19 August 2014

Borrowing a Chess Book

After posting about Chess Books in the Internet Archive, I downloaded a few titles to my Kindle and have spent so much time reading them that I've neglected to prepare today's post for this blog. What to do now?

One title I noticed available for 'Borrow' was "Chess in Literature", edited by Marcello Truzzi (Equinox Books / Avon, 1974). Curious to see its content, I've bid for the book once or twice on eBay, only to be outbid. Here was my chance to take a look at it.

I checked the book out -- it's 'Borrow' after all -- and opened it on my laptop using Archive.org's built-in reader. (It would be better to get it on my Kindle, but I don't know how to do that, assuming it's even possible.) The following image shows the book's contents.

Starting with Franklin's 'Morals of Chess', I'm sure that many of these selections are available elsewhere on the Internet, but what about 'The Chess-Player' by Anonymous (p.322)? A search on the story's first sentence, 'Those whose interest in records of the supernatural', locates several copies, apparently authored by 'Temple Bar'.

At the end of Truzzi's book (p.421) is a list of additional titles.

A Final Word. As with any such collection, numerous pieces that were considered for inclusion had to be omitted for reasons of space and cost. Those who enjoyed this collection might wish to seek out a few of these, the best of which include:
  • Woody Allen, "The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers" (1971)
  • Poul Anderson, "The White King's War" (1969)
  • Robert Benchley, "How to Watch a Chess Match" (1922)
  • E.M. Forster, "Chess at Cracow" (1932)
  • John P. Marquand, "The End Game" (1944)
  • Alfred Noyes, "Checkmate" (1924)
  • Kurt Vonnegut, "All the King's Horses" (1951)

While I was working my way back-and-forth through the book, I received many, sporadic 'disconnected' messages and finally saw this:-

Connection error: The BookReader cannot reach Open Library. This might mean that you are offline or that Open Library is down. Please check your Internet connection and refresh this page or try again later.

Looks like I have to end the post here. Now how do I return the book I borrowed?

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