Teach Yourself Go

Rating:
Summary: Solid introduction to the basic strategies of Go
Review: I have checked out several books from the library on Go, and I found this to be one of the better introductory level books. It's not as instructive to the complete novice as Janice Kim's "Learn to Play Go: Volume 1" (an excellent series btw), but it does cover more material. This book goes over some concepts and then has problems that test you on what you've just read about. It covers a wide range of material from basic moves like nets and ladders up to an example of a complete profesional learning game on a 19X19 board.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I found this book to be a disappointment. I'm not sure who the intended audience is. As a complete beginner, I found too many early, basic topics included here to be confusing and poorly explained. This is the sort of book for those who wish they could be reading a math textbook. There's the same concise, almost cryptic style I recall from my months spent hating calculus. Perhaps a better title would be, "Teach Yourself Go Because I'm Not Going to Explain the Easy Stuff." Perhaps others feel this is a delightful read. Not me. P.S. Mr Matthews' contributions to a web site entitled "Sensei's Library" (look for it on Google) are much more relaxed and better written, with clearer explanations for essential concepts. I want to thank him for those writings, but not this thinned-out glossed-over frustrating tome.