also come in traditional. Hope this helps! I am pretty experienced in trying out tons of different resources for Mandarin! :)

-Stay motivated. I tried learning Japanese on my own for about 2 years (didn't get very far) until I finally got to college and was able to take a class. The foundation I'd already established helped SO much, and now I'm learning at an incredible rate. But that's because I have 4 classes a week, and I'm constantly using everything I know to write and speak frequently.
-For learning hiragana, katakana, and kanji, try to make up stories or associate the pictographs with things that you can remember. There are certain workbooks that will teach you hiragana and katakana, giving you cutesy little ways to remember the characters. That's a good starting place.
-I'm using the textbook Genki...learning from a textbook helps you go through grammar in pretty logical steps.
-Pay close attention to the sentence structure. Once you get that down, it's easy. (Ex: Instead of Subject Verb Object - I kicked the ball - Japanese uses Subject Object Verb - I the ball kicked.)

Hammer's German and Usage

Hammer's German and Usage Workbook

German Grammar drills

Secondary grammar book

Personally, Hammer's Grammar book is quite enough. It is around 500 pages of dry grammar. It is very well constructed and very easy to understand, get it with workbook. It is logical, as it teaches you from the most essential and easiest structures. Nouns -> genders, -> cases, that way it is easier to learn.

Secondary Grammar book is not necessary.

Advice her to use Anki, its a very helpful tool i think for the most easiest words to learn. Especially it helps a lot with German genders.

I have a BA and MA in German, so that's pretty much how I learned. I also did some studying on my own for grammar points that I found confusing. There're a lot of websites for German grammar. Watching videos in German is a good way to improve your listening comprehension. I can watch most films in German starring Germans without much of a problem. However, I can't understand Austrians. It sounds to me like they're speaking German with a mouth full of food. I don't want to brag (well maybe a little), but I'm really good at German grammar. To me it just makes sense. If you want a good German grammar book, I'd recommend English Grammar for Students of German. I also highly recommend this website. It's by a native German speaker, but he really knows his stuff and understands how to teach it to native English speakers. I've used it especially for some of the finer grammar points.

I read this book for general hockey info - it is beyond fantastic as a primer for all parts of the game https://www.amazon.com/Take-Your-Eye-Off-Puck/dp/1629371203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520231712&sr=8-1&keywords=take+your+eye+off+the+puck

Then you can read this one if you want to go deeper in the game mechanics - yes it is about advanced stats, but it really helps you understand the way the game works as they go through how these are effective: https://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Abstract-Presents-Stat-Shot/dp/177041309X/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=177041309X&pd_rd_r=95WZ602VZZPEVN4HHYXW&pd_rd_w=W2ZUk&pd_rd_wg=F2J4k&psc=1&refRID=95WZ602VZZPEVN4HHYXW

These two are great books about the sport.

Would love to recommend this book to you:

https://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chinese-Simplified-Characters-Textbook/dp/0887276385/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=integrated+chinese+level+1&qid=1573484927&sr=8-1

Integrated Chinese. You can use this in conjunction with the book you are looking to buy (glossika). When I first started learning Chinese in middle school they used much more juvenile books, but for my friends who continued Chinese in university, this is what they used. I've seen the book in real life and I really like it and would recommend it. Let me know if you have any questions :)

Personally, I don't think a full repeal to all of the residential zoning is the best practice. A full repeal would likely only increase land values
(here's a good explainer as to how that can happen). I do believe they need to be loosened significantly. At the rate this city is growing, it needs to have all of the tools necessary to help increase density and banning thing such as having both an ADU and DADU on single family lots and requiring their sizes to be such that they cannot accommodate families is a bad thing. Duplexes and triplexes also should be legal in single family zones. These allowances also should be paired with strategic rezones that allow for some sort of corner market/commerce zone within a 5-10 minute walkshed of every house in SFZs in order to make it reasonable for people in SFZs to live without a car in these now densified neighborhoods.


In regards to more reading: are you looking for more reading regarding Seattle zoning law exclusively or are you looking for reading recommendations that follow an urbanist bent? For Seattle specific stuff, The Urbanist and Seattle Transit Blog post a lot regarding land use in the city. If you are looking for books that talk about general city planning the gold standard is The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I personally really enjoyed Walkable City, Suburban Nation, and Happy City.

Try some other schools? Usually you don't need to come in at rank beginner level if you already know a lot of Japanese. (I haven't been to one, but I am going to one in October).

The advantage of a school is that it offers you a 2 year visa. If there are other visa options, I'd recommend those - working holiday visa is available for some countries, etc. Then you can self-study and practice conversation. Assuming you're sufficiently motivated!

As for books, I did this book. It overlaps a bit with Genki 2 but it's a natural step up. Towards the end it gets quite difficult as it uses native texts. I'm now doing Tobira which is really fun and is placed between N3 and N2.

What you're talking about is more or less in line with a psychoanalytic / Jungian interpretation. There's a lot of history and some disagreement^1, but generally the idea is that religion was instituted to codify morality into an easy-to-digest way (ie, making up stories that teach us how to behave morally) and to give a general model of human behavior and interaction, a sort of primitive social science.

I'm coming mostly from Carl Jung (Text 1 / Text 2 / Wiki), Jacques Lacan (Text / Wiki), Joseph Campbell (Text / Wiki), and Erich Fromm (Text / Wiki), but these anthologies give a decent scope of study: Ways of Being Religious and Religion, Society and Psychoanalysis.

There's also an entire sub-genre of what amount to self-help books based on mythology, interpreting myths to teach you how to be a better person: Myths to Live By, Iron John.


^1 One of the big disagreements between Freud and Jung was the role of religion in the mind of a subject. Freud believed it was a fantasy we use to bolster our own sense of importance and impart some sense of order onto the world that isn't there. Jung believed, while that may be true of fundamentalists or the neurotic/pathological, generally speaking it was a positive thing, that it created or strengthened social bonds, that it taught us things about ourselves and humanity.

If you are interested in Botanical Terminology (in terms of identification) I would recommend Plant Identification Terminology An Illustrated Glossary which you can get for fairly cheap off of Amazon. Any Peterson Field Guide in regards to plants would also be good as they have good descriptions and pictures. I'd say that learning to identify plants is just as important as learning about how they work. I'll edit this post later, however, to post a few plant biology
books I've read that you might be interested in.

