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good italian books

can anyone recommend any good italian books/listening aids for a complete beginner that i can use to help teach myself?

Michel Thomas's Italian and Advanced Italian will give you almost complete competence with Italian verbs and their forms, which are the backbone of any language.

I found 'Living Italian' (search amazon) to be an excellent and comprehensive book on written Italian. As Italian writing is phonetic, once you learn the pronunciation you do not need to be tutored on how to pronounce any new word you come across in the book.

If you combine the verb mastery you would get from Michel Thomas, with the vocabulary you'll learn from Living Italian, you should be able to say pretty much anything; and reading (say a newspaper) will simply be a matter of looking up the odd new word. Listening would be the hard part, but you can practise listening to Italian by making Euronews channel on Sky broadcast in Italian, if you have Sky that is.