Life In 19x19

What are your favourite Go Fiction and/or non-fiction works? And do you own them or hire or borrow from a library/friend?

List of go-related books are here:

1. http://senseis.xmp.net/?Literature
2. http://www.usgo.org/resources/books.html#fiction

I have just read a humble portion of those go-related books mentioned in the list above though. Here are my favourites and I own them:

(in order of most to less)
- Meijin (or The Go Master) by Kawabata Yasunari (actually I own all of Kawabata Yasunari works which were already translated to English)
- First Kyu by Dr.Sung-Hwa Hong
- EZ-GO-Oriental Strategy in a Nutshell by Bruce Wilcox
- Hikaru no Go
- Shibumi by Trevanian


I heard from some friends that PopCo by Scarlett Thomas is quite fun to read and Go: An Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy by Miura Yasuyuki - 3dan Nihon Kiin and President of Japan Airlines is quite useful to business student like me. But I have not had chance to read them - those books are currently not available in Australia.

The longer it's been since I've read First Kyu, the more I enjoy it.

I wonder if my bad memory is making subtle improvements to the book with age.

EDIT: On second thought, my enjoyment of the book is improving as I learn more about professional Go, and as I learn more about Korean culture. Either way, I really do enjoy this book.

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I also really enjoy books with significant biographical information. Such as kamakura, invincible, and 400 years of go in japan.

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I am keeping my fingers crossed for the day that someone writes a book about Kitani Minoru and his go school, and then painstakingly enumerates his students with biographical info regarding each one.

Well, I bet the book exists if I was willing to learn Japanese.

Out of Go novels I have only red 'First Kyu', and found it to be quite a good book. I liked how fast the events unfolded, it really felt like there wasn't a single unnecessary word in the book. Reading 'First Kyu' was kind of like seeing the author's life flash before your eyes, everything is clear at an astounding pace.

A good book, too bad there isn't more of it.

First Kyu is awesome!
The Master of Go is a little dry - I like reading it, but it's not one of my favorites.
The essays and stories in The Treasure Chest Enigma are wonderful, I think.

PopCo was quite an interesting book, but Go is mentioned only as a sidenote if I remember correctly.

- Mic

koks9dan wrote:What are your favourite Go Fiction and/or non-fiction works? And do you own them or hire or borrow from a library/friend?

I definitely own all of my go-related books. In fact I have attempted to own Every work of fiction or literature in English with a mention of the game, as well as every known edition of each. So far I have succeeded pretty well. Obviously, one can never know whether one has All such books, because one can never be sure that they have all been identified. However, I do have good reason to believe that the list I have compiled online is the most complete and thorough such list anywhere, and I have all but four or five of the items on that list as well as most of the American or British variant editions of most of them.

My list [actually it is much more than a list; I have page references or comments on most of the books, and extended reviews of many, and I am expanding these almost daily] is on a book website called http://www.goodreads.com. It is a site designed mainly for readers rather than collectors, but I have been gradually listing every go-related work I can find and transferring some of my old essays on go fiction and scattered attempts at an annotated bibliography, as well as references and discussions by other people which came up over the years in rec.games.go and other discussion groups.

The website allows users to create lists, called "shelves" of books grouped by any topic, author, or other theme. My go fiction lists, currently numbering 201 titles, can be found under my real name, Brian R. McDonald, and a "shelf' titled books-with-go-references. I think the site requires registration to look up lists by name, but I'm not sure. It's free, anyway.

Back to the original question, I am a big fan of Shibumi, mostly for the Go content, but also because I've always liked "Trevanian's" writing enough to enjoy all his books in genres I wouldn't otherwise appreciate.

I also very much enjoyed the early volumes of David Wingrove's massive [eight very thick books] series Chung Kuo. Being set in a world dominated by China, the books refer to Go as Wei Chi. The game plays a fairly substantial role in several of the volumes. I am looking forward to the new and revised version of the series [in 20 volumes] to be issued beginning next year.

George Perec's Life A User's Manual, written in French but available in translation, is a fun read if you like puzzles and gimmicks as much as I do. Perec was a mamber of a French literary group known as OuLiPo; a few members and associates of the group played the game and incorporated references to it in their ficiton and poetry.

Back when the usenet group rec.games.go was the main place on the internet for any go-related discussions and conversations, a few of us regularly talked about go references in fiction and traded newly discovered items. I miss those days and would love it if anyone interested in such a topic would check out my list, comment on any of my reviews and add any references of which I might be unaware.

chiwito