What do you do to master languages?

[Jazzmin]

Alors, the question I have put as the title, I guess it's rather clear... What ways? Movies? If so, with subtitles or not? Do you do anything special about them like writing down some vocabulary or what? Books? Genre? Simplified or orginal classics? Contemporary or archaic? Talking to others? Then - native or non-native speakers? And generally everything about it. Anything else?

Me is kinda a bookworm. At least so my friends say because I scold myself for not reading enough :P . In English I read anything that catches my fancy (yay for the Internet era and cheap e-books, not to mention Gutenberg project things). As you can deduce by my signature, I'm in awe of the (in)famous author of "Lolita" and other masterpieces... Bless God if I ever get as half as learned at English! And I'm in love with Jack London's prose style!

Besides noble fiction, I happen to read some popular scientific books on animal and human minds (but most preferably on dogs'; that's my little craze, like Nabokov's insects... ^^' ). Though, recently I've rather neglected this realm - I've been engulfed by so much fiction that it all turned out... thus.

Anyway, any English read appears a (tasty) piece of cake, collated with writings in other tounges. At least to such suckers like me. I do not know why but it's tougher to find nice stuff that you will manage. (Which is also a problem because what good's a book you don't understand?) Maybe because of the popularity of novels in English? If I ask somebody what book they're reading, they're sorta likely to come up with some American/English piece.

Finding something to listen to can also be an obstacle. And how is one to talk if one isn't environed by the melody, the accent, the words, the expressions? Well, laugh me off but I do not manage talking without being accustomed.

And... if you've ever attempted to learn a language whose letters are not identical with your native one's (I mean the Cyrillic alphabet for instance, given you're accustomed to the Latin one), then how do you get to memorize them?

(Sorry about boring you to death but if you've made it to this line... you can as well reply in this thread ^^')