Favorite Non-instructional Books?

Was in town today with some time to kill so stopped by a favorite used book store as usual starting in the chess section (its at the far end of the store so just makes sense) and was pleased to see it had grown by several books since the last time there.  A couple of them might be of interest to followers of this thread and the "enjoyment" thread (will post a link to this thread there when done).  

Chess: a Celebration of 2000 Years by Roswin Finkenzeller, Wilhelm Ziehr and Emil Buhrer is a lovely 12x9.75 work which seems to cover a little bit of everything yet with emphasis on history, well, there is a fair amount of prose but this is a picture book and it has some really wonderful photographs (some full page) of fine art involving chess, chess pieces and boards, players and other things such as "illuminated manuscripts and other ancient documents."

Not quite sure what to make of the other one I nabbed, The Complete Book of Chess by I.A Horowitz and P.L Rothenburg, it seems to have a bit of everything, puzzles, games, history, electronic chess machines, stories of the great players, plus hundreds of "other pointers and insights into the game that will enthrall and delight..."   nice, but what piqued my interest (there in the store) was that it has chapters on chess literature and one particularly (ch 12) on the "Lighter Side of Chess: humor | memory | joshing | gibing and jargon in the chess clubs | classical tales."

Don't remember seeing either of these books in this thread or the other one.

This odd but interesting knight is from the first book (my photograph of it didn't come out so great I'm afraid) and is 18th century Russian turned from bone.   Doesn't it look more like a dog?   

Yeah, it has a rather whippety look.