At a recent tourney that we entered, I spotted a friend at the bookstall, looking at a book we have at home.  "It's a really good book that," I said, "you should get it."  "Are there any books here you haven't got?" he replied.  "It doesn't matter which book I pick up, you've always got it and can tell me all about it." 

That made me think I could do a weekly book review on the website from some of our books at home.  Hope people find it helpful.

Paul.

I like Silman’s writings. He guides you through a series of lessons looking at different aspects of the game to help the reader develop their own skills. The different chapters include calculation, spotting the ‘imbalances’ in a position to help you decide on the correct plan, understanding knights and bishops, which is best and when. Looking at space and why it gives you the advantage, weak squares, and much much more. I’m sure anyone who is prepared to put in the time and effort to read/study through this book would benefit.

The basic idea in the ‘It’s Your Move’ books is to show you a diagram of a chess position or puzzle. Then follows 5 different explanations from a team of 5 imaginary players. Your task is to decide who has got the most plausible idea of how to proceed in the position.

Two dozen of Bobby Fischer's greatest games written down in nice big print with commentary.  This book is brilliant from game 1, which was his match against Donald Byrne that became known as the Game of the Century.  Fischer was just 13 when he played this match and if you've never played through it then you've missed out.  Fischer was awesome, a true magician with the pieces.  I would definitely recommend this book for that game alone.

I liked this book; it was a good read.  The author attempts to examine the way a grandmaster thinks about a chess problem, compaired with how an average player might approach the same problem.  For this experiment the author has 8 chess playing assistants of varying abilities, ranging from club player level to grandmaster strength, and also Fritz 8.  What each participant is asked to do is study a chess problem for a certain amount of time whilst recording their thoughts into a microphone.  The good thing about the book is that you can also study the problem and make a note of your own thoughts before then reading what the different players thought; so you really can compare your own thinking to that of a GM.

John Nunn is a highly thought of chess writer and he has selected some great games in this book to explain the basics of different openings and defences.  As you play through each game he explains the moves and the ideas behind the opening.  The book covers all the main openings and defences, and by playing through the games, and reading John's explanations, you can get a good feel for whichever system you're looking at.  A good book and well worth having on your shelf. 

Don’t waste your money on this one! Apart from some tactics pages, which are ok, this book could have been produced as a leaflet. If someone had given me a piece of paper that had written on it, “study tactics, tactics, tactics”, I’d have got as much out of that as I did from this book. The author spends a lot of time advising you how to do his tactics study plan, which is basically this: get 1000 tactical problems and study through them all in 64 days. Then go through them all again in 32 days. Then again in 16 days, then 8 days, 4 days, 2 days and yes 1000 problems in 1 day. I’m sure if you did that it would benefit you but it’s totally impractical. If you only spent 30 second on a problem for example then that’s 500 minutes. Besides, de la Maza (the author) spends a whole book explaining what I’ve just told you he says in one paragraph.   If anyone still wants to buy his book then you can buy mine off me at a much reduced price.

 I think this is an excellent tactics book. It teaches all the basic ideas such as the fork, pin, and discovered attack, and then goes on to tougher combinational problems. One to read through again and again.

 A good book for someone who might not have been playing for very long; if that’s you then this book will help you improve. It covers all sorts of ‘things’ from basic mates to pawn structure to tactics and combinations to endgame principles (the opposition, triangulation, zugzwang). There is quite a lot in the book. Even if you have been playing for years you may still pick up a few tips.