This is a book on techniques (surrounding, connecting, attaching, hanes, etc.). It has 30 pages of exposition and 186 pages of problems (comprising 45 problems, so the solutions have quite a lot of exposition themselves).
I don't like the expository portion very much. Basically, it's too short to do more than serve as a reminder to the topics contained therein. So it's probably best to think of this as a problem book, with a reminder section at the beginning.
As to the problems, they're okay. Each problem has three pages of explanation (comprising six diagrams), which is nice. They often turn out to be joseki problems, but presented from a "find the correct shape in this position" point of view rather than a "what's the next move in this joseki?" point of view, which is kind of interesting. Still, they didn't excite me too much.
The front cover says that this is volume one; nothing inside talks about what might be in future volumes. The author's name is perhaps more commonly spelled "Cho Hun-hyun".
Dan Schmidt (NNGS 6k*) says:
I like this book a lot. I think it is aimed at a weaker player than David is, which is why he finds much of it uninteresting. The expository section, while short, is very clear, and explains fundamentals in more detail than one often sees. The problems are simple but have detailed solutions (along with excellent explanations of why alternate moves that look good to a 10 kyu are mistakes), a combination that is unfortunately rather rare in other Go literature. Working through them, I never got the (common to me) feeling of 'I know my proposed answer must be wrong, but I have no idea why'. I find this an excellent book for reviewing fundamentals. I'd recommend it for 15k (for whom it will contain many revelations) all the way through 5k (for whom it will be a good review).
Click here to see Yutopian's blurb about the book.
Last modified: Sun Aug 10 20:59:39 PDT 2003