First, I apologize to Robert for being so late to write up something about his book, Fighting Fundamentals.

Back in late November last year (around Nov 22, 2013), Robert mailed me a copy from Germany.
The book arrived in excellent condition here in California on Dec 2, 2013:(For some bizarre reason, the two photos are rotated 90 degrees.
They should be "vertical", with resolution 480x640. I don't know why when I uploaded them here,
they got rotated sideways. )

The agreement was that Robert would send me a copy of the book,
and in return I would post a review of it.

I did a very quick scan of the book (every page), and started writing down notes.
But a combination of things happening in life and my procrastination,
and I never actually started writing (except for pencil notes on pages of the book.)

I have never written a review of a book before, and this task seems very big.

So instead of one giant review, I'm going to post (much) shorter "impressions" here in this thread.
From time to time I'll probably come back and edit them.

Fighting Fundamentals, by Robert Jasiek.

Version and date (printed on page 2): 1; 2013-05-27
Also on page 2 is a handwritten (what I assume) license number: 0007 0079192.
(The "1" looks the capital Greek letter lambda Λ; I think it's the digit one. )

Packaging of the book: excellent. The book arrived in mint condition (see photos in previous post),
with sufficient protection and padding inside the envelope.

Quality of the paper of the book covers: Excellent. (Thicker than a normal business card.)

Quality of the inside paper: Excellent.

Unfortunately, I don't know the professional measurements of the various paper thicknesses.
I also don't have a caliper. Otherwise I can get an estimate of how many pages per inch or cm, etc.

But I can tell the book covers are thicker than all my other paperback Go book covers.
My copy of Invincible is hardcover, so we cannot compare apples and oranges.
This is also the first and only copy of Robert's book I have, so I cannot compare its paper quality
to his other books.

The inside pages are also thicker than the pages of my Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go,
and the pages of my joseki dictionaries by Takao and Ishida.

The binding seems sturdy. I also don't know the professional terms of the quality of the glue.
Of course, only time will tell how this book stands up to use.

But I am very impressed by the quality of the "hardware" (i.e. the papers) of the book.
If all paperback Go books were produced with this quality of paper, I'd be very happy.
(Of course, it would probably result in high prices.)

Suggestion for improvement: currently, the book uses the so-called "dumb" or typewriter quotation marks:

'typewriter single quotes'
apostrophe: Tom's cat
"typerwriter double quotes"

Personally, I much prefer the curly versions:

‘Curly single quotes’
apostrophe: Tom’s cat
“Curly double quotes”

I set the font to Times here because it looks similar or identical to the font used in the book.

I apologize for the following excerpt, but I want to show the difference between the two different quote styles:

Currently in the book (page 15):I much prefer the curly versions:( The bolded terms are in the book; they are not my emphases. )

Suggestion for improvement: some of the names of pro games are italicized, and some are not.
Pick one style and use it 100 per cent throughout the book.

For example, on Dec 9, 2013, I spent only 9 minutes 41 seconds to scan every page of the book,
looking through all the pro game names and marked all the inconsistent italics.

Page 24: Example 9: Kim Se-tong 2p - Song T'ae-kon 9p - 2011-04-26.

Page 31: Example 1: Ishida Akira 9p - Kong Xiangming 7p - 1985-06-01.

On Page 37, we see both usages on the same page:

Page 37: Example 2: Otake Hideo 9p - Kudo Norio 9p - 1978-03-30.

Page 37: Example 3: Oyama Kunio 9p - Ushinohama Satsuo 9p - 1982-10-28.

So far your review is mainly about the construction of the physical book and the arrangements of the italics and quote styles. What can you tell us about the usefulness of the book to a go player seeking to learn how to fight better and how this book compares with other books that are available? Are there areas that you think need to be further elaborated for clarity of thought?

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Paper and binding: careful interaction between publisher and printer play a great role in getting good results. Of course, choosing the right papers is an important factor.

The usual font is Times New Roman.

Typography: the style of quotation marks also is a matter of preference. Typography in general: getting this right is beyond average readers' preference for go book prices. My rough estimate is that good typography would result in EUR 3 increments of a book's price.

Italics for player information: the concept in this book has been to use italics when the player information is followed by regular contents in the same paragraph and otherwise to avoid italics. So (I hope) it is consistent throughout the book, but maybe always italics would have been better or maybe it is another matter of personal preference.

Question for Robert (and more about this in later posts): I assume your native language is German ?

