Even though Skritter.com is (IMO) the best tool to learn fast and efficiently Chinese characters (their system is just magical with something like 95% retention rate) it's not enough. Not enough because it's (for now) only a "one way" learning, that is from the pinyin/definition to the character, if you know how to write a character from pinyin doesn't mean you can read the character alone, you need to train for that too.

As I don't have time yet to go to school (February hopefully) I train myself to read and pronounce almost every character I see in the street, but that's not enough as well. Not enough because even though you can read "李記滷味", it won't help you much in your daily life. Therefore, I decide to start reading something that wouldn't be too hard to begin with, with a story I already like and know very well : Dragon Ball

I was a huge Dragon Ball fan when I was a kid (I still have 400 or so episodes archived in a BD-R somewhere) and I always wanted to read the comic version. It looks like silly, but it actually helps me quite a lot, even tough it's quite long (I need almost one week to fully finish one).