The Texas Language Technology Center of the University of Texas has a very nice online grammar of German, Grimm Grammar.
A snippet from their about page:
Welcome to Grimm Grammar, an irreverent revival and shameless exploitation of 19th-century Grimm Fairy Tales for honorable pedagogical purposes. Fortunately for you, Dear Reader, thirty-six characters from these fairy tales have returned to 21st century Germany (their precise location cannot be revealed for privacy reasons) to model all things grammatical … anything the most eager language learner may wish to know about the German language.
…
This online grammar reference was created for lower-division language courses at the University of Texas, but any beginning or intermediate learner of German may use it completely free of charge, as long as he or she is willing to take a trip to the imaginary world of Grimm Grammar … the characters of which are grumpy and gorgeous, scary and smarmy, witty and wicked!
If you’re getting started in German, check it out; you could probably skip the introductory German grammar book, and instead just wait until you need a copy Hammer’s.
Over the past few days, I’ve been focusing some more on Dutch. I’m up to lesson 31 of Dutch with Ease. I realize I’ve said it many times before, but: I love how Dutch vocabulary corresponds so clearly to English and German vocabulary. We in Dutch; we in English. Eenvoudig in Dutch; einfach in German. I’m getting better at understanding the spoken language (at least the Assimil version of the spoken language…), but reading is still much, much easier.
I’ve also done a tiny bit of Russian recently, working a bit on lesson 54 of Russian without Toil, as well as on some of the exercises in chapter 12 of the New Penguin Russian Course. Nothing overly exciting about either, however. I want to sit down for a few hours and plow through a bit of my Russian history book soon.
And, finally, I’ve been trying to decide on how I want to rearrange my language learning schedule. While I’m making progress, certainly, I’m not entirely happy with my haphazard way of hopping from one language to another. Some languages tend to get lost in the mess, and as of late, French has been suffering quite a lot – not to mention poor Spanish, which seems to have wholly vanished from my studies. I’m not frustrated enough to slash any more from my current list, but I’m going to have to put my current list into some sort of overall structure to please myself. I’m just not entirely sure how I’m going to do that. I know some people insist on sticking to one or two languages until they’re mastered them (whatever that means), but I don’t see myself doing that. I’ve also read of some people spending a few months on a couple of languages, then switching to other languages for a few months, etc. Again, I’m not sure I could do this.
Hrm. I’ll figure something out.
Today was largely a Dutch day. In Dutch with Ease, I reviewed lesson 24, then went ahead and did the passive wave for lessons 25 and 26. I’ve decided that, seeing as I’ve not exactly had much trouble with Dutch, I’m going to try and push through the passive wave of Assimil fairly quickly, rather than going slowly and meticulously. Once I’ve gotten through the first pass I’ll go through it again most likely, in a slower manner.
Later in the evening, I took my copy of Russisch ohne Mühe to bed with me, and reviewed lesson 24. I’m not sure why, but my bookmark was on that lesson, so it seemed as good a lesson as any to review.
