What should I do now?
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My rating is a little lower (around 1200), and sadly it seems to be staying there. I also need help, and will be watching this thread in hopes that someone will reply.
The 'Winning Chess' series by Yasser Seirawan & Jeremy Silman is very highly regarded.
To be honest I haven't read the first book ('Play Winning Chess', from memory), but I believe it is pitched at the first chess book level. There are 4 more key books in that series (Tactics, Strategy, Openings and Endings) and 2 others that maybe are a little more preipheral. The series is available from Amazon for a good price.
I actually started out with 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess' and for an all in one book, it's quite good (certainly better than the title suggests!). It also has the advantage of having enough diagrams that you can follow pretty much all examples in your head. This is not the case with the Seirawan series (the first book may well be different in that respect).
One last point. Don't undervalue the ratings the two of you have achieved. The median adult, club player rating is around 1400. These are experienced players who take their chess seriously enough to join a club and half of them are sub-1400. If you can pick up an additional 200 points in the next year, you should be very happy!
I've been playing chess on occasion for a couple years now and on chess.com for a couple months. My rating currently fluctuates around in the 1300s range. I've never formally studied chess or done any training programs outside of the tactics trainer on this website. I've noticed that I haven't been improving rating-wise overall. So should I consider buying a chess book or something of that sort? If so, what are some good ones for my level?