How many chess books do you have?

I used to have 132 books. I gavet 104 away here a lot of them were in discriptive notation.

Here is the list of the books I gave away.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/this-is-the-list-of-book-im-giving-free-to-the-member-that-paid-the-freight

I only kept a few and now I only have 10.

I like to do research before buying a book.  But here's a list of must haves in no particular order:

1. Dvoretsky's School of Chess Excellence volumes
2. Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual
3. Karpov's Best Games by Karpov
4. Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games
5. Smyslov's 2 volume set
6. Botvinnik's first two volumes (third optional, first two still have plenty of Botvinnik games)
7. Zurich 1953 by Najdorf (beware some atrocious typos in notation)
8. Alekhine's Best Games (Russell Enterprises version)
9. Aagard's GM Prep series
10. Secrets of Pawn Endings
11. Fundamental Chess Endings
12. Endgame Strategy
13. Secrets of Chess Endgame Strategy
14. How to Play Chess Endgames
15. Dynamic Pawn Play
16. Pawn Structure Chess
17. New Art of Defence in Chess
18. Practical Chess Defence
19. How to Defend in Chess
20. Art of Attack in Chess
21. My System
22. Chess Praxis
23. Soviet Middlegame Technique
24. Questions of Modern Chess Theory
25. Masters of the Chessboard
26. Modern Ideas in Chess
27. San Luis 2005
28. Nunn's Chess Endings 3 volume set (Understanding Chess Endings then volume 1 and 2)

Averbakh's 5 volume set (especially queen endings and minor piece ending volumes because most specific piece ending books focus on either rook endings or pawn endings) is great to set up positions in a computer to draw or defeat it from. 

1. My System
2. Chess Praxis
3. Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual
4. My 60 Memorable Games
5. Art of Attack
6. Pawn Structure Chess
7. Pawn Power
8. rethinking the chess pieces
9. Secrets of Rook Endings
10. MCO-15

3 that I won back in the 70's. I chose them as they had knights on the covers. I have yet to read them. perhaps I will pass them on to my daughters .....

Shocking.

Which books did you find you could not part with?

Good advice, I'll have to consider this.

I own ~10 chess books.  I'd like more but I'm a poor bastard.  

500-ish.  

26

I have 2. A lot of the times I don't even play through the moves on a board. I just read it until I forget where the pieces are on the board.

if I had to have only one book, then this is the one I have. It is by LEV ALBURT

It cover all phases from beginner to Expert. I been trying to play if over a year.

I have 0.

I have 75-80. And I have read content of all. Never had enough courage to study after that page.

how many chess books should one have to achieve a 1700 rating?

0.

It depends on what your current rating is and if you only use books or other ways of studying.

Robert0905 you ony need one if you find the one that works for you. Rating points are not about chess knowledge they are a reflection of chess skill, which covers a area much broader than chess knowlege. Learning to think first is most important than learning tons of knowledge. Check out Simlman's "The Amateur's Mind" or "How to Reasses Your Chess"  or Dan Heisman's "A Guide to Chess Improvement: The Best Of Novice Nook" these will give you a good grounding in improving you thinking skills first before you head off on the infinite road of chess knowledge. Good Luck, Kirk

Assuming one is brand new to chess at least seven.  You need a beginner book, such as Logical Chess Move by Move, a general book on endgames, a game collection book, a book on pawn endings and one on rook endings. Also one on strategic endgames and of course My System.

You'll be doing tactics with software such as CT-ART or similar.