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Ziryab

I’m currently reading somewhat quickly Thomas Engqvist, 300 Most Important Chess Positions (2018). I’m jumping back and forth from the middle to the beginning, studying five positions every day. I started with endgames, then moved to openings at the beginning of the book.

Engqvist is driving me into other books on my shelf, too. Yesterday, I read part of Mark Taimanov, The Taimanov Sicilian. Today, How to Play the English Opening by Anatoly Karpov came off the shelf.

This photo has nothing to do with this post, although I did finish On the Road last night.

KMKorsmo

I would have thought you'd have read On the Road 30+ years ago! I never did read that one.

Ziryab
KMKorsmo wrote:

I would have thought you'd have read On the Road 30+ years ago! I never did read that one.

I have a stack of books to read that everyone else read decades ago. Started 1984 half an hour ago. Have Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test on deck, as well as Herman Melville, The Confidence Man which I mostly did read thirty years ago.

Ozzr

Just reread Graham Greene's "The Comedians" and "The Third Man" and The "Tenth Man" . . . am currently working on Upton Sinclair - "The Jungle" which I read halfway through a few decades ago. Working on GM-RAM (still) which you suggested. Also randomly revisiting some Shakespeare. Read On The Road and Dharma Bums decades ago and reread them both a couple of years ago.

Lyudmil_Tsvetkov

Chess and Orwell, nice combination.

Because we are already in 1983.

Lyudmil_Tsvetkov

Look good on the shelf, but weigh too much.

I would prefer ebooks.

Nice collection, though.

shadowtanuki

Morphy's Games of Chess

Ziryab
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:

Look good on the shelf, but weigh too much.

I would prefer ebooks.

Nice collection, though.

Of the 41 books that I finished in 2024, 7 were ebooks. I use the Kindle app on my iPad often. I also have numerous chess books in ChessBase format.

Even so, print books are still more comfortable to use, and in most cases easier to read well, especially academic books.

Part of the back wall of my office.

Derek-C-Goodwin

I love to read, usually historic.

this past year I ate up quite a few.,

The dirty thirty - dave bell (miners strike)

The shipping forecast by meg clothier

Ultra processed people by chris van tulleken (highly reccomend)

seed to dust, marc hamer (highly reccomend for 0ver 50's)

and of course I need to drop in a link to what I published this year :-

Click me to view my book!

621311251521mark

im reading sherlock holmes rn 1984 is a really good book

ChessGT17

How to reassess your chess by Jeremy Silman

621311251521mark

in 2024 ive read like grapes of wrath and to kill a mocking bird and of mice and men

Ziryab
621311251521mark wrote:

in 2024 ive read like grapes of wrath and to kill a mocking bird and of mice and men

Read two of those in the 1980s. Tried to read the other and didn’t like it.

odyson

I read On The Road when I was young enough for it to be a bad influence on me. I also read 1984 when I was too young to appreciate it. All it did was depress me, and I came away with a sort of cartoon version of what it was saying. I read it again about five years ago, and thought it was a work of genius. The subject was no less grim, but this time I was exhilirated.

My reintroduction to Orwell came just a little before that with Down and Out in Paris and London, which was something of a revelation to me. After 1984 I read his Homage to Catalonia, which has the experiences that would shape his political vision. And then, The Road To Wigan Pier, where he lays out his beliefs on socialism, with surprising criticisms for one who considered himself to be a socialist.

By this point, I decided that I liked being in the company of Mr.Orwell, so I bought two volumes of a three volume set of his essays, journalism, and letters. I have mostly read them, and plan on buying the third volume this year sometime.

thegraves

I am reading The Chess-Player's Handbook by Howard Staunton. I have always liked

the older descriptive notation.

shadowtanuki

I also read On the Road at an impressionable age. I had a friend who introduced me to Kurt Vonnegut, Carlos Castaneda, Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison all in the same year, and I discovered Kerouac somewhere along the way. Has anyone read The Illuminatus! Trilogy?

sawdof
Ziryab wrote:

Whatcha Reading?

The bunny's a bit like chance the gardener. He doesn't read nor write and only watches tv.

I am therefore I am. Being there is more important than thinking sometimes

odyson

" Has anyone read The Illuminatus! Trilogy?"


Wow! That's a blast from the past. I had friends who were big Robert Anton Wilson fans who pushed it on me. I found it clever and amusing, but I couldn't tell you much about it now.

shadowtanuki

I read it earlier this year. It's pretty off-beat. Kind of like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but to the world of conspiracy theories and the occult.

Ziryab
shadowtanuki wrote:

I also read On the Road at an impressionable age. I had a friend who introduced me to Kurt Vonnegut, Carlos Castaneda, Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison all in the same year, and I discovered Kerouac somewhere along the way. Has anyone read The Illuminatus! Trilogy?

I read Palm Sunday, Player Piano, and Cat’s Cradle last year. Was hoping to pick up a copy of Slaughter-House Five at the bookstore the day that I bought On the Road and a collection of Charles Bukowski’s poetry. When Palm Sunday was first published, I looked at it on the book rack at a convenience store walking distance from my college dorm. I was intrigued then, but it took me more than 40 years to make time to read it.