Funniest cover for a go book

[aokun]

I would imagine that collectors would want copies of this book because if Amazon bans it seems likely not many copies will be sold and it will be rather rare. I doesn't matter whether the book is any good or not (I think probably not). Colletors seem to search for scarce books like The World of Ki by John Goodell even if they are not good.

I think it is probably fair to say that no collector in any English-speaking country is as fanatic as I am about acquiring every book on go ever pubished. However, even I don't see a print-on-demand volume of material reprinted from public websites as having value. Perhaps if I could get it for a tiny fraction of the cost, then I would consider it for its curiousity value. Also, if Alphascript/VDM were to get busted and the case ended up as a legally significant moment in internet copyright law, then it might be worth something as an exemplar. Otherwise I'm not sure it represents a part of even a completist collection, Besides, would a completist collector have to by a new "edition" every time one of the wikipedia articles is updated?
chiwito

I have loosened up my "complete" thing because, happily, Slate and Shell, Oromedia, Kiseido and the others have been cranking out books at such a pace I have no time to read them or space to put them. I'll catch up to them in time if possible. I am always looking for the old and/or weird books, when I hear about them. I have to say, ordinarily, fairly bogus wikipedia reprints wouldn't interest me one bit ... they're not real books ... but this cover is making me sorely tempted, I gotta say. I can see have it in my funny or notorious section.

[chiwito]

I have loosened up my "complete" thing because, happily, Slate and Shell, Oromedia, Kiseido and the others have been cranking out books at such a pace I have no time to read them or space to put them. .

Hmm, I've never thought of either time or space being a limiting factor in my completist tendency. I can always rent more storage space, and I don't read most of my go books anyway. Many are in languages I can't read, and many others, especially among my collection of go-related fiction, are multiple editions of the same book. Even if I read every English book in my collection, that would represent only a minority of the total.

chiwito

[gaius]

Hmm, I've never thought of either time or space being a limiting factor in my completist tendency. I can always rent more storage space, and I don't read most of my go books anyway. Many are in languages I can't read, and many others, especially among my collection of go-related fiction, are multiple editions of the same book. Even if I read every English book in my collection, that would represent only a minority of the total.

Wow... Why did you do this? Somehow, buying books with the only goal to put it in a storage somewhere else just sounds like a pretty big waste of paper! I'm probably missing the "romantic" idea about collecting stuff, but maybe you can enlighten me .

[tchan001]

I have loosened up my "complete" thing because, happily, Slate and Shell, Oromedia, Kiseido and the others have been cranking out books at such a pace I have no time to read them or space to put them. .

Hmm, I've never thought of either time or space being a limiting factor in my completist tendency. I can always rent more storage space, and I don't read most of my go books anyway. Many are in languages I can't read, and many others, especially among my collection of go-related fiction, are multiple editions of the same book. Even if I read every English book in my collection, that would represent only a minority of the total.

chiwito

Wow, sounds like you have a big Asian go book collection as well. Would love to hear about the rare books you have collected in this category.

[entropi]

Wow... Why did you do this? Somehow, buying books with the only goal to put it in a storage somewhere else just sounds like a pretty big waste of paper! I'm probably missing the "romantic" idea about collecting stuff, but maybe you can enlighten me .

Hmm, wait wait, don't tell, hmmmm, yes, you are an engineer, right

[gaius]

Wow... Why did you do this? Somehow, buying books with the only goal to put it in a storage somewhere else just sounds like a pretty big waste of paper! I'm probably missing the "romantic" idea about collecting stuff, but maybe you can enlighten me .

Hmm, wait wait, don't tell, hmmmm, yes, you are an engineer, right

I'm a physicist actually, but you're close enough

[Liisa]

Hmm, I've never thought of either time or space being a limiting factor in my completist tendency. I can always rent more storage space, and I don't read most of my go books anyway. Many are in languages I can't read, and many others, especially among my collection of go-related fiction, are multiple editions of the same book. Even if I read every English book in my collection, that would represent only a minority of the total.

Wow... Why did you do this? Somehow, buying books with the only goal to put it in a storage somewhere else just sounds like a pretty big waste of paper! I'm probably missing the "romantic" idea about collecting stuff, but maybe you can enlighten me .

