I think the more books the better too!

It's pretty common in chess, poker, or go, where when you are reading new material that you're partially absorbing new ideas and your game deteriorates...

Think of it as experimenting!


I'm curious too, what books you were peeking at, and what were some 'ideas' were you 'sorta' trying out?


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I think it's true with a lot of games [sports too], and learning music, that one just keeps studying modestly and you keep playing regularly and just by magic, you slowly improve.

There's also something to be said for making sure you got more and more of the basics covered, it's true with chess, or one's leaks in poker. But quick progress is all about what you study and the order in which you study it. As well and figuring out where you did a 'bad move'.


You're at the level where you can still get some mileage out of
G2 Basic Techniques of Go

and still get good use of the Elementary Go Series still
[only G11 38 Basic Joseki and G16 Handicap Go are going to stop being useful to you]

And you're at the perfect strength for G6 Strategic Concepts of Go

and the Get Strong/xxx Problem books fits in nicely for single digit kyus as well

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but it's pretty common for people to totally look at things differently at certain stages of their game too. But i think of it not as the books as sinking the boat, but new ideas and new weapons sinking the boat. It makes you respect how new ideas can be tricky to master, or figuring out a bad move might be really really difficult to pinpoint. [a lot easier with chess and chess computers when you search for weak moves in your games, or the older literature]


study-play-enjoy-study-play-enjoy...

don't forget the enjoy part... studying too hard and wanting to win too much can sometimes klll it


but there's a lot of awesome advice tossed already on here about things, and to always keep browsing and to also keep studying 1 or 2 books as thoroughly as you can, and to re-read most of your books when you go up a few notches.