Top picks of books for learning Mandarin Chinese.
1) Beginner's Chinese
The book teaches the most basic words and patterns to enable students to begin talking and communicating based on Pinyin.
2) Ultimate Chinese : Basic-Intermediate Mandarin
Teaches conversational Mandarin Chinese with grammar and culture. It contains 40 lessons, each with a lively, authentic Chinese dialogue that includes the most common and useful expressions for everyday conversation.
4) Reading and Writing Chinese : A Guide to the Chinese Writing System
The book contains about 4,500 characters. It gives the pronunciation, definition and derivation for each of the basic 1,062 characters, with examples of the use of most words and a chart showing how to write each character.
5) What Character is That : An Easy-Access Dictionary
It is a good reference book for beginners. It contains about 5,000 characters.