A book I read back in the '70s - a couple of times - by the Russian Nicolai Krogius, I forget the exact title (help!) - something like "Chess Psychology."
Chapters on the psychology of blunders, playing in time trouble, playing in your opponent's time trouble, etc. etc. Very informative and I found it very entertaining as well.
For a fun book I would recommend "creativity in chess" [might not be the exact title ] by Avni. He discusses moves that contradict common sense/normal ideas. For instance he shows positions where the right moves looks optically like a wild rook pawn advance, or a move that produces a positional weakness or traps one of your own pieces and so on. One of the most original books I have ever seen.
. . . This thread reminds me that I've had it in mind for years now to read Frances Parkinson Keyes, "The Chessplayers." Now maybe I'll get to it! Is it on anyone's list of favorites?
A book I read back in the '70s - a couple of times - by the Russian Nicolai Krogius, I forget the exact title (help!) - something like "Chess Psychology."
I used to have it myself...
. . . This thread reminds me that I've had it in mind for years now to read Frances Parkinson Keyes, "The Chessplayers." Now maybe I'll get to it! Is it on anyone's list of favorites?
It looked awfully long to me (if I'm remembering right).
I thought "The Queens Gambit" was a good chess novel.
I read this earlier this year. It's a good story. Some of the chess play is fuzzy, but I did end up caring about the central character in her rise from poverty to the world's chess elite.
Thought The Queen's Gambit was too boring to finish.
Am currently reading Endgame, written about Bobby Fischer shortly after his demise. So far am enjoying it.
I have read several books which are about the history of the world championship which i found very interesting (sorry i don't recall their titles).I also read both of Brady's books about Fischer which were good.
. . . This thread reminds me that I've had it in mind for years now to read Frances Parkinson Keyes, "The Chessplayers." Now maybe I'll get to it! Is it on anyone's list of favorites?
It looked awfully long to me (if I'm remembering right).
Well, I just finished it. It is over-long, but the last few chapters (Morphy in Paris during the Civil War as a 'sort-of' spy) are really good. Very well-researched. Bottom line? A pretty dull read - until those last few chapters.
These two were fairly fun reads.
Ree has a gift for storytelling.
I think Lawson's "Endgame" about Short's preparation for his match against Kasparov was extremely interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/End-Game-Kasparov-vs-Short/dp/0517598108/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349959549&sr=1-1&keywords=endgame+lawson
This is in addition to post nr 41 : the book is named " Velemajstor Gligoric " and is written by Cicek and Ivkov in 1973. It is a biography of Gligoric, originally in the Croatian language, but perhaps translated ? It has 64 annotated games. At that time he was only 50 years of age, and apparently that was the reason to write it...
Hot off the press! The Queen of Katwe. A true story written by sports journalist Tim Crothers. A 16 year old Ugandan Phiona starts playing chess at (I think)11 and has developed grandmaster skills and has a future playing chess at a professional level - all grown out the worst slums in the worst parts of the country. I ordered from Amazon after reading the review. This sounds amazing and inspiring. I thought if she can be that good at 16 from her environment I should be much better than I am in my game.
Grandmasters of Chess by Harold Schonberg
Confessions of Chess Grandmaster by Andy Soltis
The Great Chess Tournaments and Their Stories by Andy Soltis
Los Voraces, 2019 by Andy Soltis
The Dragon Variation by Anthony Glyn
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
The short stories "Last Round", "Slippery Elm", "Professor Powenall's Oversight"
Along the same line as post 23, read Diary of a Chess Queen by Alexandra Kosteniuk while killing time at a local Borders. Interesting story and enjoyable reading. Something about Kosteniuk's sincerity, passion and empathy I find encouraging, even inspiring. Given the chance, will read it again somewhere down the road and go over the games.
A book writen by Patrick Wolff-Chess For Idiots=Patrick is one tjme US champion-At all book stores about 30.00 US