EDIT:

• Economic Botany is an interesting textbook. It deals with the more cultural aspects of botany as it describes how different cultures use plants. The first chapter is a brief primer on the basics of botany which is enough to understand the terminology, naming conventions, and inner workings of the plants mentioned. It's not an easy read but it isn't too dry either.
  
  
• Botany is a good botany textbook. It, again, isn't an easy read while still being interesting. The only thing I would note about this book was that it was published in 1995 so it while not contain any of the newer theories that u/Shilo788 talked about. Other than that I'd say the material within it is fairly up to date and is a good introduction to botany.

Like many others, I recommend watching Buffalo. I live in NC and always love when they come to play the Hurricanes. I also love watching Chicago, Pittsburgh and Nashville. If you want to learn more about the game, I suggest the book Take Your Eye off the Puck. I'm reading it now and it's entertaining and informative. https://www.amazon.com/Take-Your-Eye-Off-Puck/dp/1629371203

In the same way that die can be either an article or a relative pronoun in German, that can be either a relative pronoun or a simple subordinating conjunction in English. Sometimes the same form fulfills multiple functions in a language. It's simply a different way of dividing up the grammatical work.

Edit: I will point out that we actually can make a distinction here in English, but only for inanimate vs. animate antecedents. If it's a relative pronoun, you can get that or who(m). If it's just a plain subordinating conjunction, you'll only get that.

• I know that he is already here. (conjunction)
  
• I know who he is already here. (conjunction, so the form does not change)
  
• That is the most beautiful house that I have ever seen. (relative pronoun)
  
• That is the most beautiful woman who I have ever seen. (relative pronoun, so the form may change)
  
  If you have never been taught basic grammar, you might find this book useful in drawing comparisons between English and German.

Excellent. Thanks.

Here are the Amazon links for those books for anyone interested.

• The High Cost of Free Parking (Paper book only)
  
• Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile (Kindle and paper book)
  
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Paper book only)
  
• Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Kindle and paper book)
  
• Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (Kindle and paper book)
  
• The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World (Kindle and paper book)
  
• $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better (Kindle and paper book)

You're not just going to be able to guess/work it out/get an answer in even a long reddit post.

Are you actually studying Japanese? You need a self-study book at the very least (many people recommend the Genki series) or, if you just want to dabble, look at the Pimsleur or Michel Thomas audio series. Another fun approach you may enjoy is Japanese the Manga Way.

It's well worth making the effort. Good luck!

Hey, I also love and studied human geography as my undergrad and then went into urban planning for a master's degree. Since you've still got time in high school, I strongly recommend some good books to see if it interests you more (you'll see that actual urban planning isn't like a Sim City game). Don't worry these books are written in easy language so you don't need a university education to appreciate them.

For a general overview of urban planning and why it might interest you, you should check out The Purpose of Planning. It is a British-based book but the concepts are the same (I'm assuming you are American).

For an overview of the current issues/topics within urban planning, I really recommend Walkable City. Another older book by the same author is Suburban Nation if you are curious but Walkable City is a lot more recent.

I haven't used Lingodeer since it went to a paid model, but for an app it's pretty good. Starting out, https://www.talktomeinkorean.com/ is pretty good too IMO

The majority of my studying has come from this textbook series though: Integrated Korean

There's actually a book series that made memorizing characters really easy. I'm learning Japanese, and with it I was able to commit 2000 kanji to memory in a bit over a month. It doesn't go over readings at all, but you can at least write everything without issue.

And Chinese grammar is great, it takes all those things like conjugation and irregular verbs and noun genders and just laughs at them

EDIT:

Books I used was this for Japanese

Chinese equivalent

Just want to put this out there because I've studied young adult lit and I'll never grow too old to love it: YA is an incredibly fascinating genre. It's an absolute goldmine if you're looking for character development. Even the books with horrible photoshop-vomit covers often have merit if you give them a chance, and the fact that something appeals to teenage girls does not invalidate its quality.

If anyone is interested in reading good young adult fiction, I'd recommend the following:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Looking for Alaska is good, too)
  
• Divergent by Veronica Roth
  
• Legend by Marie Lu
  
• Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

WaniKani or other "Learn Kanji via the Radicals" methods actually make learning Kanji a lot easier and more fun. WaniKani doesn't always use the "real" meaning of the radicals, which takes away some of your ability to figure out what unknown kanji may mean, but it the method is fantastic for learning kanji. www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ is really good if you need to learn a certain set of Kanji (via a class or something) and want to learn/use the radicals as wanikani picks your kanji for you.

> I picked up my first book on religion from the school library. It's called "Gods and Rituals: Readings in Religious Beliefs and Practices." It is a collection of passages written by different authors on religions, mainly ancient religions. How should I go about my possible conversion to Wicca, assuming I keep the door open?

Is that the Middleton book? I think if you're interested in modern paganism that "Drawing Down The Moon" by Margot Adler would be of more use to you. It addresses the diversity among Neopagan religions and will give you a better handle on Wicca and other modern paganism.

There is also a reading list on the sidebar regarding Wiccan-related practices. I'd suggest also picking up "The Witches God" and "The Witches Goddess," both by Stewart and Janet Farrar. They're a good introduction to understanding deity from a Wiccan perspective. Their "A Witches Bible" also has useful information overall and is an example of coven-based practices.

If after reading Adler you find another form of paganism or witchcraft interests you, there are other subreddits to check out: r/witchcraft, r/realwitchcraft, r/pagan, and r/paganism. There are also subreddits that are for specific forms of paganism, like r/HellenicPolytheism.

Happy Birthday!

1. N/A
   
2. N/A
   
3. Have on my list
   
4. N/A
   
5. [Frog](http://www.amazon.com/X8-Drums-Croaking-Percussion-Instrument/dp/B006AT65OA/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=YKASDQOC0SEJ&coliid=ICR00ODU5G77Z0
   
6. On the right
   
7. Game
   
8. Fruit Leather
   
9. Writing tool
   
10. 8th grade
    
11. You organize data on this
    
12. My hobby is football
    
13. Video game
    
14. Frogs are from nature.
    
15. The can 2nd to the left.
    
16. Cleats
    
17. N/A
    
18. N/A
    
19. N/A
    
20. Red cleats
    Bonus. Did you get the camera?
    Happy happy cake day

It's pretty neat. The author takes panels from various manga along with a brief description of the context, gives a translation and breakdown of what each word is doing, and explains the grammar point for that section. It's a very fun read, and actually teaches you a lot. I suggest clicking "look inside" on the amazon page to see what it covers in the table of context. Read the preface, too.

