Slight motivation

A few years back, I refused to by language books thinking it was a waste of money to buy a book whose contents I could find scattered all over the internet. Now I can't get enough of them and I'm always on ebay thoroughly searching for new language books. But I've always prefered to buy language books that don't belong to the big companies or series such as linguaphone, berlitz, Michel Thomas methods etc. I think it is how they advertise themselves. As someone who has been struggling for years to get a good command of French I know it is impossible to 'learn French in 3 months' as Hugo language books portray themselves or acquire 'Portuguese in 10 minutes a day'. They seemed false, as though they would teach you phrases from phrasebooks and the most advanced material would be the past tense. But now I'm starting to see differently and I'm becoming more interested in audio based courses. After all, these companies wouldn't have been established for years if they weren't good. I started unit 3 of FSI portuguese [which can be downloaded freely and legally from here] and was pleasantly surprised with the course. It may be slow but I'll definite be able to say to someone that 'Eu conheço a Maria. Ela é minha amiga.' It may be basic but I tend to be too quick to jump the boat and skip the basics so maybe it'll be good for me. I'll definitely be continuing with the course tomorrow. On another note, I don't think I know how to properly pronounce nasal sounds. Anytime I practice I'm left with a really sore throat. I'll need to look into it.