This week I have been tackling the 78 problems in Yoda Norimoto's Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki (my last inter-library loan). Other than some apparent issues with translations, especially the frequent comments accompanying "Failure" variations that describe that play as skillful finesse (?!), and what must be some diagram errors, the book is extremely interesting and valuable, IMHO. In particular, I feel that it is helping to improve my positional judgment. While I've been working on my tactics, lately doing some 1,200 intermediate problems at GoChild, this book balances that urge to kill/save with a better realization of when to let stones go, or even toss a few more on the sacrificial altar, for compensation elsewhere. Of course, sometimes I am forced to accept the author's final assessment without seeing the exact compensation--I suspect the book is meant for shodans--but I still recommend this book for SDKs or near-SDKs, or maybe even DDKs as I feel I am getting a lot out of the instruction.

Edit: As I have seen mentioned elswhere (Senseis, I believe), the construction of this book seems remiss. In particular, the glue holding the binding was seperating when I received it--bad enough for the library to place a note about this--and now several individual pages are coming loose. I am not hard on books; I don't fold the cover back or even flatten books out. Caveat emptor.