Book wish list

One thing that would be real nice is if the Beginning Chinese Reader books were available in simplified characters. I used them for a while with the traditional set. Each chapter teaches 10 new characters and a bunch of new words. The readings spaces out use of the characters to reinforce memory. While I liked the approach, though, I'm not very interested in the traditional characters and would prefer to spend my limited time on the simplified form. If the book could be rewritten simplified I would gladly buy it.

I don't expect this to happen, though. John DeFrancis is up in years and is working on an English-Chinese dictionary, which is admittedly more important. The other reason is that DeFrancis hates the character system. While I have some sympathy for his point of view, it is still necessary to learn the characters to be literate in Chinese. The intermediate and advanced versions of his Chinese readers are written in Pinyin. The fact that he would make the effort to publish books in Pinyin, which no one uses for regular reading, confirms that he wants to put into practice the views in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Oh well. I otherwise like the approach in the Beginning Reader, which is a bit like the Pimsleur method, but for reading.