A Google search reveals that it'll bring you up to about an N4 level of grammar, which is as good as what the Genki 1+2 gets you. The difference is that it's actually fun to read, and it teaches you casual speech in conjunction with the formal stuff. If you're taking a class, Genki takes 2 years to finish; I finished The Manga Way in 2 weeks.

Any book written to prepare you for the DSH will have these exercises and more.

I took the DSH (and passed with a level 2) at my current Uni and it's considered one of the hardest to pass in Germany. So my opinion may differ slightly than other people's so take the following with a grain of salt:

I strongly suggest you work on your writing style and your grammar basics (especially endings and vocabulary). The best way to improve the former is to read copious amount of German texts, especially news from like Tagesshau. I mean, read this level of material until your eyes bleed. The DSH prep books will have tons of texts for your to read and reading comprehension exercises to solve, and additionally reading news articles or random internet articles for C1 will bolster your effort.

For the latter, use these series of books:

1. A2-B2
   
   
2. C1
   
   If you do intend on buying these, make sure to buy the Answer Book to correct yourself. Every single professor I ever encountered, used these books to some capacity to practice German grammar. Every. Single. One. I abused the hell out of mine, I'll tell you that. Not to mention, they are cheap for how effective they are.
   
   For a more in depth explanation(s) in English check out Hammer's German Grammar Bible. If it wasn't for this book, I would have been lost for much longer when it came to things like Passive.
   
   Good luck on your exam.

Check out, Divergent, by Veronica Roth.

It takes place in a future, semi-post-apocalyptic Chicago where all people have been divided up into 5 different "factions" based on core principles of "goodness", aka: Bravery, Honesty, Kindness, Selflessness, Knowledge.

But of course, people can only stay good for so long...

Mwuahaha! It's such a great book, and it's a 3 book series. A film of the first book comes out in a few months too.

I have to thank the people of RAOA for the suggestion that is my selection: Divergent - by Veronica Roth. It's an absolutely amazing book about a dystopian society that has separated itself into smaller groups based on personality type.

As for why I would like the Kindle Fire, I'm sure other people are far more deserving than me, but I've been reading on my little iPhone screen through a Kindle app for quite a long time now. It works, but it is so small. :( I do not own any kind of tablet computer either, so this is what I've got to work with. A Kindle Fire would be absolutely amazeballs and would help to continue my recent reading bug. :)

Thank you for running this fantastic contest. :)

In this exact order:

1. Start with Suburban Nation by Duany, Zyberk, and Speck. It's super easy to read, totally skimmable, and has a lot of great graphics and diagrams that help explain things. It's not the deepest book out there, but it's the best place to start.
   
   
2. After that, try Geography of Nowhere by Kunstler. The author can be cranky and there are no diagrams, but he does a nice job of explaining how suburbia happened, why it made sense at the time, and why it's not so great anymore. Basically it's a primer on the key issue facing city planning today.
   
   
3. After them, you'll be ready for The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jacobs. This is the bible of urbanism, the most important and influential book written about the form of cities since the invention of the car. But it's not as accessible as the first two, so I wouldn't start here.
   
   
4. Walkable City by Speck. This is the newest of the bunch, and provides the data to back up the claims from the previous 3.
   
   
5. Image of the City by Lynch. This one is a series of case studies that will teach you how to "read" how a city functions based on its form. The examples are all woefully obsolete, which is too bad, but still teaches you an important skill.

Sure. To regain motivation, have fun.

Do you need to learn kana? Make mnemonic charts with your own art.

Genki's method of kanji is bad? Textbooks don't excel at that. KanjiStudy does.

Japanese Graded Readers are fun, tho you may not be ready yet.

Rosetta Stone [insert obligatory condemnation in the next reply] costs money, but if you have it and it doesn't bore you stiff, it's worth a try. (Do the demo first to see if it's for you.)

You can do Japanese the Manga Way ( https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Structure/dp/1880656906 ) or online versions of the defunct Mangajin almost from the beginning, tho you get more out of it the better you get.

Whatever you do, if it's learning or practice at all and you like doing it, you've got something to make it fun.

My hair is longer but my sis in law has a cute short cut and uses these products

http://www.amazon.com/Sexy-Hair-Frenzy-Texture-Pomade/dp/B001964BDQ/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1398136080&sr=8-15&keywords=short+sexy+hair+gel

I'd love to read this

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004CFA9RS/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1OCYQBIQB0HKN&coliid=I1984HXN3P0UZW

Your hair is adorable.

Short hairs, no cares

I'm 34 and finally diving into my spirituality after mom passed away. My parents were conservative Christian and did not like me owning tarot cards...or even Magic the Gathering Cards! I moved out in my early 20's but always felt guilty finding my own faith. [Drawing Down the Moon](Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143038192/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Gn4QybJK9C7TV) helped me figure out who I am. The Kindle version is updated with social information. I now live in a fairly large city with Wiccans, Druids and eclectic witches so I'm lucky to have that resource. Meetup.com helped me find friends who mentored. Try several ideas out! It is overwhelming because there are lots of information out there. Figuring out if you want to practice solitary or with a group is a good question to start with. I'm in between, I like to practice alone but discuss ideas with friends.

Some Kanji facts.

There are 1945 Jouyou "Daily Use" kanji. Newspapers use these. Of these, about 1000 are designated Kyouiku "Educational kanji, divided into six grades to be learned by the end of elementary school. You might want to try and learn them in that order.

For reference, Kodansha's The Kanji Learner's Dictionary is unbeatable. It's compact, being almost small enough to fit into your pocket. It uses SKIP, which is the fastest, easiest way to look up characters.

When learning kanji, make sure you memorize the basic rules for stroke order. Enclosures first, left to right, top to bottom, horizontal before vertical, vertical piercings come last. Knowing the stroke order will make your handwriting look authentic.

Radicals each have their own meaning. A Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters is very good for learning the meanings of each of the radicals and creating a "story" for each character to help you remember them.

One common pitfall with learning kanji is if you neglect to WRITE kanji out by hand, you will be able to READ them, but you will forget how to WRITE them. Just make sure that even if you're using a computer to write out your Japanese by hand.

