How to judge a book

[tchan001]

If you want to judge a book by it's packaging, there are no English language go books which match the beauty of a set of limited edition Japanese traditional bound books. For example, check this recent blog post of mine.

[RobertJasiek]

Although I've been disappointed with the fact that you review your two books on joseki :/

As a publisher, I have several options:
1) say nothing and wait for reviews
2) make a tiny summary statement about the contents (like a backcover's text)
3) give a detailed advertisement-like description of the contents
4) give a self-review
5) advertise my book by comparing it with competitive books

(1) is a bad choice because there are too few reviewers for go books in general (sometimes it almost feels like John and I were the only regular reviewers) and I might have to wait years until any substantial information starts. Also not everybody gets access to the book as selling during tournaments; so reviews are all the more important.

(2) is bad choice because my books offer much more contents. Making only a short statement equals hiding most of the features.

(3) is maybe possible but people tend to be sceptical about positive-only advertisements. IMO, (4) is fairer because it offers at least some criticism (although I think my books are by far the best).

Pure advertisement with (5) and explicit reference to other books is, I think, prohibited by law. I can only wait for related questions in discussions rather than advertisements.

[RobertJasiek]

For me a go book is very good when I enjoy reading it a lot, or when it significantly improves my playing ability.

Enjoying reading has causes, which can be assessed: entertaining, learning much, contents more interesting than ordinary information elsewhere, suitable teaching style, good writing style etc. Whenever I enjoy or don't enjoy a book, I know the why.

[CnP]

re: S&S to me it's obvious they're ugly books and having bought about 10 of them I can say the paper they use is not as good quality as, say Kiseido (I don't expect them to age as well, though that's just a guess). I don't see how the covers can be a pure cost thing though since there's plenty of scope for quality even in monochrome. But they're publishing books and often I want to read what those books have to say and none of the pages have fallen out yet. JF said here that they operate on the basis of publishing new books only when they meet costs (hopefully plus a bit extra) on the previous one - so anything that cuts costs for them is good news for us. Also, the S&S website often provide pdf sample pages.

p.s. S&S are not prone to typos in my experience

[imabuddha]

re: S&S to me it's obvious they're ugly books and having bought about 10 of them I can say the paper they use is not as good quality as, say Kiseido (I don't expect them to age as well, though that's just a guess).

AFAIK all of Kiseido's books are printed in Japan, where consumers expect good quality even in inexpensive goods. It's no coincidence that America is the home of walmart…

That being said, there are printing companies in the USA that can produce books of the highest quality if one is willing to pay the cost. The sad fact is that this is a very niche market, and too few go enthusiasts would be willing (or able) to pay $80 or more for a nicely bound book to make it profitable.

The good news IMO is that electronic publishing greatly ameliorates this issue.

[Mivo]

Pure advertisement with (5) and explicit reference to other books is, I think, prohibited by law. I can only wait for related questions in discussions rather than advertisements.

How are you not doing this? On your list, the only two Joseki books that got a "++" for "rank improvement" are the ones that you have written. One other book got an "average", the rest gets "-" and "--". While I respect your knowledge and desire to teach, this pretty much invalidates the whole list, at least from my perspective.

[hyperpape]

5) advertise my book by comparing it with competitive books
....
Pure advertisement with (5) and explicit reference to other books is, I think, prohibited by law. I can only wait for related questions in discussions rather than advertisements.

What law? This would be quite a surprise to me.

Edit: quote tag was wrong

[oren]

How are you not doing this? On your list, the only two Joseki books that got a "++" for "rank improvement" are the ones that you have written. One other book got an "average", the rest gets "-" and "--". While I respect your knowledge and desire to teach, this pretty much invalidates the whole list, at least from my perspective.

The only funny thing is how few people are surprised by it. We're just too used to it now.

[RobertJasiek]

How are you not doing this?

The list is not an advertisement for particular books but an information on all go books I have reviewed or read well enough to rate them.

On your list, the only two Joseki books that got a "++" for "rank improvement" are the ones that you have written. One other book got an "average", the rest gets "-" and "--". [...] this pretty much invalidates the whole list, at least from my perspective.

The following refers to only the "rank improvement" rating.

