The General's Daughter: First Year Russian Reader

by Samuel D. Cioran, Gennadi A. Kalinin

Release Date: August, 1993

Edition: Paperback

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Best text for intermediate students I've found

This book is an extremely effective learning tool for the intermediate Russian language student. Basic grammatical rules are introduced and reinforced by repetition throughout the text. Very handy to have vocabulary translations on the page opposite the Russian text - saves having to flip back to the end of the book to find the meaning of new words there.
The story is rather basic, but I still found it interesting. I've tried reading Russian language "classics" but usually get bogged down with slang, archaic vocabulary or complex grammar. This story was an easy read, and one that I will reread quite often to maintain proficiency with the new vocabulary.
By the way, my native language Russin tutor also gives this book a good recommendation.

Format is good, but story is bad

I have mixed feelings about this book. As an intermediate reader I found the text rather simple, but I expected that since it is marketed as primarily a beginners reader. The format is very nice. On the right side is the Russian text, and on the left side on the same line, are notes on "difficult" words. Unfortunately if there are too many "difficult" words on one line you just don't get translations on all of them. This doesn't happen very often but it can be annoying when you are getting translations of words like "ruka" but not of much more difficult words. There is also a 15-page russian to english dictionary at the end of the book which seems to have most of the words from the text. There are also useful grammatical quick references on the front and back covers, although I think the inclusion of the list of numbers is unnecessary and should have been substituted with more grammatical references. There are 17 chapters and an epilogue, but the story itself is only 19 pages, so you should be able to work through it quite quickly.

My big complaint about this book is that the story is just bad. The language is not natural and the events of the story are borderline idiotic. I really don't want to use it as a study guide because I shudder at the thought of rereading it over and over. For the same reason I wouldn't order the tape. There are whole chapters which add nothing to the story line and prolonged descriptions of things which don't serve any purpose except to provide a list of vocabulary words. Maybe this is useful from an educational standpoint, but in a reader I'd rather have something that is, well, readable. Admittedly there isn't a huge selection of beginning Russian readers out there, but I'd recommend looking elsewhere. I much prefer Lila Pargment's Beginner's Russian Reader, which is a bit dated and a bit more difficult, but much more enjoyable as well as much longer...