Best book for general improvement from 1200-1400

I'm reading Amateur's Mind at the moment and recommend it. Suitable for that rating range. You can preview it on Amazon. Second edition has extra material. It covers planning, strategy and evaluating positions. Not really tactics or openings but there is overlap of course.

Fischer's 60 Memorable Games: Fischer gives good analysis, and the games show a lot of nice ideas. It also gives you a lot of ideas for an opening repertoire which you can use later on. 

(1.e4, Najdorf, Kings Indian) 

Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

Although the book's title says "Primer", that is an unfortunate description on the part of the publisher.  It may be a primer for someone rated 2000, but it is too advanced for someone rated below 1500.

I have both books and familiar with them both.  I am rated chess.com 1800+ in Daily chess, and find Maizelis's book challenging.  The book starts off easy enough, but quickly gets very challenging for lower rated players.  The OP is rated 1100+ in Daily chess; I would suspect that (s)he would find it even more challenging.  Having said that, if you like it and find it helpful, then by all means go for it.   

And Romanovsky's middlegame book is even more challenging.

The term "advanced beginner" is an oxymoron.  More appropriate is "novice"!

I tried reading that book, got nothing out of it.

fortnite ultimate guide

Now that I can agree with!

by the way - both books you've mentioned are in my list.  They are both very good....but more appropriate for experienced players, rated > 1500.

@NilsIngemar Maybe its pitched at a higher rating but I'm 1400 (currently a bit overrated) and got a lot out of it on planning and strategy. Did you mean that you new it all already, didn't understand it, or didn't like the book?

It is true. I have been in our moscow city library...and I did surch over there for a good russian or soviet textbook suitable for my chess level... ( All they were too complex.

Authors of books... as if they wanted to show us as Chess game is difficult thing... Not teach us someting.

The same... unbelievable difficult were lessons of the Chess school which soviet tv broadcasted in those long ago times. (

They tought us that we should calculate all possible variants of the posion on the board... for 5 moves ahead !  I think that even National Masters can't do it... but they required that from us... soviet children... Is it not absurd.. the such style of teaching ?

Llama, an advanced beginner is a kind of nonsense.

Sometimes I have 1500 points raiting but believe me... I understant that I am only a beginner... Many moves of you... of men with rating 2000+... l simply can't understand.

My dream is to become 1800 at least. ) Not more.

attacking chess by whoever that american prodigy IM is

I hope that if I become 1800 though... if it  really happens in not too far future.... than l'll start to understand the games of Chess Masters at last.

And so I will be enjoing Chess game more.

Yeah I am clueless about plans  and that book did nothing to help.

I got a lot out of Silman's end game book.

The problem for many beginner-novice players is that they act on a book recommendation from another person, buying the book on faith that it will be useful, only to subsequently find out that the book is not helpful or too difficult for them, typically because the reader is not sufficiently prepared for the level at which the material in the book is presented.  As an analogy, the reader is attempting to read a book on algebra, when (s)he has not yet mastered arithmetic. 

The point is that even though one person may find a particular book useful, another, less knowledgeable or experienced player may find that same book to be over their head.  Just like school subjects, one has to prepare oneself for the level of material which you are about to learn.

In the blog article below, I've made an attempt to recommend books in a specific order such that the earlier recommendations serve as preparation, prerequisites, for the later recommended books.  You will notice that both Silman's The Amateur's Mind and How To Reassess Your Chess appear further down in their respective lists.  One can expect to experience difficulty with either of these books without first having learned or at least been exposed to the material in the books recommended earlier in the list.  Learn to walk before attempting to run!

Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy