Strategy books, which order?

I got Vol.3, not read it, yet

There is no melodrama in trying to find the correct books to study.Anyone who has study chess knows that.

    The 3 Pachman's books and the Keres book is an excellent starting point(ideal I could say).We are talking about 2 of the best theoreticians/teachers and top players of their time.After them OP will be able to judge for himself which is good and which is bad.

     I will agree that Sill man's endgame book is surprisingly good and probably his only book deserve to be read from his wide(and wild) collection.

One of the many foolish mistakes in my chess journey through the years was not to seek out advice from a strong player(s) as to what I should read. I foolishly and wholeheartedly delved into many chess books which did very little to improve my knowledge and understanding of the game.

After hundreds of wasted hours studying well intentioned crap chess books I finally stumbled upon Jeremy Silman's Amateur's Mind and his book Reassess Your Chess. These books filled in gaps I didn't know I had and finally explained  questions I had for many years but couldn't find anyone or any book to explain to me in a way I needed.

Another book over the years that still remains one of my favorites is 300 Most Important Positions by Lev Alburt.

Sillman filled your gaps?What did you read all these years?

If you need Sillman to fill your gaps , you certainly did something very very very wrong.

Even though our original poster said we weren't supposed to mention RYC... for my own education, I would like to know why the higher rated players in this thread do not have a high regard for Silman's books.  (My feelings are more in line with EnterTheDragon's.)

Aren't the positions and ideas presented in book primarily tactical?

Another good book along the lines of Lev alberts (and better in some respects) is Practical chess Exercises by Ray Cheng

It is a mix of positional, tactical, defensive tactics

Do a comparison yourself.Pachman's books are simply written and easy to understand and he uses the best examples for every topic.Sillman deals superficially with most of his topics(Backward pawn , only 2 examples , not even good ones),he uses mostly his games(he has around 50 in the book while at the same time Tal's  or Botvinik's games are less than 5!!!) because obviously it's the easy solution(searching for the best examples needs lots of time, why not use yours?) , and a lot of important things are missing(where is Minority attack in a 650 pages book?).

     If you can't do the serious study Pachman's books demand then Sillman is perfect.For all the others is not.

p.s.BTW , his expressions are really hilarious.

"Initiative is a physical manifestation of a psychological battle"

This definition of the initiative still makes me laugh a lot. 

Good input @Michael-G.  For me, Silman's books provided the "glue" to help me put the pieces together.  While his specific examples may not be the highest quality, as an amateur I found the text that goes with them to be useful.  The one characteristic of his writings I do not like is that he sometimes uses language to belittle players or moves they make -- his tone could be more constructive and less demeaning.  This could be a function of his style or sense of humor not translating well to the written word.  On the other hand, I have corresponded with him a few times and he was very cordial.

I have Reassess Your Chess, any comments about this one?  "Winning Chess" by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld.

It is "OK" just a tatics book really

What I find excellent is Artur Yusupov's Level 1 series of training books (3 volumes) at Quality chess. Superbly written, easy to follow, but very demanding: One has to follow EXACTLY the instructions given by the author to get something out of them. If you approach them the lazy way, then they will be next to useless for you. Aimed for players up to 1500 FIDE, although some exercises may prove hard even for strong players which are not familiar with the Russian School's systematical way of thinking and analysing.

My System - Nimzovich

Chess Praxis -- Nimzovich (after My System)

My Best Games of Chess -- Alekhine

Think LIke A Grandmaster -- Kotov

That sounds like the Russian way of thinking is better than USA's way.  Am I right?  pfren, I'll take look at the volumes.

Nooo. Not quite. You have so many strong American players there:

Kamsky, Onischuk, Akobian, Kaidanov, Ehlvest, Shulman, Gurevich, Stripunsky, Novikov, Goldin...

You don't need the Russian chess school crap.

that is cute way of defining crap

that I do

OK, got it. 

Thanks for all the great advice, really pleased such strong players are around to advice me :)

ok so I'm going to get at least;

The 3 pachman strategy volumes

The Practical Chess endings keres book

Shereshevsky's "Endgame Stategy"

Yusupov 3 fundamental books

ok another question which order should I read these in?

i'm guessing Yusupov books then pachman books first?

thanks

Jon