Well, sometimes you learn a lot of chess in opening books ! my favourite amongst recent books in this resepct :

- The Safest Sicilian, 2nd edition, by Delchev & Semkov. (as revealing as Kasparov & Nikitin's Sicilian with ...e6 & ...d6 in its time)
- Play 1. b3 by Ilya Odessky. (Despite the opening, if I may say)
- Khalifman's "Kramnik" update, not just moves but ideas, and honesty as far as I can see.

As a practical player (= no computer chess, and never met OTB that mythical 1900 player knowing all theory on all variations), I would be interested in books showing "little theory leading to interesting equality" rather than "big theory leading to debatable & at most short-term advantage", but perhaps this is just me.

Hi,

December 25th is right around the corner. It is once again time to update the ol' Christmas chess book wish list  .

I have spent the last hour or so looking over book reviews at Silman's site, and Hansen's column at Chess Cafe. I also looked at 2008 book releases on Quality Chess, Gambit, and Everyman.

Except for Dvoretsky's Analytical Manual (I own it), there seems to be a shortage of new, interesting, NON-opening chess books this year . 

In your opinion, what have been the best chess books released this year? They can be on the opening, but since we all have so many of these, and since we do have ChessPublishing to save us, I would like something different. Personally, I prefer instructional material (the more challenging, the better), but this thread welcomes any and all ideas  .

To start: Attacking Manual 1 by Aagaard looks interesting. Silman's review (http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_js/Attacking_Manual_1.html) notes it has annoying, "Dvoretsky worship," but since I am one of those worshippers, that doesn't bother me.