I’m still pretty much a newbie when it comes to Russian so I don’t really think my review will be of much use to anyone. Anyway, I was really eager to practice what little I had learnt. So eager, in fact, I even ordered a couple books I’d already read before off of Amazon. But I began having second thoughts: I used to read lots of books written in English, back when I was still learning the language. And though I learned much in relatively little time, it took me years to correct one huge oversight: I barely practiced my listening skills during that time. Years passed before I became courageous enough to speak the language around natives. And once I realized I was about to make the same mistake, again, I began looking for material that included both text and audio. And here we are. I liked the book. Easy enough not to make it torturous and challenging enough not to make it a chore. And the fact that I get a native-speaker to read the story out loud to me is invaluable. It’s still too early to tell but I feel like I’ve already improved my listening skills.