A Dictionary of Basic Tesuji Volume 3: Tesuji for the Opening, For Capturing Races, and For Life and Death Problems, Part 1—Fujisawa Shuko

           I opened this book a few times, and then never revisited it. I think it's cool for when you want to look at some nifty stuff I guess. Also because tesuji is a timeless aspect of the game (as opposed to opening and joseki dictionaries), it's not a bad dictionary to have. 7.5/10; 3k+

A Dictionary of Basic Tesuji Volume 4: Tesuji for Life and Death Part 2, and For the Endgame—Fujisawa Shuko

           The endgame section of this book is actually quite cool and compliments the tesuji section in Get Strong at Endgame. Maybe I'll revisit these dictionaries some time, but like volume 3, it's not a bad dictionary to have in the library. 7.5/10; 3k+

The 21st Century Dictionary of Basic Joseki, Volume One—Takao Shinji

           This volume deals with 3-4 corner josekis. Okay, so at first I really wanted to get this book because my joseki knowledge absolutely sucks. However, after I've gotten it, I've run into a problem where when I'm looking up a joseki, the book doesn't have the variation I'm looking for. A lot has changed since the book was published in 2011, and some of the variations in this book have already become outdated. Imo, studying modern games is a better way to study modern joseki than getting a dictionary. 6.5/10; 5d+

The 21st Century Dictionary of Basic Joseki, Volume Two—Takao Shinji

           This volume covers 4-4, 3-5, 5-4, and 3-3 josekis. I'll admit I kind of only got this book to complete the set. I've opened it probably about once ever since I got it (it was expensive too). Like volume one however, I feel like some of the joseki in this dictionary is already outdated by modern pro standards. 6.5/10; 5d+

Miscellaneous Books

Improve Your Intuition Volume 1: Intuition in the Opening—Takagawa Kaku

           This series consists of 3 small volumes (each is under 50 pages) that were originally published in Go Review, a Nihon Kiin publication. This volume goes over a number of basic opening principles and makes a good refresher for low dan players and pretty good material for mid-kyu players. I actually quite like the format of this book; basically it explains principles and then gives practical examples. That said, it's not the most thorough book, but it does fairly well with what it presents. 7/10; 7k-2k

Improve Your Intuition Volume 3: Part 2: How to Reduce a Moyo—Takagawa Kaku

           Like the first volume, this one also follows the same format in presenting some principles and then giving practical examples, which is really nice. I still don't remember this book having a huge impact on my improvement, but looking at it again, it looks pretty decent. The topics in my opinion are more beneficial for slightly stronger players compared to the first volume. 7/10; 5k-2d

The Best Play: In-Depth Game Analyses—Feng Yun

           I'm pretty sure I read this book while I was on the toilet. This book is basically just commentary on two amateur low-mid dan games by Feng Yun. I guess the commentary is not bad, but I don't think you'll get a ton in particular out of this book. 6/10; 5k-1k

Come Up to Shodan—Rin Kaiho

           This book is another compilation from Go Review and goes over three amateur games (two between kyus and one between 1ds) and thoroughly explains the mistakes made. I guess it's okay, but there are way more useful books one can get to improve. 5/10; 5k-1k

Go Problems for Kyu Players Volume 4: Whole Board Problems—William Cobb

           This is a small pocket-sized book containing about 21 problems. The problems are not bad, although I don't think you would be able to take a lot of this book. 5.5/10; 5k-1d

Golden Opportunities—Rin Kaiho

           This was another book that I remember reading a lot on the toilet. I honestly can't remember anything that I took away from the book, but there are a lot of interesting historical stories accompanied by some nifty tesuji examples. Questionable Go educational value, but interesting book I guess. 5.5/10 (add two points if you want to read it for the stories); 3k+

New Moves—Alexander Dinerchtein and An Younggil

I actually don’t “own” this book per se; it was lent to me by my friend Edward Zhang, and I have yet to return it. xD This book is basically about trick moves or unusual joseki variations, which Dinerchtein and An then discuss. I really don’t recommend studying this book because many of the moves suggested in this book are in fact bad style and will get you screwed over if your opponent knows the refutation. In addition, the moves depend a lot on the whole board (they present each with one board example), and if you don’t know what you’re doing and blindly play the unusual move in a real game, if the surroundings are slightly different you could be left in a bad position either way. The only redeeming feature of this book in my eyes is that you can read about how Dinerchtein and An judge positions. 3/10; 3k-3d; would not recommend

Understanding How to Play Go—Yuan Zhou

Who doesn’t want to understand how to play Go? In this book, Yuan Zhou 7d reviews some of his games against other high-dan players. The commentary is clear and thorough, which is a plus. However, there isn’t a lot of lasting value towards improving your own strength, as it’s hard to apply the commentary to your own games. In addition, I feel like the material isn’t a high enough level to provide for sufficient study for mid-high dan level players. That said, I do think it’s a decent book for kyu players looking to try and understand dan-level games, although it’s not as important as improving reading ability through life and death and tesuji problems. The difference between this and a mid-high dan reading commentary on pro games is that at a higher level, whole-board judgment and flow becomes a lot more important, which can be obtained by reviewing pro games. At the kyu level, simply improving your reading ability is sufficient towards becoming a dan player. 6.5/10; 3k-1d