These are very good points. New books are really much of wasting paper AND destroying rain forests. Paper industry, especially in China is really bad soil and forest spoiler. And more, there are thousands of people doing useless work in paper mills all over the work. Instead of making paper they could do with their time something useful like playing go.

But personally I like to collect books, even more than reading them, and I do have almost every book published in my e-book reader. I prefer the fact that I have every book ever published in the known universe and I can pay directly to author at the rate what I bump into books that I find interesting.

But I like here the authors choice to include dice in the cover. Suits well the random nature of go! Although go is mathematically a game that includes no random elements, in practice we cannot calculate every variation, but we need to find moves that will bring victory with highest probability.

[illluck]

@Lissa: I doubt the author did it by choice - as pointed out, the game shown is backgammon, not go.

[chiwito]

Wow, sounds like you have a big Asian go book collection as well. Would love to hear about the rare books you have collected in this category.

Well, first of all my total go book collection is probably not a "big" one by your standards, judging by all the posts of yours I've followed on GoDiscussions and on your own blog. I believe I have about 2000 volumes, but a majority of that represents fiction and literature which contain scenes of the game -- things like Master of Go and Hikaru and Shibumi and the like. Not your area of interest, and relatively few in Asian languages. As far as "regular" go books, I have plenty of relative rarities in English, and a decent smatterig of interesting stuff in other western languages, but relatively little in Asian languages. Most of my older or more collectible items in Japanese are from the Kenneth Stubbs collection and consist of various books from the thirties, as well as a few years of Kido and Igo magazines of that era. Now that I've finally gotten all of my go books together in my library, in preparation for a fund-raising house tour later this month, I can start inventorying stuff and figure out what I have. However, I'll probably have to find someone who can translate the Japanese copyright data.

I'd love to try to assemble a collection to copy yours, but for now I just try to get everything I can in western languages and to identify new sightings of go in fiction.

chiwito

[mohsart]

Books LLC, Memphis, Tenneesee, is also printing books from Wikipedia Articles.
Just a small warning...
See eg Traditional Games on Amazon.
"Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge."
What a laugh!

/Mats

[chiwito]

Somehow, buying books with the only goal to put it in a storage somewhere else just sounds like a pretty big waste of paper! I'm probably missing the "romantic" idea about collecting stuff, but maybe you can enlighten me .

Collecting is a hobby. I can't provide any deep psychological reason why I've devoted so much of my life to it, any more than I could if I knitted or cooked or watched European movies. I enjoy the challenge of attempting to amass the most complete collection of go books I can, as well as the interesting people I've known over the years through my collecting hobbies. Although reading is certainly not the main reason I collect, any more than sending letters is a factor for the average stamp collector, I have discovered many new authors whose works I greatly enjoyed from buying and reading books of their which featured go. Currently I am in the middle of a novel called PopCo and it is rather good; I'll probably read a couple more of the author's non-go works.

chiwito

[chiwito]

Wow, sounds like you have a big Asian go book collection as well. Would love to hear about the rare books you have collected in this category.

To expand on my previous answer to tchan, when I first started to collect go-related fiction I decided to concentrate on western languages. Later, as I got more into collecting "regular" go books, I went the same direction. The reasons were twofold. First, although I am a too-typical American and illiterate in every language except my own, I can at least read titles and authors' names and copyright data in European languages which use the latin alphabet. This makes buying and organizing my collection a lot easier than it would be in languages where I can't even read titles and dates. Additionally, I may joke about always being able to rent more storage, and about buying books first and then seeing if I have enough left over for food and rent, but in reality both money and space are finite. In order to assemble a collection in Japanese as thorough as my English one, or even getting as good a sample as I have in French or Czech, would involved thousands of volumes and many thousands of dollars. As a result, I've only bought Asian books when I've gotten a very good deal. However, just yesterday I decided to buy the 1725 volume that you discussed in another thread. The story behind it was too interesting to pass it up. Besides, it may be a first step toward building a collection of Japanese items worth mentioning the next time you ask about it.

chiwito

[sixko]

Those who wonder about the mechanisms behind collecting may like this book:
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

They interviewed Randy Frost one of the authors of this book on NPR awhile back. Fascinating, heartbreaking really, the degree to which people can lose control of their lives through compulsion.