Magnus Victor Anderson, an Australian accountant and bibliophile, built up a collection of 6,000 chess books which he presented to the library of his home city Melbourne. During his lifetime he would make the journey from his office to the Public Library, usually twice daily, in order to refile any book misplaced after use. No officer of the library was permitted to do the work.

http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Sicil...

while GM John Nunn authored the book Beating the Sicilian..

http://www.amazon.com/Beating-Sicil...

their career score in a lone game (CG dbase) was 0.5-0.5 with Taimanov as black and Nunn as white in a Sicilian game.

if i have these books, i would keep them together in my shelf.. :)

Dr Jean Mennerat
(11 August 1917 – 21 September 2007)

<An avid collector from an early age on, his library contained 27,500 books (not counting duplicates).>

<He donated his collection by testament to the City of Belfort, but when the librarian of Belfort came to inspect the collection in October, he was in for a surprise: 425 meters of books, the equivalent of 18 cubic meters!>

http://www.kwabc.org/Homepage-UK/Me...

<Israeli grandmaster Michael Roiz, who analyzes six of his games for Chess Informant 110, called Informant "the last human chess book on earth." Meaning that the focus is on good old human logic - on those moves that chess players consider as possible options during the game - rather than on computer generated variations.>

Linares! Linares! A Journey Into the Heart of Chess by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam..

http://www.amazon.com/Linares-Journ...

just a glance..

+ Don Luis Rentero's hatred to GM draws. His approach was grease money for the players to fight like madmen :)

+ blow-by-blow account of Anand's loss to Kaspy (with black) in one of their Linares encounters.

+ Kramnik claimed to have read this book overnight.

+ on Indian reporter Arvind (the son of India's first IM Manuel Aaron).

+ places, people and all about Linares --- and olive oil of Linares!

+ and tournament ambiance as Kaspy once said, "Linares is the Wimbledon of Chess!"

i still have around 80 pages to read though..

Dirk is a very good writer, one of the best book ever!

Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir by Yuri Averbakh, 272 pages, 2011, New In Chess

http://www.amazon.com/Centre-Stage-...

Tal, Anand, Shirov and Morozevich

2. Pragmatics

Alekhine, Euwe, Fischer, Spassky
Kasparov

3. Reflectors

Karpov, Smyslov, Capablanca,
Petrosian, <Torre>*

4. Theorist

Steinitz, Tarrasch, Botvinnik,
Kramnik

GM Hansen provided some games to support his classification of the players

I have not finished the book yet but from the pages I have read, it seems to be a very good read. Whether GM Hansen can be considered to be an authority on the subject is no longer part of my review of the book.

juicy extracts from Linares! Linares! A Journey Into the Heart of Chess by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam..

<+ Chess was Luis Renteros' passion before his supermarket chain turned him into a tycoon, even long before 1960, when he began his career delivering groceries in and around Linares on a bicycle. Playing made him unable to sleep, as his games would not leave him alone. So he stopped and hoped for a comeback as an organizer --- a wish that in 1978 led to the start of what was to grow into a unique phenomenon.

+ While most other players stick to being traditional late-risers, even during a tournament, GM Veselin Topalov keeps his normal rhythm. He gets up early and goes to bed early. Round about noon, he takes a nap for an hour in order to be as fresh as possible when he takes his seat at the board at three in the afternoon.

+ Garry Kasparov's ties with his mother is unbreakable. She accompanies him to his most important matches and tournaments. When she is not present, they are in constant by telephone. The first thing Kasparov will do after going over a game with his opponent is to call his mother. And in special cases, he will not even wait that long; he will be selecting the pre-dialled number on his cell phone when he leaves the playing hall.

+ Vassily Ivanchuk does not push his way haughtily through the crowd of noisy children thronging at the bottom of the hotel stairs every day begging the players for a signature in their programme booklets. He always stops to sign a few. In the year of his third Linares tournament victory, he invited these young admirers to join him in eating the cake that the restaurant kitchen had prepared for him.

