Believe me. I tried. I really, really tried. I love books. Before 18 months you'll be hard pressed to get any sort of attention for any extended period of time. The book is more something to chew on at that early age (and the contrast toys are really, in all fairness, also a waste of time and money since they grow out of that so, so fast).

The first books that got a reaction were books in the Eric Carle series - the Very Hungry Caterpillar, the "bear" series (Brown Bear, Polar Bear, Panda Bear, Baby Bear - but be sure to cut out the adjectives: instead of "whooping crane" you should start with just "crane" and then add in the adjectives well after age 2), etc.

Simple Dr. Seuss books work as well - at 2 our daughter loved The Cat in the Hat, the Cat in the Hat Comes Back and One Fish, Two Fish. Anything beyond that is a waste - it is still hard to get her to sit through Horton Hatches the Egg but she's getting better.

Before 18 months you're best off with the simple books that just have a picture and a word - we had one called "Baby Animals" where it said "The Cat" and you open the flap and it says "The Cat Drinks Milk". All we got from our daughter was "Kisa moloko" (which is "cat milk" in Russian), and the "l" was tending towards "w" (one more reason why Polish people sound like they have speech defects - they do that into adulthood).

Elmo counting books worked well, too, starting at about 2-2.5 years.

I'll skip the Russian books but they were generally the same sorts of books as the US ones (barnyard animals, simple stories with lots of repetition, etc.).

It really is a geometric progression - you should have extremely low expectations early on and watch everything explode after two, and REALLY explode after 3. Our daughter now even makes fun of the way my mom tries to speak Russian (without malice, and spot-on no less) and has a rich vocabulary in both languages, and also knows simple phrases in French (though if we ask her to demonstrate her French by asking something in French in front of other people, she just says "I can't hear you" and smiles).