Joseki 1 Fundamentals gets a (++) because its contents together with the contents of a yet to be written similar book Middle Game Fundamentals amounts to over 50% the knowledge I acquired for my improvement from 3d to 4d. Therefore the book would have been worth over 1/4 rank in that dan range. Due to the exponentially growing learning difficulty with increasing strength, this is worth about as much as one or two kyu ranks. Books with such an increment as a kyu I have rated (++): Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, Tesuji (Davies), Attack and Defense, Strategic Concepts of Go. The latter alone and especially its first, theory part sufficed to make me about 2 stones stronger. Joseki 2 Strategy contains, among other things, over 2.5 times as many strategic concepts and discusses some of them in greater detail. Reading the Ishida thrice made me another ca. two ranks stronger and most of the related information is in Joseki 2 Strategy. Part of the rank improvement was due to learning josekis by heart (and understanding them); this is not in this volume, so of those extra two ranks maybe a bit more than one is also available as information in Vol. 2. It has more information on other topics though and they amount to about one or two ranks I would have gained from reading the book. Therefore my estimate is that this book would have made me 2 to 5, probably ca. 3 to 4 ranks stronger. Anything less than (++) rating for (my) rank improvement by Joseki 2 Strategy (if I had had such a book as a 5 kyu) would be a great understatement.

That does not mean that necessarily every reader becomes that much stronger or even stronger at all from these two books. Preference for teaching and learning style and learning ability from application of generalising contents plays a great role.

Joseki Encyclopedia (Nihon Kiin) (--) : This is a great heap of variations, the type of book for the proverb "Learn josekis by heart and become 2 stones weaker.". Since (as my webpage explains) my rating refers to reading a book only once, reading that encyclopedia only once won't help at all for becoming stronger. A first reading of 10,000 variations is good for creating confusion.

Dictionary of Basic Joseki (-) : Reading the three volumes once helped a bit but real understanding came only during my second and third reading when I could concentrate on actually getting insight rather than only following move by move without understanding yet, as during the first reading when I did not know most of these josekis yet. Dictionary of Basic Joseki can qualify for (++) if one spends three months or more for reading it daily for several hours.

Jungsuk in Our Time (-) : In quality it is similar to Dictionary of Basic Joseki.

Star Point Joseki (-) : As before. The fact that it contains some 4-4 variations Dictionary of Basic Joseki does not have does not avoid the necessity to approach the unfamiliar variations at all before one can try a deeper and broader understanding.

Essential Joseki (--) : It is a variation-orientated book with relatively few josekis and significantly fewer, scattered go theory hints in the text than Dictionary of Basic Joseki. Accordingly it gets a worse rating.

Choice of Jungseok (o) : It has instructive examples for the sake of teaching strategic choices. It lacks generalised go theory though. If it had refined its contents by more powerful teaching strategies, it could easily have gotten a better rating. It leaves the work of revealing the contents to the reader though.

Get Strong at Joseki (--) : Teaching by examples only. Take a dictionary and its interesting moves and make problems out of them. It is better to read Dictionary of Basic Joseki and consider each next move to be a problem; you get many more variations, many more problems and a broader selection of them. Since that dicationary qualifies as (-) after reading once, (--) for Get Strong at Joseki is appropriate.

The Great Joseki Debate, Modern Joseki and Fuseki, Lee Changho's Novel Plays and Shapes and other similar books (--): Teaching by examples only. Small selection only. Therefore much less useful than Dictionary of Basic Joseki.

38 Basic Joseki (--) : I spent 4 hours per joseki to actually learn something. With an ordinary "reading once", I would have learnt and remembered essentially nothing. The book can be (+) after hard work but only then.

Whole Board Thinking in Joseki (-) : These books actually try to teach something general, so at least a (-). However, as soon as trying, they also already stop again. Much space of the pages is wasted. The selection of strategic choices is limited and the reader is left with most of the work of identifying them from the text or diagrams. Choice of Jungseok teaches significantly better. So (-) is right for Whole Board Thinking in Joseki.

The other two books in the list I would need to dig out to be sure which they are.

