What shall we discover in the library of chess culture?

Well, I've decided to change tracks.

I still love playing chess, and will do it any way I can, but I've decided to try and combine it with my greatest love of all time, stories.

As a writing student (and film, but that's not the point), I love stories. That's it, plain and simple. I like books, and in the Aberystwyth University Chess Club I'm sometimes referred to as 'The Librarian'. I would have changed my username to that from my original KingGolem, but someone beat me to the punch.

That being said, it's now my aim to try and write and examine everything I can about the culture of chess. I want to look at and review the textbooks, yes, but also the films and the novels and the plays and the poems and the news articles and the general history of chess. How is a game of sixty-four squares and thirty-two game pieces the human symbol for intelligence, for cunning, for the ultimate struggle of everything humans stand for?

That's my aim with this blog, and hopefully with other things as well. That's my new aim. I hope some of you will enjoy it as much as I will. Chess is fascinating as a game, but what does it mean for us, as human society? How far does a checkmate really, REALLY, influence the world?

-Kieran Judge, TheBookSmuggler

(image - front of The National Library of Wales. No copyright infringement intended, just set dressing.)