How Life Imitates Chess (Self Help Book)

Finished: Sometime near the end of February

Author: Garry Kasparov, the Russian Chess guy.

Length: Approximately 220 pages

Synopsis: Garry Kasparov spells out a strategy to tackling life's problems by making allusions to his chess career and the important games/matches of his life.

Highs: The analysis on his chess career. Discussing prioritizing your life. Discussing how to focus on the long term but build on your short term tactics. Being aggressive. Focusing on being creative in multiple facets of your life.

Lows: So. Freaking. Boring. The pages move like cold molasses. The chess games are described in vaguely qualitative terms at best. Kasparov comes off as a total egomaniac at points, rarely criticizing himself.

Views: I don't know, I really don't know. It was by far the most average book I've read all year. It wasn't a page turner, or very good. But the book did not induce me to throw it out the window or at a wall, either. Are self-help books supposed to be page turners? Because this one wasn't. Garry Kasparov is many things, the first one being very knowledgeable of himself. He knows he's kind of a big deal, and throughout the entire book you can tell he has an attitude of "yeah, I'm a big success, here's how you can try to be a success". The selling point of the book is "HEY LOOK CHESS THERE IS CHESS IN THIS BOOK", but--honestly--I am pretty much qualified to write the same amount of chess in this book as he does. That's not because I'm a chess grandmaster (heh, far from it), but that's because the chess that is involved is so vague and described in such a bare bones manner that the reader really gets no handle on the chess at all. I understand why: so even the most naive person towards chess can fully utilize the book. It's just frustrating because if you want to use chess as your canvas to illustrate your points, then USE CHESS AS A CANVAS TO ILLUSTRATE YOUR POINTS. No one is going to pick up a book about how "Life Imitates Chess" if they don't have a semi-competent grasp of the game of chess. Those people will buy a Chicken Soup for the Soul books or that book about An Inspired Life. CALL TO YOUR AUDIENCE GARRY. Plus, you must humiliate yourself a bit to look credible in a self help book. Indulge in your mistakes to make your audience relate to you. Garry fails at this hard, and I think this is the greatest short coming in the book. Instead of learning from a charming, relatable guy, I feel like I'm being preached at by a teacher. Garry takes on the role of a charming teacher, but he makes sure to establish a sense of superiority. I learned some stuff from this book, mostly to be aggressive and not shy away from my creativity (Garry would approve of this blog, I suppose), but he did it in such a boring, preachy way.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.