Complete Book of Chess Strategy by Jeremy Silman
Strategy books
"My Best Games" by Anatoly Karpov
Playing through the games of Karpov is an excellent way to learn about chess strategy and how to turn an advantage into a win.
Nimzowitsch's My System is obviously a classic. I do like Neil McDonald's Giants of Strategy because he touches on some topics that are not covered so well elsewhere such as pawn breaks. I like Marovic as well, especially his Secrets of Chess Transformations. Alfonso Romero's Creative Chess Strategy is another interesting book. John Nunn's Understanding Chess Middlegames has not been released yet, but it has been generating a fair bit of buzz, and should be good.
Ty everyone for all the suggestions, lol there are too many books suggested Idunno what to get! And streetfighter good points and I love attacking and tactics but the reason I want to get a strategy book is so I find it easier to get into positions to attack.
Refining search for strategic books:
Are there any good, simple strategy books for beginners?
Michael Stean and John Emms have both written books called Simple Chess which are aimed at fairly new players. Of the books I mentioned above, Neil McDonald's Giants of Strategy is probably the easiest one.
Maneuvering into a position where you can launch an attack is a fairly specialized skill, which not a lot of books cover. Alexander Kotov wrote a good chapter on the strategy of attack for his book The Art of the Middlegame (co-written with Paul Keres). Vukovic's The Art of Attack in Chess is also probably useful on this topic.
I'm not "really" new. I have known how to play for quite a while but only started playing properly in the last 6 months
I mentioned Michael Stean, John Emms and Neil McDonald because even when they write books for beginners, they don't try to dumb down the material, but instead they explain fairly advanced concepts clearly and simply. I suspect that you might enjoy their books.
Chess for Tigers by Simon Webb - Its quite a good book. I have it & it can teach you a lot plus it is a lot of fun with its drawing.
But seriously you need to learn tactics. For that I recommend Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. There you get some basic but solid information which in my opinion should be useful to you.
You can do unlimited tactics atchesstempo.com. Finally study end games. That helps a lot. Believe me.
One of the books which i think helped me most was Silman's reassess your chess.
There are two other books, which don't give you a silver bullet, but which provide some great ideas (albeit ones which require work and dedication) are: Tisdal's improve your chess now and Rowson's Chess for Zebras.
The other point i would make is to listen to Streetfighter
@rigamagician - um, not sure whether i agree or disagree.
There are advanced ideas in both books, but there are also ideas and suggestions that can be applied at the 1800 level. There are also some pretty basics bits in them too.
I know I just made a thread about books but I forgot to ask for good strategy books? I heard that these ones are supposed to be quite good:
Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur by Euwe
My System by Nimzowitsch
Understanding Pawn Play in Chess by Marovic
Understanding Chess Move by Move by Nunn
Capablanca's Best Games by Golombek
Tal-Botvinnik 1960 by Tal
So has anyone read any of them and if so, can you post a bit about each of them because I have got no idea whether any of them are good or not. If you have read another good strategy chess book which isn't up there, if you could reccommend it, that would be great :) Also I would like to buy a sicilian dragon book that is not all memorizing lines, instead I'd like one that looks at the theory behind the variations.
Any reccommendations would be great :)