Have you ever tried learning a new language...

So US still wait until middle school to teach kids a foreign language???? Wtf. Or is this just an Illinois thing? So dumb.

The reverse makes more sense: you read so that you can train and understand the language. Then it becomes a loop between learning and reading. Books are not such a bad choice - handy, self-sufficient - if you don't have people available to torture with your slow monstrous sentences.
Russian and Japanese seem daunting / near-impossible though - you'd need additional motivation than just being able to read Tolstoi in the original.