+ At one time, GM Vassily Ivanchuk was in the small park next to the hotel around midnight, howling like a wolf in an attempt to get over a lost game.

+ To Vassily Ivanchuk, Kasparov is 'God', but without irony. When he goes to church in his hometown of Lvov, it happens that it is Kasparov's face which comes to his mind while he is praying.

+ Belot is a card game which many Russian grandmasters seem to be addicted.

+ When Gata Kamsky was six years old, Rustam his father, told him that music was food for the soul but not for the mind. For this reason, he put a stop to Gata's piano lessons and taught him to play chess. Every day, Gata got up at a crack of dawn to live in accordance with his father's new schedule. As soon as he became world champion, Rustam promised, he would get a day off.

+ Garry Kasparov was the first lucky winner of the first price car that Luis Rentero put on the train for transportation but it never made it to Moscow. The Spanish Suzuki dislodged itself along the way, fell overboard and was irreparably damaged.

+ Viswanathan Anand did a commercial in India for Memory Plus, a popular pharmaceutical mnemonic. Everytime he forgets something, his wife Aruna calls after him: "You haven't forgotten to take your pills, have you?">

<According to the blog writer, not all books in this series are chess books!>

http://home.roadrunner.com/~etzel/c...

i will post the pic of my Tartan collection series this week.

9 Tartan collectibles:

#01 Ideas Behind the Chess Openings
#04 Learn Chess Fast
#07 Winning Chess Traps
#09 Modern Chess Strategy
#25 200 Miniature Games of Chess
#27 Chess Fundamentals
#28 The Art of Sacrifice in Chess
#29 Profile of a Prodigy
#49 Modern Chess Opening Traps

I have

#02 Fine The Middle Game in Chess

#03 Fine Basic Chess Endings

#05 Nimzovich My System

#70 Mednis King Power in Chess

#71 Soltis The Art of Defense in Chess

btw guys, today is my lucky day --- just bought a used copy of San Luis 2005 by Gershon/Nor for only $7 :)

No Passion For Chess Fashion: Fierce Openings For Your New Repertoire by Raetsky & Chetverik..

ray keene: while we are on lists-here is my current thinking on the ten best chess books ever written kasparov my great predecessors-just one big book

alekhine's best games again one big book really- i like the batsford edition with chod alexanders choice of extra games through to the end of alekhines career all in one volume

my system by nimzowitsch

masters of the chessboard by reti

golombek on capablanca

golombek on reti

clarke on tal

clarke on petrosian

golombeks book on the 1948 world championship is magnificent

i like hannaks book on lasker very much tho the notes arent deep its a fascinating biography of a very great player

books chosen because of their narrative qualities just as much as the analysis

<chessgames.com: Recently I saw a copy of "The Times: Winning Moves" by Keene & Byron Jacobs. I picked up a copy and just flipping through a few pages I predict it will be the best $10 investment I make all year. There is nothing more instructive than a real tactic from a real game. I'm sure Ray won't mind when we borrow some of the ideas from this compendium for our daily puzzle. This simple unassuming book is a treasure trove in disguise!>

lucky <CG>, no one can beat the enormous pleasure of finding a chess book in a mound of used books..

btw guys, <nanobrain> gifted me with these chess books and mags..

Mags:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wordfu...

Books:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wordfu...

Chess with the Masters (1963) by Beheim is a treasure wheww!

For years (decades?) I have wanted to write short fiction or even a novel based on chess. To add authenticity, one would have to add a game or games.

However:

I assume that chess-centric fiction would attract more than a few enthusiasts such as ourselves. If I were to use <my> game/s to illustrate a story about strong international players, the low quality of the play would utterly destroy the credibility of the story.

Were I to use games from real-life GMs and IMs, chances are good that some of those games would be recognized by the readership - and <again>, out goes the credibility.

A third option would be to use computer vs. computer games, but I have the idea that many readers would quickly observe that these games were not conceived by the human mind.