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Very Hot Topic (More than 25 Replies) Chess Book Review blog (Read 336247 times)
proustiskeen
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #387 - 08/08/18 at 04:23:17
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My August 2018 review of a number of books on studies and miniatures.

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/studying-print-on-demand/

Also, some may be interested to read this:

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/cja-awards-2018/
  
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proustiskeen
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #386 - 07/03/18 at 14:37:16
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My July review of Sam Shankland's _Small Steps to Giant Improvement._

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2018/07/03/one-small-step/
  
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TD
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #385 - 06/06/18 at 13:56:37
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proustiskeen wrote on 06/05/18 at 20:28:52:
My June review of Ramesh RB's Fundamental Chess: Logical Decision Making.

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/decisions-decisions/

I absolutely love this book! Ramesh mentions a lot of concepts I never heard of before.
  
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proustiskeen
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #384 - 06/06/18 at 01:28:08
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IsaVulpes wrote on 06/05/18 at 22:06:55:
Thank you lots as per usual! Always a pleasure to read.

Am I interpreting "Its target audience – “younger players,” or, in Ramesh’s system, those rated 1500-2400 (!?) – is very wide" correctly as "If you're rated 2000, you will still get plenty out of this book"?

How would you say it stacks up to the Books reviewed in the older Decisionmaking Review ( https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2017/10/07/making-better-decisions/ )? Are they even comparable, or too different?


I think a 2000 player could get something out of the book. What I was after with the quoted phrase was that the apparent intended range seems insanely wide for one book.

Aagaard's book covers more meta-level material, deeper consideration of thought processes, etc. It's the better book, which takes nothing away from Ramesh, but TITB is just outstanding. (And if you like both, check out Kislik's new book from Gambit. Just got it, can't put it down, but also frustrated by the tone / lack of citations / need for developmental editing.)
  
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IsaVulpes
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #383 - 06/05/18 at 22:06:55
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Thank you lots as per usual! Always a pleasure to read.

Am I interpreting "Its target audience – “younger players,” or, in Ramesh’s system, those rated 1500-2400 (!?) – is very wide" correctly as "If you're rated 2000, you will still get plenty out of this book"?

How would you say it stacks up to the Books reviewed in the older Decisionmaking Review ( https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2017/10/07/making-better-decisions/ )? Are they even comparable, or too different?
  
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proustiskeen
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #382 - 06/05/18 at 20:28:52
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My June review of Ramesh RB's Fundamental Chess: Logical Decision Making.

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/decisions-decisions/
  
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Justinhorton
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #381 - 05/23/18 at 21:15:06
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Well more than that, it's called telling people something they would not otherwise know, and in this particular instance it's done no harm at all.
  
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #380 - 05/23/18 at 07:57:01
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katar wrote on 05/22/18 at 03:59:30:
My 2 cents: it is not the place of a review to pronounce that a book's very existence presents moral, ethical, and legal problems. The boundaries of fair use can be surprising sometimes. The more relevant legal concept is "standing."

The legal concept of standing is there to ensure that the courts are not clogged up with people complaining about things that are none of their business. I don't quite see how it is relevant to book reviews. The publishers of a periodical can, if they wish, tell reviewers to stick to the question of whether the book offers value for money, without straying into the question of whether it should have been published. But, if they don't take that line, I don't see anything wrong with a review that does consider that wider question, for the benefit of any readers who may be interested. It's called free speech.
  
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LeeRoth
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #379 - 05/22/18 at 14:08:41
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proustiskeen wrote on 05/21/18 at 21:27:50:
I'm also well aware, now more so than ever, that once I write something, it's out there for everyone to take as they will. I need to thicken my own skin and learn to ignore the trolls. (Not to say Rene is one of them; indeed, I'm honored by his careful reading ...)


That’s the spirit.  Years ago, I worked on a daily paper.  We had a sportswriter who said the darndest things, and people wrote in to call him names.  I asked him if the letters bothered him, and he said, “No.  You want them to write in.  That’s how you know they’re reading your stuff.” Wink
  
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katar
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #378 - 05/22/18 at 03:59:30
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Bibs wrote on 05/07/18 at 06:14:38:
It is possible that 'IM_Serious' was trying to be funny, but it did not carry well, and it just came across as a rather stupid comment.