Try to memorize WORDS instead of CHARACTERS. For example, don't just learn that 続 means "continue" because it's not a word on its own. Instead, learn that 接続 means "connection" and 続く means "to continue".

There's a lot of Kanji. You don't learn them in a few years. It takes Japanese natives over a decade of schooling before they are able to read their own language fluently. And they are immersed in it! Just keep working on them and don't get discouraged.

I've been using KLEAR Integrated Korean textbooks to learn Korean this summer. It's actually really great and I've been making progress. There are the textbooks and workbooks, plus all the audio files that accompany it can be downloaded online for free. I definitely recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Korean-Beginning-Textbooks-Language/dp/0824834402/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313630860&sr=8-1

For those wondering how this was made:

1. The raw terrain is created using WorldPainter. That isn't grass; it's two shades of stained, hardened clay.
   
   
2. The large, customized trees are manually placed in using MCEdit. These trees are originally created by LetsLente and are available for download for use in your projects [here]
   (http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/native-trees-of-europe-template-repository-1779952/).
   
   
3. In ZBrush, a 3D model (the giant head) is sculpted or edited before being exported as an OBJ file.
   
   
4. That OBJ is run through Binvox to convert it to a schematic file.
   
   
5. The Schematic file is checked using ViewVox.
   
   
6. The final Schematic file is imported and posed in the WorldPainter-made World using MCEdit. It is then changed from default stone into Quartz.
   
   
7. For the first time, the world file is opened in vanilla Minecraft. Here the terrain is adjusted, with the small houses being built, the caves dug, and the waterfalls added. Smaller trees are bonemealed into existence along the ground, or hand built on the model. The model is also retrofitted to better fit it's surroundings. In my case, I needed to almost completely destroy and rebuild the nose.
   
   
8. The world is opened up using Chunky, excellent software built for rendering Minecraft worlds. The chunks that are visible from where the camera is are selected for rendering.
   
   
9. In Chunky, the render is set up. Light-colored blocks (like Quartz and Sand) have trouble rendering in Chunky under the default setup, so the sun's brightness, the photo gamma, and many other features are adjusted. The sun is also moved to where it best compliments the build. The sky is actually an image called a "Skymap" and there are many available online.
   
   
10. The scene is rendered, a process which can be very time-consuming for the computer based on the complexity of the lighting. While the scene is being rendered, it might be a good idea to leave your computer and read a book. I suggest Ready Player One by Ernest Cline or The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. ^^^DFTBA!
    
    
11. The image, now completely rendered, is imported into Photoshop. Here adjustments are made to the color of the photo. I find the David Nanchin actions to be helpful for this sort of thing, though I never run them full-strength. I also add in a water splash at the base of the water fall, and remove some pesky leaves that floated too far from their trees.
    
    
12. The final image is exported from Photoshop and is ready to be seen by the lovely people of /r/Minecraft.
    
    In Conclusion:
    
    These kinds of renders do take time. A user commented:
    
    > Pretty Certain you just imported a 3D model of a head using Binvox..
    
    And that's absolutely correct. However, that doesn't mean this kind of thing is simple to create! Certainly, this wouldn't be what it is without the help of external software- but the use of that software doesn't mean it can't be respected as a build. Don't say I just imported it-- it took a lot of work!
    
    TL;DR: I used a lotta software and it took a lotta time.

You'll need a solid grammar, and I wholeheartedly recommend Hammer's. Very comprehensive, easy to use, clearly written, tons of examples, great at pointing out differences between formal, colloquial, and regional uses.

The list of verb principal parts could be a little longer, that's what Wiktionary or "500 German Verbs" are for. Otherwise, it's a very solid resource for you. Find grammar points that are tricky for you and work on those.

Oh, if you haven't read it, The Fault in our Stars will make you laugh, then rip your heart out and leave you begging for more. It's the love story of two cancer-afflicted intellectual teenagers, and it is so incredibly beautiful. The writing flows so easily, but the story and how it is told is so incredibly deep.
So, in summary, you will laugh, you will cry, and you will love every second of it.

You can begin by looking for classes for naturalists! Contemporary botany is actually mostly genome and molecular genetics and way out of my league and interest. Classical botany is more on morphological (physically observable) features like fruit, reproductive parts, stems, leaves, branching patterns, etc.

https://www.amazon.ca/Botany-Day-Patterns-Method-Identification/dp/1892784351

This is the book they had us get in our first year of school, great easy intro to it without blowing your mind too much. It's focused around NA, so the species might not seem as familiar

Bonewits on Witchcraft and Wicca is probably an excellent start. It gives a detailed rundown on the history of Wicca, has a chapter on classifying different traditions, and is a great way to go for researching the different options out there. Adler's Drawing Down the Moon is also an excellent starting place. Either of those books will go a long way to familiarizing you with Wicca and helping you figure out where you want to go from there.

> I don't really care if Hayashi did his homework or if the lady reading the newspaper is Tanaka and neither do the people I want to talk to.

At my undergrad school, I taught the language lab (1 hour per week required intensive practice session where we drilled the students) for three years. I was surprised at how surprised the actual instructors were that the students often wrote very similar criticisms on their course evaluation forms. No one gives a fuck what Hayashi is or is not doing. But, everyone was up on the latest chapter of whatever Shōnen Jump manga was popular at the time.

I'm a huge fan of manga. Even as a first year student I enjoyed plodding along in my favorite story with my trusty denshi jisho, and copies of my Yellow and Blue. (The Red one hadn't come out yet.)

Pick a story and go for it. Even if you have to keep a translated copy nearby to help understand.

I know you said choose two, but I'm gonna go ahead and do three ;)

1 - It's a children's book but my favorite book ever is Mandy by Julie Andrews. It's about a little girl who finds a cottage in a field behind the orphanage where she lives and makes it her own. When I was little I read that book over and over wishing I could find an abandoned cottage somewhere near my house.
2 - Least favorite is hands down, Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. I had to read it my first year of college and while the other books we read were great, that one was just painful to get through. I didn't even get close to finishing it.
3 - Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist was my favorite book to movie just because the book was so bad but the movie was excellent.

e-books:
Divergent
And then all kinds of French readers
1
2
3
4

the genki books are good for starter-intermediate learning.... kana's the easy part though. you need to find a kanji book to really know how to read.

edit for teh TL;DR better infoz: the first genki book teaches roughly 100 kanji if i remember correctly and the second's like 150 or something. the follow up book is called An Integrated Approach to Japanese and is more difficult as kana to assist kanji reading is mostly gone, but you'll learn enough from those three books if fully studied to understand basic news prints/read childrens' manga...
here's genki 1:
http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291080055&sr=8-1
there's a supplementary workbook that you don't necessarily need but can order as well, good for writing practice/exercises.
Genki II:
http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789011631/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1291080055&sr=8-4
I'm not sure where to get copies of the third book as i bought it for university but you can probably find it on amazon or abebooks. just be sure you're not getting only the workbook that is mostly fill in the blank.

