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I'm sure that plenty of people will disagree with me, but I REALLY don't like textbooks for self-study. It's always seemed to me that the authors of textbooks half-ass explaining things since they assume you'll have a teacher who can explain it to you. (Also they tend to be really expensive!)

For getting your feet underneath you, I honestly love phrasebooks (Rick Steves; Lonely Planet) and picture dictionaries.

At the start, I used (still use!) the "Practice Makes Perfect" series. They're not expensive at all, though they might as well be printed on newspaper - these are NOT long term reference works... there are a ton of these in the series that I haven't listed below, but these are good:

• Practice Makes Perfect Basic Italian
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Vocabulary
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Pronouns And Prepositions
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Sentence Builder
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Conversation
  
  These are more expensive but absolutely worth the price:
  
  
• Modern Italian Grammar: A Practical Guide (and the corresponding workbook maybe)
  
• Soluzioni: A Practical Grammar of Contemporary Italian
  
• A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian
  
• Using Italian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage
  
• Using Italian Vocabulary
  
• Using Italian Synonyms
  
  Edit: Forgot this one but it's worthwhile also - Italian Fluency: Twin-Words and Essential Vocabulary.
  
  Avoid at all costs ... "Italian for Dummies"; "501 Italian Verbs" :)

I have one book that has some Italian Classics and their English translations as well. Unfortunately, I do not have it with me, but I will save this post and try to let you know what it is when I get back to the US. It’s interlinear, but I haven’t read it so I honestly can’t tell you the quality of the translator; seems pretty good, though.

I have a second book that I bought when I first started learning Italian, but it may just have the Italian and no translation, I can’t remember. All of my other books are just Italian, though, unfortunately.

I realize a pretty unhelpful comment overall, but I’ll try and reply in a few weeks with more information about each book.

Edit: Here is the first book I was talking about. You can decide for yourself if you think it is worth it; as I said, I did not have the time to look at it before I left the country. Also, some of the stories may not be super interesting to you, depending on your own interests, so that may lower the worth of the book.

Edit 2: Here is the second book that I was talking about, but it turns out to just be in Italian as far as I can tell. If you’re still interested however, feel free to check it out! I don’t really know your situation, so it could be pretty helpful or also pretty useless. I do think in general that the book was pretty helpful, but mind you I read it before I had ever formally studied Italian. I don’t know what level you are, but this is good for a beginner level to maybe intermediate-ish.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask questions or PM me if I can actually answer a bit better.

This book is the best textbook I’ve seen. The verbs can be complex but as a French speaker you have an advantage over people who only speak a language like English because you’re familiar with a language that prominently features things like conjugations and subjunctive tenses.

Truth be told, the only way to have a marked improvement in a language is to use it use it use it. If you have a friend who speaks Italian, try to practice with them. If you don’t, for practice speaking, try reading a book that’s been translated into Italian out loud. Don’t even necessarily worry about understanding what everything means; you’ll start to pick up on things that are commonly used and you’ll notice your studying becomes much more targeted and productive, plus you get to practice the act of speaking, your accent, and all that good stuff. For comprehension, watch movies in Italian, and put the subtitles in Italian. That’ll help give you a reference for how people talk and it’s the best way I’ve ever found to improve comprehension aside from one on one conversation with an Italian speaker.

I almost bought this last week, but can't justify the cost right now (I'm working at a pretty slow pace so probably can't rent it). I ended up buying two other books:

1. Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Italian Grammar
   
2. Easy Italian Reader
   
   They're being delivered today so I'm not sure if they live up to the reviews; I can update my thoughts on them later.
   
   EDIT
   
   These are my first thoughts after working through the first few pages of each book.
   
   

• Practice Makes Perfect: Seems like it's going to be great as a general overview, and the review questions are actually tolerable unlike the countless French homework assignments I suffered through in high school. It's hard to judge at the moment because I've already been using Duolingo for a while so obviously the first few chapters are going to be pure review for me.
  
  
• Easy Italian Reader: This book focuses more on reading passages; after reading small chunks of text you read and answer questions completely in Italian, and so far this is exactly what I was looking for; something that would allow me to practice reading stories and passages in Italian without being forced to read young children's books (hoping to read the first Harry Potter book in the near future). It's a bit dry (the first story focuses on two friends and their school life and whatnot), but I think it's perfect for someone who wants to start reading Italian early in their studies.

This is old school, but an excellent text and particularly good for grammar drills. Italiano Vivo https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0174450397/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_saplDbCXFEQ86

Italian in 32 Lessons is one of the best books (no audio though) that I've used. Add Assimal's Italian with ease and you're good to go.

Here's a good channel to learn from. She's easy to understand and she explains a lot of things well. I also recommend getting this grammar book. It's probably the simplest italian grammar book you will find. After you got some basics, start coming up with little conversations in your head throughout the day. I know it sounds crazy, but it helps a lot with remembering vocabulary.

I've been using The Ultimate Italian Review and Practice. It has a pretty good explanation of grammar and plenty of exercises in each section. All of the answers to the practice exercises are in the back of the book. In bocca al lupo!

We just took it down because we published it to Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Italian-Vocabulary-Builder-Language-Learning-ebook/dp/B07K1DRLSB/

If you have an Amazon account, PM me and I can give you a review copy in private. :-)

You can check out my Italian course on my website, here's the link
www.wordopolitan.com
And this is a grammar on Amazon that you might like
https://www.amazon.it/dp/125958772X/ref=asc_df_125958772X52628279/?tag=googshopit-21&creative=23390&creativeASIN=125958772X&linkCode=df0&hvdev=m&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=&th=1&psc=1

I learned with Prego an introduction to Italian. A very solid and thorough beginner-intermediate grammar and vocabulary survey:Prego! An Invitation to Italian (Student Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0072561319/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_cGCaBbNY2C45Q

This is the book we use at my university.

Vocabulary: http://clozemaster.com

Grammar book: https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Italian-Conversation/dp/1260026205/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8

A2 graded reader: https://www.amazon.com/Italian-Short-Stories-Beginners-Unconventional-ebook/dp/B01JKDYV4I/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

If you are in the US:

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Italian/dp/0071603670