This is just spiteful and unnecessary name-calling that adds zero value to the subject matter.  In almost every thread you can find a similarly acidic putdown by a "God Member" to a "Newbie."

I more or less agree with the message behind IM-Serious's comment, which I found succinct and clever.  That makes me stupid and unfunny too, obviously unworthy of intruding into this sacred ground among such luminaries.
My 2 cents: it is not the place of a review to pronounce that a book's very existence presents moral, ethical, and legal problems.  The boundaries of fair use can be surprising sometimes.  The more relevant legal concept is "standing."
  

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proustiskeen
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #377 - 05/22/18 at 02:09:59
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Noted and fixed re: Rene and RdC. Thanks for the heads-up.
  
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an ordinary chessplayer
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #376 - 05/22/18 at 01:47:48
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@ErictheRed - I have a cousin who talks like that. Nothing to worry about.

@proustikeen - There is an "RdC" who posts on chesspub, but I don't think he has commented here on Shereshevsky. By RdC did you mean ReneDescartes? Genuinely confused.

@ReneDescartes - Okay, moralizing is bad. Got it. I'm not a fan myself, for different reasons, but at least I can respect that the moralizer has a good intention. For me the higher crime is telling someone what they think, rather than letting them speak for themselves.

ReneDescartes wrote on 05/21/18 at 19:17:28:
In fact, as LeeRoth pointed out, the review undeniably did mislead a substantial portion of readers (including you, Bibs!) into thinking that there was plagiarism.
Speaking just for myself here (a) I was not misled, because in fact there was plagiarism; and (b) the review did not convince me of that, it was Aagaard's post on the qualitychess blog (also linked by dfan here) that convinced me.

@LeeRoth - You twice accused me of misunderstanding, without really having any idea of what my understanding, correct or incorrect, might actually be.
  
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ErictheRed
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #375 - 05/21/18 at 22:45:56
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Hauge Frank wrote on 05/21/18 at 15:40:26:
I m open it and don't see any enough information there so please guide me about it  Cheesy Cheesy


Can anyone make sense of this?  Not to derail a serious discussion, but perhaps this post/poster should be deleted, counseled, removed, etc.  It looks like a spam bot testing the waters.
  
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proustiskeen
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #374 - 05/21/18 at 21:27:50
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I thank Bibs for his intervention, but it is unnecessary.

Rene has defended me and my honesty / critical integrity in the past, in this very forum, which is part of what makes his current 'stance' so perplexing. But he is entitled to his opinion, and others may draw what conclusions from it they will.

I'm also well aware, now more so than ever, that once I write something, it's out there for everyone to take as they will. I need to thicken my own skin and learn to ignore the trolls. (Not to say Rene is one of them; indeed, I'm honored by his careful reading, although I resolutely disagree with his conclusions.)
« Last Edit: 05/22/18 at 02:09:04 by proustiskeen »  
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ReneDescartes
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Re: Chess Book Review blog
Reply #373 - 05/21/18 at 19:17:28
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I said what I said as clearly as I could, not in a fit of passion, but after days of thought and reflection in which John Hartmann's review, as it were, ate away at me and I resisted writing because I knew my comments would alienate some people I respect here, including him. My post expresses both my considered views and my inner nature, and I stand by it.

I never made the charge of dishonesty against Hartmann, and I still do not--that interpretation is an utter misunderstanding. In fact, I have defended him vigorously from the charge of dishonesty in the past and I would continue to do so in the future. I spoke very carefully of the existence of an ulterior ("beyond what is immediate or present") reason for conscious or unconscious hostility. This is structurally similar to pointing out that an official had a conflict of interest without trying to determine what was going on in his consciousness (only structurally--there is no analagous conflict of interest in this case, for in the first place it is normal to to write a review whose tone reflects one's hostility based on loyalty to schools of thought, and in the second place the supposed conflict is nothing publicly agreed-upon, to say the least, but my mere psychological hypothesis, which one will share or not depending on intangibles, and which I did not expect him or others to accept or read without anger: this is why I said only "I believe that such a reason exists ...").

