I haven't been checking the group as often as I have been so I may be repeating
what's been already said.
John's comments on the basic Pali textbooks are right on. He and I have been working
on Pali for a couple years, progressing through these three books in the order he
gives. In addition, I'd recommend getting the Venerable Bhuddadatta's "Concise Pali-
English Dictionary." While the entries under each word are far less extensive than in
other dictionaries, this one is the most user-friendly, especially for novices. I find that
I refer to it before the the vocabularies in the textbooks or the PTS dictionaries.
A book that is not so useful is "A Pali-English Glossary," form Sri Satguru Publications.
I ordered this after seeing it listed among Pali language books in an Indian vendors
catalog. It looks to be a computer-generated word list, with only one definition per
word and no indication of part of speech, gender, etc. I remember that one thing that
caught my eye was it's price, which was far less than one would expect a dictionary to
be.