I've surpassed the 1000 character mark and want to practice reading some kind of news site that is simple.

Right now I'm reading the china daily and end up constantly having to look up words due to the large amounts of names of politicians and various institutions and other words that I'd never need to use in normal life.

Even though not simple, I find the NYT Chinese edition online the most interesting.

Although not really what you asked - I've had great results with just liking a ton of Chinese things on Facebook. After a month or two of this, more than half my newsfeed is Mandarin. Plus it's really interesting (because I like the same sorts of things I like in English) so motivation is a non-issue. And it's colloquial in both the posts and the comments. Saw this mentioned on AJATT and it's worked awesome.

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I guess i'll try something the NYT chinese edition. There should be a wider focus than diplomacy and traffic laws.

As bad as this is about to sound.... What are your favourite 'go to' novels in English? I ordered the whole Harry Potter collection in Chinese, it has me reading daily ;-) (found for a decent price on amazon.cn )

Agree with that. I've bought up a lot of Chinese language manga (can get at Yesasia.com or wherever) and this is a great way to get some volume in without dying of boredom.

I rather like the Chinese Breeze books. I have two more to go at the 300 character level and will then start in on the 500 character books. (Stocked up on them on my last trip, but you can order them from Cheng & Tsui on line.)

@Tangqiuyue

Harry Potter is difficult to read in English; it's even harder in translation. How would you translate the word "muggle" into Chinese?

@raybetts89

Go to any library and check out the little kids section. Learn the language the way children do. You can also look at the pictures if you get confused. I read most of としょかんライオン (Library Lion) yesterday at a bookstore. It's about a lion. The lion has all kinds of experiences inside of a library. You can read a book about a lion inside of a library while you yourself are inside of a library! That's deep.

I would skip the NY Times until you are pretty advanced. I have a hard time following some of the articles in English! There is a lot of context that is assumed in most articles.

The Chinese breeze books are great. There are a few good suppliers of Chinese books in the UK. I did try and read Harry potter, which was not that bad, but I'd never read it in English, so the names caught me out a lot. I think if you'd read it in English before and knew what to expect it wouldn't be too bad.

I can't find it at the moment but I did find a version of the CCTV news channel, which was a more basic version for Chinese learners.

And for the answer of how to translate muggle into Chinese...

http://dict.youdao.com/eng/muggle/

My local Confucius Institute has an amazing library of Chinese and multi-lingual books; everything from books for toddlers up to the 四大名著. I think I paid $10 or something for a library card.