Mastering French Vocabulary (Mastering Vocabulary Series)

I started learning French last September on the basis that I would be working for the summer in Paris. I have just come back from Paris and it is thanks to this book that I have managed to be able to learn conversational French pretty much on my own within the space of one year. I looked at lots of other ones and not only were they far more expensive (with some going over £20!), but they were also less concise, harder to comprehend, and often in no real order.

This book manages to fulfill all of these demands and more. It is perfectly feasible to be able to learn a chapter a day, or every other day if you put aside a few hours each day - meaning you can learn over 5000 words in two months or so. No other vocabulary book would be able to give you this.
Go buy people! Go buy!

I've tried lots of french vocab books and they are generally dry lists of nouns and verbs. This book is laid out logically by subject, with easier words then more difficult at the end. Each word has an idiomatic sentence and it makes great reading. The only vocab book you'll ever need unless very specialised.

This has everything you need to build an extensive, practical vocabulary, as well as the intelligent design to allow you to do so quickly. Importantly, for a french word book, it contains the phonetic pronunciation of every word listed. Arranged into thematic sections, all of which are important, but obviously you can choose which order to study them in. Also helpful is the fact that each section is itself divided into essential and advance vocabulary. It contains many sentance examples and a fair selection of idiomatic phrases. Each page is divided easily between french and english, so you can use a card to cover up one or the other while testing yourself. All in all, probably the wisest choice if you want a book to build up your french lexicon.