How to Play Handicap Go—Yuan Zhou

           I remember originally wanting to get this book because I was playing in the monthly Tiger’s Mouth tournaments, which gave out book certificates as prizes. Because it was always a handicapped tournament, I wanted to get better at handicap games so I could win more. Of course, in my opinion, studying handicap games is not really a good way to improve your strength at even games, because the moves played in handicap games are often either overplays or slack. Nevertheless, if you want one book about handicap games, this one is not bad. 7/10 if you’re interested in handicap games; 3.5/10 otherwise; 3k-2d

Lee Changho's Novel Plays and Shapes—Lee Changho

           After flipping through the book again, I just noticed that a chunk of the book is out of order *shrugs*. Anyways, I think I got this book because I wanted to learn more about cool moves or something. However, this book is kind of more of a joseki book about “new” (in the context of the year 2000) moves and analyzes them. The analysis is pretty thorough, but as I think I said somewhere before, books are in my opinion not the ideal way to study joseki. 5/10; 4d-6d

A Dictionary of Modern Fuseki: The Korean Style—Seolim Publishing Company

           If you scroll down further, you’ll see that I have a sub-section for reference books and dictionaries. However, this book is so old (published in 2000) that it doesn’t really deserve to go in that section anymore. I actually have a kind of funny story about this book. In the Fall of 2008, I participated in a UMBC tournament (I was 3k at the time), my second real-life tournament ever. I won all three of my games, which won me one book from a selection at a table. I really wanted this book out of all of the ones there, so I was really excited at the conclusion of the tournament. The prizes were announced from the bottom division up, and in the division right before mine (I think), the winner took this book, leaving me feeling rather disappointed (I was 13 at the time). I think I ended up getting Understanding How to Play Go instead, but in the back of my mind I still wanted to get this book. Fast forward about five years later, where I finally got my hands on the book. I believe I opened it once or twice and then dropped it. It’s so old that komi had been changed to 6.5 from 5.5 (under Japanese rules) after the book was published. Openings and josekis have changed so much over the past decade and a half that many of the variations have become almost obsolete. If you want to study openings (at the dan level, so not just basic principles), look at modern pro games instead. 2/10; 1k-1d

A Way of Play in the 21st Century—Go Seigen

           What do I remember most about this book? Falling asleep and never finishing it. Anyways, I think I got this book because it was by Go Seigen and I was interested in studying his games and stumbled upon this book when picking out a prize after a TM tournament. Anyways, it’s basically another opening book, although pretty outdated in terms of modern styles (this book was published in 1997). The language in the explanations are also sort of dry, but Go Seigen’s small excerpts about his thoughts on Go as a game at the beginning of each chapter are pretty interesting to read. I can’t say that reading this book will improve your Go a great deal, but it is okay for seeing Go Seigen’s insights and judgments about certain positions. 5.5/10; 1k-4d

Jungsuk in Our Time—Seo Beong-soo and Jung Dong-sik

           Ahh…yea I got this book too when I was around 5d and wanted to improve my joseki knowledge. Unfortunately, this book, like several of the others on my list, as published over a decade ago (2000) and has since been rendered somewhat obsolete in the face of modern Go. That’s not saying that these old books are necessarily bad, but rather that they don’t consider modern variations that have become more popular lately. In addition, with WeiqiTV being accessible online and daily updates of pro game records, joseki books have become less helpful as a print form. I just found that I still have a bookmark smack in the middle of this book, so maybe I’ll finish it someday just for the sake of finishing it. 4/10; 5d+

21st Century New Openings Volume 1—Kim Sung-rae

           This book was published in…oh wait! You can’t even find the publishing date in the book for some reason. After doing some research online, I think the publishing date is 2008 and that the English version was not translated later than the Korean version, but that they were published at the same time. You might still be able to guess what I am going to say about this book based on the previous couple books. Looking at the second volume on Sensei’s Library, the first sentence says, “Originally Kim Sung-rae planned to write one Fuseki book every 3 years, but due to a great deal of new developments since the first book he decided to publish the 2nd one earlier than planned.” So yes, the book is already outdated, even though it was only published 6-7 years ago (which when you think about is still a long time). I would say that it’s still ok for the average amateur to study however, considering how it was at least published after komi was changed. That said, I still think it’s not the most efficient way to study opening, and that watching/reading commentaries of modern pro games is much better. 6/10; 4d-5d

**Positional Judgment—Cho Chikun**

           I haven't really fully grasped the concepts of this book yet, but I think it's a really good book about a very important topic, as positional judgment becomes increasingly important at the mid-dan level. I think I've gone through it once before, but I don't remember much about it and am currently slowly making my way through it again. I think it's definitely valuable for any mid-dan level player. 9/10; 5d+

Go as Communication: The Educational and Therapeutic Value of the Game of Go—Yasutoshi Yasuda

           Okay this book isn't actually about improving your strength, but rather talks about the educational (non Go-related) value that Go as a game has on both young and elderly people, and methods of how to promote Go. It's a pretty interesting read for those Go promoters out there.