Reddit reviews French Stories / Contes Français (A Dual-Language Book) (English and French Edition)

I recently bought this book.

Seems like a good selection and it's also cheap!

http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Français-Dual-Language-English-Edition/dp/0486264432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332907615&sr=8-1
This book has 10 short stories with the french page on the left and the corresponding page translated into english on the right. This about what you had in mind?

good French bands ? This is an oxymoron..

It really depends on your goals: I learned mostly just to complain to my landlord and understand when the girlfriend wants me to take out the trash, stuff like that. So I played back L'École du micro d'argent a thousand times while reading the lyrics in French/English on Google translate, and I spoke all the exercises in teh FSI French Basic (first 18 units is enough, it includes some culture, but from the 1960's). If you diligently record your speech with a tape recorder and play back comparing to a cassette or MP3 of a real speaker, you'll learn to speak better much faster.

If you want to read French, pick up bilingual novels or a novel and its translation, and read the English one day, the French the next day. This is a good example.

Depending on the context, learning informal French is helpful too. I'd never figure out what a meuf is otherwise..

Sure. This, this and others.