It has taken me almost a year to get through this book and to learn the Devanagari script. I have written in the book and highlighted words to get to know the language little by little. Thanks to this book I have made some progress in learning Sanskrit, but I still have a long way to go!
Just beginning -- it's fun :O) buuut, not entirely reader-friendly, for an american speaker. The shop people say it's mostly for speakers from the various Indian regions. I trust that they are enjoying the book, with greater ease. Still, while I may add a zero, after the '30' -- as in 'Learn Sanskrit in 300 Days', or maybe I'll skip the '3' digit entirely, haha, a dbl zero days..right now, on day number 2, this is for fun. The pronunciations are not clear, to an english speaker: For example, words that end with an "h" are actually ended with the sounds of 'ha'. There are various degrees of hard and soft sounds, when voicing the 'g' and also the 'k' sounds...this might work very well, as a CD or cassette set, much easier to be accurate, instead of embarasssing (with a do-able '30 days').
This was my introductory book to Sanskritam, thus it has a very special place in my heart.
The book teaches you Devanāgarī, basic sentences, the eight cases, some nouns with their corresponding table of declinations. However, it doesn't teach you Sandhi. And that sets you back.
It is a great book if you want a quick overview to what you will be learning in a Sanskrit course. But if your goal is learning the wonderful language, you do have to rely on other courses.
Better than the other two 30-Days books. It's larger, the transcription is more official and there are more charts and sufficient explanation for those as well... so it's not that bad. But don't think you could learn Sanskrit in 30 days! ;)