Which books should I read?

mandy, how long did it take you finish 80% of this book. i am just starting.

I spent about 4 hours. I'm not playing in tournaments anymore so it's more like casual reading.

If you're not looking very deep into the variations and moves presented what's the point of reading these books? Maybe you should read them using chess software and play the lines out more deeply since the software will conveniently "write" everything down for you and save it for you as well (but you'll still have to enter the initial positions if you're not working with complete games - unless you can find the games in DBs)

I'm also wondering what you're getting out of these dense, complex books if you find drawn games disappointing, which sounds like an inane distraction to me (and pls don't take any of this personally!) Kotov is trying to get his readers to actually do what the titles of his books say ie "Play" "Train" and "Think Like a GM"  not "like" or "dislike" draws, wins or loses because they're "disappointing" (to you).

If you  haven't read "My System" and "Chess Praxis" by Nimzovitch maybe you should read them first and then come back to Kotov, who is probably more appropriate for  Class-A players and Candidate Masters - IMHO. AND/OR as a Diamond member maybe you should consider training with the chess mentor, videos and/or TT as an alternative to Kotov for awhile, or for when you get tired of reading him - which is easy to do, reading his books calls for a lot of work!

my 60 memorable games by bobby fisher! and also doboreski's books on endgames are good