Fans pick 100 books like The First Book of Swords

This book took me on a journey with a group of unlikely heroes, starting with their decision to enlist to fight in the war, following them through their training as paratroopers, and ending the conflict. Like many World War II veterans, they were volunteers. But the anticipation leading up to D-Day and the hell they went through in the woods of Bastogne was more than anyone could have ever expected.

Few histories of World War II hit me as hard as this one. As a child of the 1960s and 1970s, the war has always fascinated me. I’d read about the strategy, the epic battles, and the atrocities committed by the Axis Powers, but I’ve returned to this book many times over the past thirty years.

When I closed this book, I set it down and said, “Wow.” I really enjoy reading science books—the ones written for non-scientific folks like me…books by Michio Kaku and Brian Greene—and this one combines my love of thrillers and science in a fantastic way. Jason Dessen is kidnapped and begins a long journey to return home, but to do so, he visits many alternate versions of Chicago.

As every chapter ended, I wanted to continue reading to find out what happened to Jason and his family, to see some new version of Chicago, and to see how or if Jason succeeded. The novel kept surprising me, and Crouch played with the implications of some wild physics concepts.

This was my first introduction to Sanderson’s work, and I knew within a few pages that we were going to be a good fit. I’d just gotten off of reading through Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and the “multiple POVs” angle of the book was a big pull for me.

The frankly bizarre world of the book (and the series of which this is book 1, The Stormlight Archive) was so full of strange creatures and patterns–so studded with interesting, resourceful characters–that I couldn’t put it down over the course of days to finish it.

This book’s charming combination of sentient spaceships, quirky and interesting alien races, a touch of horror, and a rag-tag group of main characters thrust into a do-or-die situation apparently way beyond their respective abilities pushed a lot of my buttons in all the right ways.

Thus, this series has become another fast favorite of mine. I often recommend it to new science-fiction readers as I feel it’s a near-perfect introduction to the “space opera” sub-genre.

Between 1920 and 1945, the strength of Soviet chess exploded, propelling Soviet players to the top of the chess world – a status held in a vice-like grip for many years after.

There was no more prestigious yearly event than the Soviet Championship, and its winner was of huge political importance: this player should demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet way of life to the decadent West.

Inevitably, the championships produced both amazing chess and great personal drama, and both aspects are beautifully documented by historian Sergey Voronkov in 3 volumes covering the period from 1920 to 1953, replete with photos, cartoons, and poems from the tournament reports of the era. 

As a child fascinated by chess, I devoured chess books about the old masters – colourful, eccentric geniuses who drew me into a world that I’ve never since wanted to leave!

Chess in those days was not just about who was the strongest, but also on a philosophical level about who was playing the “chess of the future”.

Hendriks examines the long rivalry between the first World Champion Steinitz and his challenger Zukertort through their writings – often conducted via fierce polemics in their respective newspaper columns – and their 1886 World Championship match.

It’s a moving human story which highlights that the winner’s narrative (“Steinitz won, and defeated an old-fashioned player with modern chess”) is not always the correct one! 

When I’m not writing or researching chess books, history books and biographies are about all I read these days. Not until college did I realize how amazing a well-written history book could be, telling a great story about how people actually lived in different times and cultures. After 9/11 I wanted to avoid the soundbites and actually understand the history of religious conflict. In my view a great history book must have amazing research and wonderful writing, as well as being fair and balanced, and this trilogy was one of the best I’ve ever read on all counts. It still blows my mind that an author can put together a compelling, accurate, day-to-day account of events that happened 1000 years ago. You have to read it to believe it.

Harold Schonberg explores the nuances of what goes into creating a brilliant chess player across the vast history of chess. The characters he details within this gem of a book rival anything he assembled in his other breathtaking tomb on classical music, “The Lives Of Great Composers.” Schonberg’s backstories of the rogues gallery of chess great add such texture and nuance to the vast eccentricity at the heart of genius chess players and also highlights the times in which they lived so that they and it comes to life. Probably my favorite resource for my work with “The Grandmaster.”

Stephen Moss’s book about the history of chess and his obsession with it is one of the most pleasurable reads about chess for chess laymen. It’s a kaleidoscopic portrait of the game and the characters and his own personal journey with the game is filled with color and humor. As Moss seeks fulfillment and gratification from the game he encounters a kind of mental torture again and again that resonated a great deal for me with so many of the people who devoted their lives to chess, willingly or unable to resist. 

This book was easy to pick up and hard to put down, and immediately, I felt that the candor of the writing was like an extension of the main character, Beth. This is a tale about an orphaned girl who is beset on all sides by terrible situations, and of course, she is deeply affected by it all. I believe that tough times make tough people, and it always delights me to read about adversity being overcome by the downtrodden.

I loved how the story didn’t gloss over the inevitable changes that life brought Beth. She rose to the challenges and blossomed into a chess master in an arena that does not usually favor the young or the female. It’s inspiring!