Beginner's Finnish Book

Agi Risko's BEGINNER'S FINNISH is one of the lesser-known contemporary textbooks for Finnish. The author presents some of the basic features of the language in twelve chapters, with the dialogues following a group of American students on summer holiday in Finland. I disagree greatly with the method Risko uses to present these dialogues, Finnish on one side and a facing-page translation into English. A complete translation of all the Finnish will act only as a crutch for the student. The book is typeset in Hippocrene's typical space-inefficient style and nearly 300 pages are needed for a work of fairly meagre content. Grammatical concepts are presented in the dry style of reference grammars instead of the vivid presentation necessary for teach-yourself books.

I suppose this could be useful if you just want a taste of Finnish. However, anyone looking to start towards proficiency in the language would best acquire a combination of other books. Probably the best basic textbook for autodidacts is Terttu Leney's TEACH YOURSELF FINNISH. Leena Silfverberg's SUOMEN KIELEN ALKEISOPPIKIRJA and SUOMEN KIELEN JATKO-OPPIKIRJA (both published by Finn Lectura) contain further exercises that one needs to work through before leaving the beginner level. Finally, the DVD course SUPISUOMEA is an essential source of audio with fast dialogues.