Have you written much about Go in your native language (German) ?
For example, all your published English Go books -- did you first write all of them in German ?
And then you translated them into English, or, did you write them directly in English ?
Are there German-language versions of your English Go books ?

I'm wondering whether other native, professional German writers (or editors) have reviewed any of your writing in your native language ?

tchan,

I am a native German. I write the books in English. Usually, their English is proofread by native British English speakers for easily apparent spelling, grammar and style mistakes. They are proofread a few times by myself. I do not write in German because that would mean very much extra time (ca. 6 - 8 additional weeks, I guess) for writing, translation and proofreading. For similar reasons, I have not translated my books to German yet.

Robert, Thank you for your reply.

It is the German (European?) way to write digit one the left leg of lambda is as long as the right one, in digit 1 this is not the case. Also, if you look at Times, Helvetica, etc., all the “one”s have this little hook to the left


It’s even worse. Dumb single and double quote marks are the same as foot/inch marks.

The “curly” quotation marks are also called “typographic” quote marks, BTW, and for a reason … they are not “nicer” but make the text actually more readable. I have remarked this before …

Uhm, yes, TOO usual, as in “too common” (but OK, it’s readable).

Well, plainly said: this is nonsense. Form has to follow function. Ugly is counterproductive. I apologize for the pain this may mean to you, but … it simply is true.

I’m quite sure it is NOT beyond average readers’ preference, but I get the impression it is beyond your will to find the appropriate keyboard shortcuts—or editing preferences in the program of your choice … or the software you use for typesetting is simply inappropriate = unprofessional.

Also, I would gladly pay 3 € more (or make that 5 €) for a properly typeset book (if the content is worth it at all).

It definitely still shows, but I noticed that the quality of your English in your last books has improved.

TBH, it’s still not enough for my taste, sometimes it is really painful to read it, especially if one can imagine your German thoughts behind a sentence. (I’m also German, but I began speaking English at age of four, reading/writing DE and EN at age of five.)

Oh well <shrug> I guess I don’t need to repeat how almost useless it is to proofread one’s own writing.

<sigh> I dearly wish you’d write your books in German first, since you probably underestimate the interest our fellow German Go players would show in your books. Many of them are not fluent in English, and reading your sometimes clumsy English surely is harder for them than reading perfect English.

But I repeat: it has gotten better, and I still read your books despite their linguistic and typographic shortcomings.

Robert, you are not only the author but also the publisher, and it shows that, except for your own experience in writing and publishing yourself, you have little experience in publishing. And most people don't read content like programmers read code (which I assume you do). (But even code is more readable with appropriate indentation and blank lines )

My recommendations (and you are free to disregard them )


Herzliche Grüße, Tom
dearly hopes he didn’t make any serious editing mistakes in this sermon (-;

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I can only chime in saying that if the book is typeset (for instance) in TeX/LaTeX, most TeX editors (emacs, TexShop too, I think, and most I have used before) can automatically turn "" expressions into neater quotation marks before rendering.

I read the book and liked it, as stated elsewhere. I think complaining about this is quite nitpicking: I've read quite a lot of go books which are way, way worse, specially in the translation sense (I checked the Spanish translation of a book in SmartGo and it was so bad it hurts,) but also in the typographical, paper quality and diagram quality, but we usually skip these items when thinking about these books. Robert pays a lot of attention to this, though, and this is commendable.

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Bonobo, if I applied your ideas on typography, I would need to stop writing books, because I would spend too much time per book. You still do not realise that go books do NOT sell 5000 copies each. A properly typesetted, perfectly proofread, German first etc. book would cost at least EUR 20 ~ 30 more. Maybe YOU want to pay this amount (EUR 40 or 50), but I assure you that the average go player does not want to spend that much money per book.

As a former editor, I just have to say

As a former editor, I just have to say (don't bother telling me about double negatives if you don't get it)

Interesting, thanks!

I think the purpose of a review/impression should be to help others make the decision if the book is worth buying or not. All this stuff about paper thickness and cover quality, and quotes and italics, are not very helpful in this respect. I think if you take time to write something, you could have done a much better service by writing a few words/impressions about the actual content rather than concentrating about packaging. Just personal opinion.

You know the saying: don't judge a book by its cover? Yes?

_________________
- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Poor Ed. He seems to intend writing a lot about the book and is scolded for not already having finished...

In this case, my apologies.
I got mislead by the ass-backward approach.
I seriously expected to lead with the important stuff and and then fizzle down to paper thickness.

But, of course, you are correct.
Again - my apologies.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!