To illustrate this, let us  take--only for the sake of clarification--what might appear to be the "worst" case, and imagine that Hartmann was consciously angry not only about Shereshevsky's use of quotations, but also about the way Shereshevsky treated Watson--even in that case I would not think it dishonest that he should have wanted to manage the connotations of his language so as to make Shereshevsky smell as bad as possible within the denotation: the most I would think (in this imaginary extreme) is that in the strength of his anger he overshot the mark and lost control over the effect of his language, writing words that, rather than merely coloring the picture, induced readers to mistake its shape. This is why I said "it [the review] insinuates," not "you insinuate"--whatever the intent, its language simply functioned that way. In fact, as LeeRoth pointed out, the review undeniably did mislead a substantial portion of readers (including you, Bibs!) into thinking that there was plagiarism.

What ate away at me in the review, what in the end I felt I could not ignore, and what accounts for the intensity evident in my response, was not this overshooting the mark (I have done that myself). No, it was the use in the current situation of a moral attack on the work, an attack which aims not to dispute it, but to destroy it. A moral attack paralyzes--the author's words fade to silence, he moves his mouth but nothing comes out, everything other than the moral question no longer matters. When I see such weapons used in a situation that is not extreme, I recoil, as if I were watching a spider paralyze and wrap up a human being. How crazy this description seems will depend on how (or even if) one senses the psychology of morality and how far one is willing to go with it. Personally, I feel that one of the most dangerous tendencies of our time is a growing puritanism in public discourse and the use of moral condemnation as a weapon, often relying in the background on the reflexive amoral cooperation of money in the attack.

Since my reputation is now involved, I will speak some of myself. A thoughtful friend noted already when I was a young man that I primarily react to the world aesthetically rather than morally, but with what one might call moral intensity. That is my nature, embedded in my reaction to a great deal of philosophy, politics and art, and I take pride in the fact that in my own writing (not here, but under my real name) one never reads direct moral condemnation, though one may read descriptions such as "with goodwill," "noble," "higher," etc., or again "cruel," "betrayal," and so on.

I am an artist, not an academic, and though I believe in strict citation in the academy I think it would be a disaster if the world at large became a macrocosm of academia. Nor is this the first time I have reacted here with psychological and aesthetic disgust against moralizing. Here is my reaction to a previous incident:
Quote:
It is clear from NN's posts ... that the underlying impulse is not a campaign to raise scholarly standards ... but to discredit and hurt the offender in return for a perceived slight. Like an obedient but repressed driver who remorselessly retaliates within the law against a rival who has broken the law, NN may be technically in the right, but hardly seems to be coming from a higher place...


If you look carefully, you will see that even in my reactions to posts that I think are unfair, I may speak of self-respect or nobility or rationality, but I am at pains not to be taken as moralizing:
ReneDescartes wrote on 03/07/18 at 12:49:32:
Bondefanger wrote on 03/07/18 at 12:14:23:
First off - sorry if I offended some by using the word "suck" to mean "very bad". I didn't expect that. I'll try to use more bland words in the future.

It's not the word "suck, " but reasoning from an exaggeration that sucks. (I thought was happening in your post, no offense intended.) I was also using your expression to comment on the reasoning of those players previously mentioned who react to being called opening experts as if they were being disparaged, some of whom may also be using the same "transition from quantity to quality." Everyone has his own style--mine is more formal, but a diet of bland writing bites the big one.


Not that I endorse lying, cheating, gratuitous cruelty, etc.: in the face of extreme enough cases of them I will at times react with frank violence, myself wishing to destroy rather than refute, even here in the chess forum:
ReneDescartes wrote on 10/06/13 at 14:49:32:
The only reply Ivanov and his defenders deserve:

E x t e r n i m a t e !

http://s10.postimg.org/y1dijh3y1/externimate3.jpg

But I also do not wish to be taken for something other than what I am, and although I know I may lose some friends here as a result of these matters, I stand by my post.

"But what sort of difference ... causes anger and hatred among men? ...It is disagreement about what is just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable, right and wrong..." --Socrates, in the Euthyphro.



« Last Edit: 05/22/18 at 16:28:35 by ReneDescartes »  
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