Altogether there are many (-) or (--) books in the joseki section or the list altogether because of too one-sided teaching by (often even dictionary style) examples. Principles, generalisations, structure, general advice on joseki study are missing. Fundamentals, strategic concepts, analysis methods, move meanings, group meanings, strategic lines, strategic planning and often strategic choices are hardly any and mostly not any topic at all in almost all (especially) joseki books. Almost all the didactics is left to the reader's autodidactics, sheer effort and ability to reinvent go theory.

See the contrast to my joseki books: Vol. 1 and 2 do not have the many variations yet (that is for Vol. 3) but have everything else missing in the other books: essential knowledge for understanding and application in general. That kind of contents giving books (on other topics) with much smaller scope already a (++) for rank improvement, see above.

***

In case of topical coverage, the absence of exhaustive generalising theory in almost all books is even more widely spread. My advertisement since about 1996 for more general knowledge in Western books has, I hope, at least had some effect: An increasing percentage of books has at least a few (instead of previously none) principles etc.

[RobertJasiek]

What law?

I recall to have seen something like that in the European Counsil of Human Rights Declaration (or one of its appendices).

[RBerenguel]

Robert,

with your previous long answer (to MiVo) I had the information I needed, which was the reason of the ++ for your own books. It was this particular instance that made me cringe. I (personally) would have marked the ++ in red or something (and explained why it was red somewhere else), to make clear these are "special books". Anyway, the list is useful in many aspects, and I will link to it whenever I talk about ranks and related books, since it covers a lot of books (Karaklis has something similar in Sensei's Library, IIRC).

[RobertJasiek]

I (personally) would have marked the ++ in red or something (and explained why it was red somewhere else), to make clear these are "special books".

Marking only the rows of my books in a different colour would unfairly highlight them. A "warning" hint which are mine is a good idea though, so I have added that, a related note in the ratings definition sections and a citation from this thread in the new section Appendix on Ratings.

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/isbn.html

[RobertJasiek]

So far this thread leaves several points unclear:

1) There are people saying that their S&S are very good but it remains a mystery which titles are meant. IMO, such secrecy does not even help those people themselves because not even the publisher knows which of their titles are better than others and therefore continues to publish both possibly good and bad books, i.e. on average fewer good books than would be possible.

2) There appears to be a market for cheap books (up to say EUR 15) with easy going contents (such as examples only, no theory). I would like to understand why such books are bought at all. Ok, they are easy, so players learning well from easy contents can like them. Do they like the fact that they can easily understand the book's contents or does it give them more - increment of playing strength of one or two ranks per such book? If the latter occurs, please teach us: how to become stronger from easy examples and mostly examples only? I would need hundreds of such books, with an exception: All About Life and Death gave me the necessary LD overview in the 1k to 1d process. Note that books like Tesuji (Davies) do not belong to the examples only type of books; from it I became stronger as a 9k because the book taught me types of tesujis I had not known and gave general advice on how to read in a problem. I am always astonished that some seem to be able to learn quickly from unstructured examples / problems only books. I have never heard any explanation why. Is it just a doubtful rumour or is there really some generally applicable method of profiting much from easy contents books?

3) Earlier in this thread, I have shortly mentioned some criteria for judging books. Are those generally shared or do others have completely other criteria by which they judge books? Possibly which?

4) When reviewing or assessing books, their topical coverage in relation to all 9p knowledge is one of the central criteria I use. Is this a generally accepted criterion or do others not care at all how little they are taught? How then would they approach high dan levels or do they aim only at becoming low dan?

[Dusk Eagle]

I don't have time for a full response, but I often find it easier to learn by example than by learning the hard rules of a system. To make an analogy to learning your very first language, you are given very few rules explicitely, yet you still learn to speak simply by example. There are some rules you may not figure out unless you are given, such as semicolon usage, but far more often I find myself thinking about an aspect of English grammar or sentence structure where it is clear in my head whether a particular usage is correct or not, but coming up with a rule to describe it is very hard.

[karaklis]

I often find it easier to learn by example than by learning the hard rules of a system.

Learning by hard rules and by examples are actually two things that should complement each other. If you learn a language and do that by reading a lot of phrases, it is inefficient because you have to work out the grammar by yourself. On the other hand if you learn the language and the only reference you have is a grammar book, it is inefficient, because you will have a hard time to find out how the given rules are applied in practice. So the best would be to have a grammar book that has lots of example in order to give you a grasp what the rules mean.