LibraryThing

[mikekn]

Today I finally entered some books into LibraryThing. Since I've had the account since 2005, I figured it was time to use it.

I added all the books about games that I have, plus a few others that were on the same shelves (99 in total - couldn't find that one more game book and didn't want to start a different topic). Now maybe I'll be able to keep myself from buying duplicate :)

On a related note - someone has reprinted Willard Fiske's "Chess in Iceland". I'm not sure what the quality of the book is since they mention "it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control."

Comments

[jducoeur]

On a related note - someone has reprinted Willard Fiske's "Chess in Iceland".

You continue to feed my addiction to game books. So be it: I just ordered it from Amazon. We'll see what it's like...

[mikekn]

Looks like the company is scanning and publishing lots of books that are out of copyright. I did some more searching around and found that Google Books also has it:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=cIqKivFPPPQC

[jducoeur]

Frustratingly, the paper copy is every bit as bad as the one in Google. It looks like the original was a pretty wretched copy to begin with. It's about 80% fine, but the other 20% of the pages range from smudgy to almost missing.

Oh, well -- it was cheap, and it's one of those sources I'd always meant to look up. Like most Victorian scholarship, it looks rich in data, even if one must be cautious about the analysis. And it's amusingly heavy on discussion that doesn't really have anything to do with Chess or Iceland -- the topic wanders like a drunken sailor. It's 25 pages about Chess in Iceland, followed by 300 of "Stray Notes"...