Got a couple of books missing. NOt many chess books but several cartoon and psychology books. 
What's On Your Bookshelf?
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I have no chess book. Shameful.
Borges!
Apparently the Argentinian writer liked chess, and wrote a poem about it...
http://www.alinalami.com/2011/09/jan-timman-and-jose-luis-borges.html
God moves the player, and he, the piece.
Which god behind God begets the plot
Of dust and time and dream and agonies?
OH WOW I forgot all about that one. Thanks
You can't tell from the pic, but that book is well worn.
Mar 5, 2015
0
#66
That book is also his Collected Fictions. I really like it. The poem is in another volume.
Jared Diamond is well-worn, too. Do you have Collapse?
Part of one of my shelves without chess books (Selected Non-Fictions sat in the bathroom for two years where I read it cover to cover):
Mar 5, 2015
0
#67
Encyclopedia of Chess Combinations, 5th edition was just delivered a few minutes ago. It joins a handful of other books on tactics.
None of my books have anything to do with chess. I couldn't imagine myself reading an entire book dedicated to chess.
Ziryab wrote:
Jared Diamond is well-worn, too. Do you have Collapse?
I don't have it, but I've read it. It's a good scary read.
Mar 5, 2015
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#70
Really? You thought so?
Diamond's books are all superficial despite the airs of erudition he presents. If you read carefully what he writes, and pay close attention to the footnotes, you will see that he veers between repeating information that is already known and drastically overstating his own case. And yet, he writes as if he is the one discovering these trends.
What Diamond did was popularize a thesis that was already well established in academic circles. He deserves credit for that, but his work wasn't nearly as groundbreaking as he or his followers would have us believe.
Mar 5, 2015
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#71
There's always more money in popularizing than in discovering. Credit for discovery often goes to the Johnny Come Lately who popularized another's discoveries.
I've read GG&S no less than 5 times( sometimes just in parts). And I don't recall him ever claiming anything was his own ideas other than the things he experienced himself.
His books are not meant to expand or add to academic knowledge. They are meant to present what is known in a way that people unfamiliar with the topics can consume.
If you look at it this way, it seems more appropriate and useful.
As for Collapse; unlike GG&S, which was meant to help explain the course of human history, Collapse seems more like a message rathern than an explination and may be a little more like what Smyslov is saying.
Mar 5, 2015
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#73
I've read GG&S once, and have but have not read Collapse. I'm pretty well versed in the scholarly literature that GG&S popularizes, and yet find that Diamond's organization is useful. Similarly with Charles C. Mann's 1492 and 1493.
That compelling, readable books are superficial goes without saying.
I always read footnotes. If you read my history blog, you'll think that's practically my major focus.
I managed to find those Borges volumes in hardback, remaindered at Moe's in Berkeley for a decent price. I had been reading him since the seventies.
Ziryab: Did you catch the Borges references in "Performance"?
I read GG&S twice and was impressed.
But reading interviews with Diamond since and excerpts from "Collapse" as well as following the Easter Island debates, I've concluded he is just selling the usual academic party line on our environmentalist sins.
Ziryab wrote:
Encyclopedia of Chess Combinations, 5th edition was just delivered a few minutes ago. It joins a handful of other books on tactics.
Have you had a chance to look at it yet? How do you rate it?
What would interest me (in addition to the value as training tool) is the attempt to classify the tactical patterns and themes - the different "sorts" of tactics and their interrelationships. Calling a book an encyclopedia implies a degree of classification. However, I don't know how far people can go in that venture, or how far it is possible to go. Maybe it ends up like Borges' Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge...
"a. those that belong to the Emperor,
b. embalmed ones,
c. those that are trained,
d. suckling pigs,
e. mermaids,
f. fabulous ones,
g. stray dogs,
h. those included in the present classification,
i. those that tremble as if they were mad,
j. innumerable ones,
k. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
l. others,
m. those that have just broken a flower vase,
n. those that from a long way off look like flies."
Mar 6, 2015
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#77
fburton wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
Encyclopedia of Chess Combinations, 5th edition was just delivered a few minutes ago. It joins a handful of other books on tactics.
Have you had a chance to look at it yet? How do you rate it?
I wrote a few brief comments this morning: http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2015/03/sacrifice-everything.html
One of the links in that article says a little more about the classification scheme in the 3rd edition.
Naturally, no one classifies the world as well as Borges, but Sahovski Informator comes close.
Nice one. Thanks!
I found a couple other chess steals there, including a collection of all the world championship games for $2 that was erroneously put in the "cheese" section!
Bet you felt life is gouda when you found that!