First off, thank you for sharing your personal background.

If English is not your native language, yet you are striving to learn a third - honestly, I can't send enough kudos your way.

As far as kanji is concerned, I highly recommend A Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters: https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501029816&sr=8-1&keywords=a+guide+to+learning+the+japanese+characters

"Remembering the Kanji" seems to be far more preferred, but me, I've found that learning the historical basis of the kanji has helped far more than mnemonics that may be counter to their actual origin. Again, that's just me - everyone is different.

tl;dr version - Looks like you've decided to start learning Japanese and join the group that may have other people looking at you weird. Ignore 'em. We're glad to have you. :)

Can't really say for an actual order between all of the books but you should learn hiragana and katakana before doing anything else (it's not so intimidating to do), and you can probably go on to use Genki 1 then Genki 2 after that.

That said you did pick several well recommended books so assuming you can get a study plan going (and stick with it) you should be on a good footing.

As far as other recommended resources, I've heard (but not tried it myself) Tobira mentioned as a good way of moving on after finishing Genki. For Kanji and (to a lesser extent) vocab you could also use Anki (free) or Wanikani (subscription / one off payment), or if you prefer textbooks KKLC.

The various Dictionary of * Japanese Grammar books are all pretty good. They have good explanations and example sentences and if you use Anki, there exist decks that cover all of the example sentences in the books.

The only issue for self-study is that they are laid out like dictionaries, so they go in alphabetical order. I would also recommend the Kanzen Master grammar books if you want something a little more guided.

Honestly, in my opinion, unless it's a very specialised language institution, don't even bother with traditional classes. The majority of them will do little more than go through the beginner textbooks at a pace 10x slower than you could on your own. All the information you need to learn the language is freely available as long as you have the discipline to go through it without being forced to.

The first step will be to learn hiragana, then katakana. After that you'll want to tackle grammar basics, beginner vocabulary and kanji, and then begin getting exposure to simple native content while exploring the more intermediate and advanced material.

---

For kana:

Use mnemonics to familiarise yourself with hiragana and katakana.

Then drill yourself with a tool like DJT Kana until they are burned into your brain.

-

For grammar:

The single free resource I most recommend in the beginning would be Wasabi's online reference, but there are plenty of other resources out there, including Tae Kim, Imabi, Maggie Sensei, Cure Dolly, etc...

For paid resources the most commonly recommended beginner textbook would be Genki. And then Tobira for more intermediate material. My most recommended resources to purchase would be a book called Making Sense of Japanese and the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series, with emphasis placed on the first volume.

-

For kanji and vocab:

Wanikani will automate the process for you if you have the cash to pay for a yearly subscription.

If not you can use Anki with either Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Course or with Remembering The Kanji.

---

All my Japanese knowledge was acquired through self-study, starting with resources similar to these. After I had sufficient experience with the basics I went on to learn primarily through reading native material and using native linguistic resources.

It took around 3 years before I was able to begin reading light novels.

Bakugan Battle Brawlers looks like a fun game and it is only $5.97 prime - for you

Sadly I no longer have a gaming system or a TV for that matter... But I LOVE to read so if I win I would like to start the Divergent series.

Thanks for the contest. Yay for prime!

It's not exactly what you are looking for but I've enjoyed what I've read of Greg Wyshinski's Book. It's a guide to the game, it breaks down the game and some of the things you wouldn't think of - the little moves to get an open shooting lane for another player, etc.

Greg is a good writer, and a funny guy. Check it out!

• Start with Hangul. (I did this by using Memrise Hangul lessons.) Example I also suggesting writing them down a ton, getting used to them and utilizing many of the other free resources. Although, I would just learn the basics, trying to memorize when sounds change because of their placement in the word is a bit confusing at this point.
  
  
• Move on to basic phrases and the most common verbs. (The beginner lessons on TTMIK might help.) Write these down. Get used to reading them without the romanization.
  
  
• At that point I would get a language partner to help with pronunciation or whatever you are having trouble understanding.
  
  
• Then, I suggest getting a text book, or what have you, like Integrated Korean.
  
  I only say to wait this long before using a textbook, because the most suggested book -is- Integrated Korean, and I found jumping into it did not help me. (aside from maybe the Hangul lesson at the beginning, but even that was a bit much.) I found the lessons to take a much different course than other languages that I have learned in the past. I really feel basic communication (Hello, Thank You) and the verb "to be" should be included in the very first lessons you take. They kind of jump right in without great explanations.
  
  
• I suggest going with the lessons in the text book as well as doing memorizing of common verbs/nouns/words either via Anki (or since you're limited in time) Memrise.
  
  I hope that's a good starting point. Its basically how I've gone about it, without all the stumbling around aimlessly trying to figure out what works for me, what didn't work, and lots of wasted time studying things I wouldn't fully comprehend until I had a better foundation of knowledge.
  
  I find to get the most out of Anki you end up putting lots of time into creating decks, which can be a bit overwhelming or complicated.
  
  Edited for clarification.

Thanks, glad to see people are taking the time to read it. IMO, there's a reason why city-states were the basic structure of settlement for centuries.

Here's some additional reading if you're so inclined:

Suburban Nation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865477507/ref=oh_o01_s00_i00_details

The Wealth of Cities: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738201340/ref=oh_o06_s00_i00_details

Crabgrass Frontier: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195049837/ref=oh_o05_s00_i00_details

Green Metropolis (great look at the environmental aspects of sprawl from a non-traditional viewpoint. Gotta love any green stuff that rips into the sierra club) : http://www.amazon.com/Green-Metropolis-Smaller-Driving-Sustainability/dp/B002YNS422/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333550929&sr=8-1

Very nice survey of the options, thanks.

