...or, at this moment, "on the windowsill." Anything flat is a shelf.
I have a new favorite series of books. Slate and Shell has come out with four books now in a "Master Play" line. Each of these slim volumes covers one (or, most recently two) famous go pro--Takemiya Masaki, Go Seigen, Lee Changho, Kato Masao and Seo Bong Soo. The commentaries are by Yuan Zhou, and the well-go-book-read will have guessed the format. Each pro is represented by just two games--gone through virtually move-by-move with comments.
The miraculous thing is that the annotations actually make sense to me. Partly this is because we take it a step at a time. In chess, there are several move-by-move books, but doing it like that makes it hard to see the overall trends. The usual thing is to take a chess game, let a bunch of moves rattle off, and then explain the last move...which is even less helpful. Nobody does it quite like Yuan Zhou, where (say) five moves are strung together and then we are shown how they work together.
I'm essentially never going to be a decent go player--which, for myself, I define as single-digit kyu. I hope, though, to learn to appreciate a good game when I play through it.
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