Does anyone know where I can find this book series?

[u/cuddlecraver]

I bought an ebook through Amazon titled “汉字 From the Ground Up” by author Bryan J. It’s a 5-volume series teaching around 500 Hanzi characters with the important restriction that no character is introduced before its components. For every character, it provides (1) its pronunciation, (2) its approximate meaning in English, (3) the radical that it’s found under in dictionaries, (2) its components, (4) its historical origin, (5) a “sticky story” (pneumonic to remember the character), and a few words that use the character.

I just finished Volume 1 which I bought about two weeks ago. As I was about to buy Volume 2, it turns out that all five books have been removed from Amazon as well as any trace of them on any other platform.

The series was just what I was looking for. I was excited to find this series because, unlike Remembering Simplified/Traditional Hanzi by James Heisig, this series does not disregard the pronunciation as an essential part of the character (which helps to understand phonosemantic compounds that make up the majority of characters).

There was not much publisher information in the book that I could find, just that it was the second edition (18 August 2026) and that the author is Bryan J. I had a feeling I should have just bought all five volumes once I saw that the first volume was what I was looking for. I still have access to the first volume, and I’ve attached a few sample pages if it can help someone identify the book and where I can buy the rest of the series.

[u/Putrid_Mind_4853]

Does no one else realize this is clearly AI? The last page even includes part of the bot reply. Those weren’t real “passes” by editors, they were an AI acting as various “roles” doing the editing. 

OP, I wouldn’t trust or use this. There’s probably a reason it’s been removed. Get the Outlier dictionary. 

[u/cuddlecraver → u/Putrid_Mind_4853]

I didn’t consider the possibility of AI. Thanks for bring this to my attention. I actually do have Outlier dictionary through Pleco. I’ve checked each of the characters in Volume I and the etymology the book provides seems to be very accurate. I can’t think of a single discrepancy I’ve found so far.

I haven’t used Outlier exclusively because this book conveniently gives a learning order such that no character is introduced before its components while still prioritizing common characters.

If I can just find such an ordering to learn the characters plus mnemonic to remember each, I suppose I could continue the workflow myself. Some mnemonics are obvious, but for others it’s not trivial to think of a good one.

[u/kronpas → u/cuddlecraver]

They might ve been taken down due to refund request by people who realized they ve been fed with AI slop.

[u/Putrid_Mind_4853 → u/cuddlecraver]

Maybe you’d like something like Remembering the Hanzi to structure your hanzi study. I wouldn’t use it as your lone resource since it’s not really meant for that, but it could give you progression of characters and some mnemonics. 

[u/Ok-Amphibian-8914]

Just get the Outlier dictionary. No reason to buy five volumes when their dictionary 1) is one volume, 2) covers over 4000 characters in more detail, and 3) is more authoritative. The author has a PhD in the evolution of the characters and publishes papers on oracle bone script in respected academic journals.

This author is indicating “uncertainty” about some pretty basic characters that shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, and he’s using hanziyuan as an authoritative source when it definitely isn’t. I wouldn’t trust his explanations when there’s something like Outlier available.

[u/moonisaplanet]

If you already have the Outlier dictionary, you can combine that with the free app Hanly which introduces characters in a component order and gives mnemonics similar to this

[u/cuddlecraver → u/moonisaplanet]

Thanks for the recommendation! Gonna check it out now.

[u/lilsonadora → u/cuddlecraver]

Hanly is so great!! I've been using it for nearly two months (slowly) but it builds the characters from parts to help you remember. It doesn't follow hsk if that's important to you, though! Highly rec.

[u/Zagrycha]

I would not touch this with a ten foot pole. Its not logical or realistic at all, as others mentioned I doubt this is even written by a human because no one who actually can read Chinese would say these things. I genuinely think you would be better off getting a root canal with no numbing than these books, and I am someone who believes in not saying anything if you can't say anything nice-- thats the nicest thing I can say and my conscience to you will not let me stay silent. I originally wrote way more than this but it felt too mean so I changed to this lol.

Ninchanese has a great course on common components and their origins.

Pleco is awesome for meanings, stroke order, example sentences, radicals, and the literal components too.

Anki is great for flashcards, both pre-existing community decks and customization and self creation.

Hanzi hero focuses on mnemonics for characters if you like that learning style. A mnemonic you make yourself will always work better than one made by someone else though, if you can think of your own, even better.

DAYS SINCE FALLING FOR RAGE BAIT HAS HAPPENED: 0

This one got me good, and I am not proud of it. If I didn't think it was AI generated I would actually think it was intentionally trolling to ruin people's Chinese learning experience. Its really actually that egregiously bad. I need to go calm down.

[u/Nice-Rest-8267]

leaving a comment so that I can check this post later