Does anyone use books anymore?

Browsing through the site the past few days, for hours on end actually. I sat staring at article-after-article until I didn’t realize the time.

I started reading an article on Mr Fischer and a line caught my eye, “even if you own all of Fischer’s games already on a database you need to get this.” (Paraphrase). Now, I don’t know about anyone else here, but I love books, and I love studying by books.

While there is so much information out there on the web that one can be consumed and lost in the world of chess, there are still books being published. So I’m just curious, do you still study by books? Or do you only use computer databases?

Look forward to hearing your responses,

Joseph

Between the printed classics, the new chess publications, the chess videos, Fritztrainers, databases, engines, and interactive chess books - online or offline, free or paid, there is indeed more than a single person can use, absorb and learn from compared to 20 years ago! Choose one and try it out. Having the freedom of choice is something I will never complain about. If the material doesn't suit you, drop it and pick another one. 

For any player who aspires to become much stronger, the most important educational element will always be a good chess coach in my opinion.

I don't read a lot of books in general. The first chess book I ever read was the PDF version of Bobby Fischer Teaches chess in 2017. It was nice because I could read it from my phone at lunch. I don't have to carry a book around.

However, I prefer not to be so connected all of the time. I prefer physical books and chess sets for this reason. Even though I read it already, I bought the actual Bobby Fischer Teaches chess book recently. Now I am now reading a hard copy of Discovering Chess Openings by John Emms. I go through the examples on my physical board. 

I am pretty sure online is the way to go. It is probably the rule and the way I do it is probably the exception now.

I consider chess books as reference material rather than novels that should be read from cover to cover. This is especially true with opening treaties. I would prefer to never have to pay for my own books, but public libraries don’t stock up on all the good classics and modern publications and some of the better books never get returned.  Nowadays libraries are closed anyway, so if you needed a particular chess book, you’d have to pay for it to be shipped to you.

There’s no getting around drill books. Each tactics or endgame problem has to be solved with the clock as the barometer for how well you know your stuff. Fortunately services such as chessable.com and chessking.com are around to provide interactive chess puzzles from reputable published English and Russian chess books. Chess.com also has a drills section but I’m unsure where they’re from. I believe that interactive chess books are the best way to do drills. It’s like having your own chess coach!

Denverhigh here once sold off a bunch of his chess library on chess.com. Now he only has less than 500 books in his collection. Poor guy....