Some years ago I used Henshall's book and recommended it on another forum as an alternative to Heisig/RtK. I liked Henshall's mnemonics and etymologies, though he never got popular like Heisig/RtK did. I've not heard of Conning's book, it seems to be quite new, so I'm guessing it must be really good if you recommend it over Henshall.

Another +1 for the Core10k deck, though I'm only studying the words that have high frequency according to a particular frequency list I'm using. I've heard there's quite a bit of low-frequency, newspaper-ish vocab in it.

Schaum's Outline of German Grammar is good.

Also, English Grammar for Students of German

And as RadiiRadish has said, Memrise is fantastic for vocabulary. I haven't been to German is easy! so I can't attest to it's merits.

Here is a pretty good site with likely familiar fairy tales in German.

Get Germanized is a fun youtube channel that teaches vocabulary, culture, etc. I know it's not reading material, but fun no less.

As for self-study, this is what you need IMO:

These are hard to find in the US but you can get them new from Amazon.co.jp:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/A-Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=AN1VRQENFRJN5

￥ 2,946

http://www.amazon.co.jp/A-Dictionary-Intermediate-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789007758/ref=pd_luc_sim_01_01_t_lh?ie=UTF8&psc=1

￥ 3,885

Shipping & Handling: ￥ 3,300

Order Total: ￥ 9,806

So for a $100 you can get a solid grammar reference set. There's a third in this series but it's not quite as useful as the first two.

That, combined with rikkaichan or what have you for inline vocabulary help would be a pretty good use of your time I think.

Plus there's always /r/LearnJapanese, too!

To learn them. For Japanese, this is great and widely considered one of the best ways to learn the kanji (and some vocab along the way); for Chinese, this (Traditional) and this (Simplified) are two of your options. Another is to just learn them out of whichever textbook you get and while studying vocabulary separatedly. There are probably some other hanzi books too; you might wanna have a look over in /r/chineselanguage for that sort of thing.

However, I suggest getting a good base in one of the two character sets (Japanese or Chinese) before you start with the other, to minimise any confusion. I knew probably 1.3k kanji (as in, I could recognise them and sort of figure out the meaning; I couldn't pronounce all of them) when I tried learning Chinese as well, so I didn't have any problems with that.

Hard copy book I need this book to keep the potterhead in me happy and give me new treats to bake!

E-book. I need this book so I can read it before the movie comes out in a couple weeks!

If I were a book, I hope that I'd be a great one!

Try satori reader, from the guys who made human japanese.

If you really need a textbook you should probably go with Tobira, it covers more advanced stuff than genki but you can probably handle it since you finished Human Japanese.

I can also recommend ["Making Sense of Japanese"] (https://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Japanese-What-Textbooks/dp/156836492X) by Jay Rubin, it's a short read but gives you a deeper understanding of a few different topics.

Imabi is probably the most complete japanese resource in english and it's free, definitely give it a try.

I've used two textbooks for learning Chinese.

1. Basic Spoken Chinese. It helped me a lot with survival Chinese. I learned how to answer basic questions, ask for directions, and so on. BSC also explains lots of the culture, and the design of the book inside is good. The downside is that there are two tracks, one for speaking and listening and another for writing and reading. There's also two books for each track, one textbook and one workbook ("Practice Essentials"). This will cost you, but the textbooks are pretty thorough in helping you to use the language.
   
   
2. Integrated Chinese. I've been studying Chinese for three years. The first year I used IC, and now I'm using it again. (The middle year was with BSC.) The pro of this one is that it's very academic. I'm doing level two right now, and I just studied a dialogue on two people arguing about animal rights. It also has a lot more grammar than BSC. It's cheaper, too, especially if you buy an older edition.
   
   Between the two textbooks, I'd recommend IC for you. It has the grammar, and I think this is what you're looking for. Another thing I love about it is that it doesn't put the pinyin, characters, and English on the same page. After every line of pinyin in the dialogues, BSC put the English translation. This hurt my attempt to focus on Chinese. Going back and forth between English and Chinese doesn't allow you to make the necessary form-meaning connections between Chinese and the real world. In IC, you'll see a page of characters, and you'll have to flip a few pages to find some English and term definitions.
   
   Edit: The reason I'm back in IC again is that, after spending a summer in China with mostly BSC running through my head (I memorized all 40 dialogues for class), I wasn't able to hold a decent conversation. I could ask for directions, tell somebody that my Chinese wasn't too good, and ask somebody about how many siblings they had (spoiler alert: none), but that was really the extent of it. I went through a lonely phase because nobody around me could speak English, and I was totally unprepared to get to know people on a deeper level in Chinese.
   
   Edit2: You can find a graded reader/listener on this website. I've also heard some positive things about FluentU.

I am no sure if a single text can help you achieve your goals for self-study.

However, I have heard great things about the "Erkundungen" and "Begegnungen" Deutsch Als Fremdspreche series from Schubert-Verlag for existing self-study learners, which also has an online site for grammar exercises, http://www.schubert-verlag.de/aufgaben/index.htm

Alternatively, an English and progressive teaching grammar like this well known one may suit you better:

"English Grammar for Students of German"

https://www.amazon.com/Botany-Day-Patterns-Method-Identification/dp/1892784351

Botany in A Day and Botany for Gardeners, which was mentioned above were both books that were used in my classes when I got my horticulture degree. They’re both very approachable and easy to understand and will give you a good basis for building your plant ID knowledge. I would also suggest familiarizing yourself with both native and invasive plants in your region and going out with a dichotomous key and keying some of them out.
Good luck to you!

I've found that Japanese textbooks do tend to go cheaper on amazon.co.jp then else where. Just make sure the ISBN of the book in question is the same and go for it! Some items wont be able to ship out of japan but most books that I've seen do!

I would switch the language from Japanese to English on the site just to ease the purchase (日本語 with the globe under it, just hover over it.)

And even if you've used the free prime trial on regular amazon you can get the trial again on the Japanese version, so free shipping!

EDIT:

For example this book and this book on the Japanese site both have the same ISBN 4874244475 which you can see in the Product Details so they are exactly the same book.

I went looking and couldn't find much. There's its web site, which has an overview (incl. contents) and videos about it (note: these start in Japanese, but students talk in English later), but I couldn't find actual sample pages. There's this video review where she shows a few pages and talks about it, but that's it really.

