I read bridge books too.

And sometimes miscellaneous fiction and non-fiction.

Now that gives me an idea. I have dozens of bridge books which I bought before I started playing go. Maybe some of these are classics and out of print. I should think of adding those to my auction site as I have not read them in over 30 years.

I also have many old bridge books. The problem with them is that practically everything on bidding a lot of defensive play (lead cards, defensive signaling) has long been outdated.

Perhaps true, but they still have curiosity value for the avid player.

Yes. I for one liked to study the ideas of old, famous bidding systems like Roman Club or Marmic, but there is very little material available, especially in English. You don't happen to have anything on these, do you?

To be honest, I don't remember what I have, it has been so long. I have books on several old (ie 1960s & 70s) bidding systems. I remember one time my partner and I decided to try an experiment: we used a different bidding system at each table at the weekly duplicate bridge session.

In that case I'll be one of the first to vote.... yes I do read non-go books, but not regularly... I used to, then I ended up reading all the good ones... and going to the library is such a hassle, not to mention the fees they are putting out now. Somewhere around 50-75 cents per book per day that you are late. Ridiculous.... I'll be visiting Barnes noble a little more often, but since they are out of town not that often. Can you believe that they closed the only big bookstore(Walden's) in town? It is like the city is encouraging illiteracy...

Only recently did I start reading Sherlock Holmes stories, which I've found fantastic.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Shogun, by James Clavell. One of the few books that actually deserves to be over 1000 pages.

A great many other readers had a similar reaction to the series as Kirk's. In fact, from the trend line of the sales stats over the course of the series it looks as if Most readers had that reaction. I'm not sure that "repetitive" is the word I would use to describe the feeling, though. I think that many readers dropped off for two reasons: First, there was a general perception that the quality of the writing sagged quite a bit in the later volumes. While that sort of judgment is inherently subjective, I think it was pretty widely shared. In the case of the final volume, even Wingrove acknowledges it and offers a reason, that it was something of a rush job dictated by the terms of his advance. Secondly, the nature of the plotlines changed so greatly that the later volumes might as well be considered to be in an entirely different genre than the first three or four. Even if they had all been of equal quality, they might well have appealed to such different audiences that avid readers of the early books might not be interested in the later.

The series was originally supposed to be nine volumes. The last two were essentially condensed into one for the aforementioned contractual reasons. The new series will reverse that. Each of the original books was quite lengthy, with the paperback editions running 6-800 words. Most of the foreign translations split the English volumes into two or three books each. The revised editions will add a certain amount of new material and will essentially publish each previous volume as two. Combined with the expansion of the original volume eight into something approximating the plots of what should have been vols eight and nine, the split will yield 18 books. A prequel will begin the new series, bringing it to 19.