Reddit reviews Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book (English and Russian Edition)

You could try something like this

http://www.memrise.com/course/86069/intermediate-russian-bookbox-stories/

Also Amazon have a book with stories where the left page is in Russian and the right in English. I prefer Duolingo at the beginner stage, but you sound more disciplined than me so maybe it works better for you

Edit: Amazon link for the book http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0486262448/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?qid=1463390139

Try this , it has Russian stories printed on English on one page and in Russian on the other

Чехов считается одним из лучших писателей рассказов в русской литературе. И, что плюс, его можно взять в двуязычном издании. Еще двуязычный сборник. И еще

Find books written for children or foreigners. One is here: https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-Book-English/dp/0486262448.

Dual text or dual language, most likely. Here is an example, a good collection of short stories I read for a class last year. Wonderful stuff. Good luck!

I used this book when learning:
http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-English-Edition/dp/0486262448/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1374777073&sr=8-2&keywords=dual+russian+reader

It's got good stories and has stress marks.

I have used this book in my Russian classes. It has the English translation on one page and the original Russian on the facing page.

http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-English-Edition/dp/0486262448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411531020&sr=8-1&keywords=russian+stories

I own this book and it has gotten good reviews on Amazon. I think this is what you are looking for.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0486262448/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1459022403&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=russian+stories&dpPl=1&dpID=5199t8ch4ZL&ref=plSrch

The New Penguin Russian Course is amazing and includes everything you need to know about Russian grammar. A book I am reading right now for beginners is First Reader in Russian. It is a very basic Russian book that has exercises and a dictionary in the back. The only bad thing about it is the dictionary doesn't include all of the words from the book so I usually have to go to my Russian-English English-Russian Dictionary. This dictionary also lacks many important words, but it hasn't given me any problems. Another good Russian reading source is Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book. If you just look around on amazon you will find many good resources.

There are a number of dual english-russian books out there:

Amazon link

I have specifically used this one. It might be a good way to review the same text from two different perspectives and then talk about it together. As a bonus you could hash out the differences in how a sentence gets translated one way or the other.

Alternatively I would suggest modern fairy tales and childrens books. Simple stories, simple grammar. Easy to glom onto. There are three or four Dr Seuss books that have been translated into Russian. Likewise, she could send you russian books for children. I found kids books really helpful. They are, after all, designed to help build grammar.

Thanks. Damn it. I read somewhere that the Russian language has not changed that much in the last few hundred years, so I figured Dostoevsky would be fine...does that mean that Chekhov, Tolstoy, Bunin, Gogol are all no-gos too? i.e. the authors in this highly rated book

Thing is, I really prefer to learn from online parallel texts, and so far at least, I can only find a few instances which don't use what you guys are telling me is archaic Russian. Mostly short stories. I'll switch to them now, but once I run out of those I'll be going back to Crime & Punishment. I'm only learning as a hobbie anyway, as an offshoot from my interest in opera singing (I like Russian romance/sang poetry & operas, which I believe are mostly archaic language anyway) so fuck it!

[Would you say learning from a parallel text version of the bible is bad too?]
(https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/parallel/e/russian.htm)

It seems mad to me though that knowing the vocabulary of, and being exposed to the grammar of a few chapters of Crime & Punishment will do NOTHING for my Russian language skills...oh well...

I've heard good things about The New Penguin Russian Course. I also like to have plenty of reading material, like readers and parallel texts to help build my vocabulary and work on comprehension.

As others have said, there's plenty of free and usually legal stuff out there, so give those a shot too. While materials can help or hurt your motivation, the specific brand or program isn't as important as doing something every day to improve your Russian.