It's been a while since I used it, but basically each chapter is somewhat self-contained and tend to be on a general topic. So I'll take Chapter 1 as an example.

Chapter 10 has the topic 日本の便利な店. The chapter starts with some preparatory stuff before going to the reading about vending machines (自動販売機大国ニッポン), which is deliberately low on furigana apart from some difficult words, but has a list down the bottom of key kani compounds. The reading is about two pages long (earlier ones are shorter) but not especially difficult. Next is a detailed wordlist with the word, its reading, type of word (verb, noun, etc.) and English meaning indexed with its location in the reading passage.

Up next is the transcript of a conversation about convenience stores and how they're different between countries (Japan and America, specifically), the audio of which is online. This also has key kanji compounds at the bottom of the page and is followed by another wordlist. After that there are a series of questions relating to what was in the reading and conversation. Then there's an exercise to write your own conversation based on prompts and paying attention to politeness and stuff. Then there's a conversation with partner roleplay type exercise.

After that is one of the things I found best about this book, the grammar notes. This chapter has 17 grammar points lifted from the readings (with references to where it was from), with explanations of when you might use it, ways that it's translated into English, how it's actually used and example sentences. One issue is that the sentences from the reading and example sentences don't have English translations, but I didn't really have much trouble with that myself. The explanation in English was usually enough to understand what the examples mean, and you can of course look it up online if you're really struggling.

Following that is a table of kanji split into "things you should learn to read and write" and "things you should learn to read", again with where they were. This pretty closely follows the kanji compound lists at the bottom of readings.

The chapter then ends on a "Grammar note" explaining a general grammar principle (as opposed to the specific points in the grammar section). This one talks about dialects and has a little map of Japan with how they say すごくおいしい in different places.

With copyright I don't really want to include scans of pages (seeing as I can't find them anywhere I'm assuming you can't upload them), but the videos at least put up shots of the pages. If you really need to check it out before buying, see if you can find it at a local library or even better find out if any university libraries near you have a copy and check it there. I really like this text myself, and the grammar pages in particular are way better than any other text I've seen.

EDIT: There's a sample chapter on Amazon JP, just click on the picture of the cover.

Picking a team, I would just watch games and see who you like. Maybe pick up one of the NHL video games and do the same. I know it's not the best advice but nobody else can really tell you who to root for. I agree to pick a team in your time zone so you can watch the games. A good book is Take your Eye off the Puck, although it might be better once you know the basics already

Taxonomy is the practice of describing, identifying, naming, and classifying life. The best way to start with plants is probably to start learning vocabulary. Plant Identification Terminology is a good book to get started. From there, learning the major plant families and the distinguishing characteristics of each family is great while keeping in mind the orders these major families are in. From there you can start focusing on genera within the families. I took a plant taxonomy course at my university and it was more or less structured in this way.

There's a pretty good book called Take Your Eye Off the Puck which is pretty good at explaining hockey rules and culture on and off the ice.

For about $20, pick up this book: http://www.amazon.com/Plant-Identification-Terminology-Illustrated-Glossary/dp/0964022168.
This will help with a lot of the jargon you will run into when using technical keys.

@OP If you are truly interested in plant taxonomy see about enrolling in a plant tax class at a university. You should also find out a good key for your local flora (if you let me know your area I can attempt a suggestion) and just get out and start keying. At first you will struggle and it will be painful, but as with anything, you get better with practice.

Oh, also consider getting a hand lens. I suggest something 10x or 14x.

Your comment—and the general consensus around here—convinced me that I should get that series of grammar books. However, I'm not sure I found the right series. If there's any chance you could confirm it's these (basic, intermediate and advanced, seems to be all for ￥11,130) it would be highly appreciated. :)
Thank you!

This is the textbook I had in college, and seems to be what many universities in the USA use. If you get more, be care as there are textbooks and workbooks with similar covers for the various levels. The books were useful enough for me that I would recommend them. If you're only self teaching, then you could probably save your money and only get the textbooks.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0887276385/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526269716&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=integrated+chinese+level+1+part+1&dpPl=1&dpID=51M7k%2Bq1OaL&ref=plSrch

Genki is the most commonly recommended beginners textbook over on /r/learnjapanese (definitely use this sub). Other options like Minna No Nihogo pretty much require a teacher or don't have the same availability genki has.

Tobira is an intermediate textbook that's pretty popular. The other option is An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese which is published by the same company as Genki, basicaly a Genki 3, but doesn't follow quite the same format. Personally I think Tobira is better but maybe is a little harder to use at the start for someone straight of Genki 2.

I can't believe nobody mentioned A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (and the Intermediate and Advanced books that follows it)

http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/

Use Genki, skip the grammar descriptions in the book and instead look them up in A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (and read all the sections in the book before the dictionary part)

As linguist you should be aware of second language acquisition theory and therefore sympathise with / understand / appreciate how the teaching of the language progress through a normal textbook. You can't learn a language just by understanding its structure, you need practice and exposure.

For Kanji you can look at A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, which will go through the etymology of the most common ~2100 characters as historically correct as any other work of etymology on these things can get. You can supplement with http://www.kanjinetworks.com

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418734675&sr=8-2&keywords=guide+to+remembering+kanji

I think something like Core 2k decks for anki (or the paid version, know.jp) is good enough for practicing listening and reading comprehension, even for a linguist.

I used this series in school: http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chinese-Simplified-Characters-Textbook/dp/0887276385 They're pretty good books with very reasonably lengthed and fluid sections. The only thing I suggest is supplementing the grammar with some crosschecks online. I didn't find their explanations for 了 usage to be adequate, for example. But, they're pretty cheap and you can add on the workbooks if you want to do guided writing exercises. There is also a Traditional version if you want that instead.

Don't worry it's one of the most popular on Amazon so it's easy to find there. Here it is.

I would also suggest looking up How to Speak in Korean. It's a website that was written by a guy who taught himself to speak Korean and wanted to create a resource that has everything for beginners to become fluent for FREE.

I've found the Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar to be the one of, if not the most useful thing, I've found to help with learning Japanese.

Sam Martin's Reference Grammar of Japanese is also excellent, but good luck finding a copy.

I've answered this question before, so you might find some useful information there. Special emphasis on Japanese the Manga Way and JapanesePod101

To add to that, let me add a few more pointers directed specifically at you.

