A good book for leaning Chinese (Mandarin)

Locklock

Hey y'all, I was curious if anyone had a recommendation for a good text book to use in learning Mandarin. I don't have the time or money for a full on class or Rosetta Stone, so something I could carry around and learn from in my spare time would be grand.

Thanks!

Fuzzywhale

My University course is using New Practical Chinese Reader and along with http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php for practicing stroke order and memorizing characters I am doing okay. However, it emphasizes simplified characters.

Gandalf_the_Crazed

This is the series that we use at my university. It may or may not be what you're looking for, but it's good in any case.

Unearthly Stew

I will second the Integrated Chinese series. Once you get a little further in and know how to use a dictionary I recommend picking up a book in Chinese and translating. They make plenty of books for this purpose.

Gandalf_the_Crazed

Something else you should do once you know a wide variety of characters: Watch English movies with Chinese subtitles. You can look at the subtitles and pick up words and structures you haven't learned yet. For instance, I've only ever done this with two movies, and I've picked up several majorly useful words (like "accident", which I learned from Kung-Fu Panda, and "apparently", which I learned from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

One major downfall of textbooks is that they're trying to build in a progressive way, and once you reach a certain point in a language, there's no need for you to do things in a linear manner any more. Watching movies and TV shows will teach you all those words you'll need every day.