• No Rosetta Stone! Although it's popular and probably works in some learner/language configurations, I hear that it's not the best for Japanese. Rosetta Stone tries to fit all languages into its program and Japanese doesn't fit that mold very well. Plus in think that their "Act like a baby" slogan is bulls#!t. Kids are barely coherent even after four years of immersion. Plus you've already learned one language, so you know a lot about how language and communication works (nouns, verbs, etc). Why not leverage that knowledge? </rant>
  
  
• An good offline grammar resource is The Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar but more as a reference book than a guided learning book.
  
  
• I like the Kotoba app for iPod Touch but that's for reference too.

i haven't read [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Take-Your-Eye-Off-Puck/dp/1629371203) because I'm a cheap bastard but the author is a pretty respected guy I think and it looks like its not too expensive.

I like the name Bosco, and it could be Bambi&Bosco :)

I'd really like this book! I've read it before and loved it!!
The Fault in Our Stars
http://amzn.com/0525478817

If you are interested in mnemonics based on the true etymology of kanji, try Henshall's book.

Here's an Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2081001609

He tracks the form and meaning of each kanji down to the original ancient inscriptions. Kanji are not just random symbols attached to meanings. They contain the wisdom of centuries.

> I've read that you should learn like a child

Your brain is not like child's brain, you have adult's brain. You can try to imitate the environment but you can't replicate what goes on in child's brain/mind. Take "learn like a child" advice with grain of salt. As for children's books, IMHO these are far from ideal for learning because for and adult it may be difficult to relate to the stories and they rarely elicit emotional response that would facilitate remembering.

Integrated Korean is widely used popular textbook series, you might want to look into that, perhaps your library has a copy.

If you need a grammar book, I highly recommend Hammer's German Grammar and Usage, along with Practising German Grammar if you want a workbook.

I was totally blown away by the quality of these books, it's super complete and easy to use.

Thank you for the contest! Good luck in training as well.

The book i've wanted to read for some time now.

I have this book: English Grammar for students of German. It compares English and German in lots of areas of grammar in easy terms. I find it pretty helpful.

Also you could probably find a better price for the book but I just linked a better description.

I'm all up on Wanikani. It costs like $5 a month with a coupon code you can google for, but it's worth it in the end.

For gramar, Japanese The Manga Way is amazing, and I supplemented that with (Japanese Demystified)[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071477268/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1).

It was enough to navigate Tokyo and order food after a year of study.

Any recommendations? I've heard this one is pretty neat:

http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Korean-Beginning-Textbooks-Language/dp/0824834402/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260972037&sr=8-1

Was also considering trying out koreanclass101.com and talktomeinkorean.com, any thoughts on those?

Thanks everyone for the replies / suggestions.

I'd say the first one. I bought it, it's decent - but somehow I think it'd be better to not buy this basic one. Learn basic grammar in a textbook like Genki and for advanced grammar you can still buy https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Intermediate-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789007758

Because as soon as you finish Genki, you are already very familiar with everything in this basic book.

Depending on what language you want to learn, there may be a book that explains the grammar you'll need for that language by connecting it to English. For example: German,
Spanish, Russian.

If there's a term that you're unfamiliar with, you can also poke around on Wikipedia to get a better idea behind some of the concepts. But when things get too technical, just keep looking up unfamiliar terminology and you'll be on your way.

For a little bit of fun, check out:
Split Ergativity,

where you can see this gem of a sentence:
>An example of split ergativity conditioned by tense and aspect is found in the Hindustani language (Hindi/Urdu), which has an ergative case on subjects in the perfective aspect for transitive verbs in the active voice, while in other aspects (habitual, progressive) subjects appear in the nominative case.

Similar field report :

In high school, I had a major (lasting for years) oneitis for a girl in my class.

We dated for about 1 month when we were 15 - and then she broke it up. Which broke my heart pretty bad at the time. We didn't have sex but fooled around (full naked).

Fast forward about 18 years. I'm married, with a kid. She got married and got divorced after a while. We've been friends on Facebook, but no real conversations apart from saying happy birthday on her wall etc.

Anyways - I play in a band as a 2nd job and we had a gig in the town where she lives. I invite her (and a +1 if she wants to). She comes and stays till the end, and we chat for about 20 minutes before our tour bus heads back on the road.

Since then (about a year ago) she initiates chats over FB at least once a week. She even has dropped numerous hints about hooking up etc. We had a talk about how we used to fool around etc.

At one time we had a gig in Germany and she told me to take her with me, and when I said something to the effect of "weekend getaway with a married man? Scandalous" she merely laughed and made smiley faces etc.

She's still single with no LTR at the moment.

My take on this :

Even as a kid, the needy type (who loves them to the skies and will do anything to gain their favour) will get the kick on the butt.

Being married does not really stop women from making advances - it probably even creates a "chase" and "competition" feeling so they can say "he's married, but he still could not say no to me" in the end.

I probably won't go for a "close". I'm reading Iron John at the moment and I'd hate to be "the father who fooled around and left his family" and screw up the chance of my son becoming a proper man.

Seeing no better advice yet, I would try italki (what I use, though in my case for Japanese). Particularly in the case of Mandarin you should be able to find native speakers via italki willing to help you 1-on-1 over Skype for less than the cost of any kind of instruction from people living here in North America. If italki is too expensive, I would look for other online options with as small of class sizes as possible to maximize your practice time. If learning Mandarin is anything like learning Japanese (my experience), you will also want to avoid hearing other non-native speakers (ie. students) speaking your target language so you don't pick up their bad pronunciation.

Assuming you go the italki route, check around for vbloggers on YouTube giving away italki promotions before you sign up (or wherever you can find a promo). Usually you can score an extra $10 for your lessons.

If you want to learn Chinese writing, I'd recommend a system like the one used in this book: https://www.amazon.ca/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Book-Characters/dp/0824833236. I used the equivalent by the same guy for Japanese ("RTK"), the idea being that Chinese characters can be broken down into simple parts you can recognize easier. An fast example is that forest (森) uses 3 trees (木), so if you learn 木 first that's easier to remember than the 12 individual strokes... Another quick one, "difficult" (難) can be reduced to 2 components most people call "Sino-" and "turkey", etc... Heisig then uses mnemonics (little stories) to tie them together and help you memorize them.

Anyways best of luck. I've heard getting used to speaking a tonal language is tricky, but that Mandarin grammar is relatively straightforward (compared to Japanese).