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MannyRayner

Manny Rayner's book reviews

I love reviewing books - have been doing it at Goodreads, but considering moving here.

Currently reading

The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution
Richard Dawkins
R in Action
Robert Kabacoff
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
Douglas R. Hofstadter
McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture
Harold McGee
Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood
Simon Evnine
Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics)
Christopher M. Bishop
Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology
Richard C. Tolman
The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
Julia Herschensohn, Martha Young-Scholten

Chess Champion from China: The Life and Games of Xie Jun

Chess Champion from China - Xie Jun [With apologies to Abbott and Costello]

- Who's the current Women's World Chess Champion?

- Yes.

- I said, who's the current...

- That's right.

- Well?

- Hou.

- So why don't you tell me?

- I just did.

- Sorry, who is the reigning women's champion?

- I think we agree on this. Can we talk about something else?

- Wait a minute. You're saying that the Women's World Chess Champion is someone called "Hou"?

- You've finally got it. Congratulations. Hou Yifan. Very strong young Chinese woman.

- So she's the current champion?

- No.

- But you just said she was.

- No, Xie isn't.

- Who isn't?

- No, Hou is. Xie was Women's World Champion in the 90s.

[continues ad infinitum]
_______________________________

- One of those Chinese players certainly won a nice game today!

- How?

- That's right.

- I said, how?

- Yes, he did.

- Wait, we've been here before. Don't tell me, there's a Chinese player called...

- Hao. Wang Hao. Strong supergrandmaster. Put away Giri in 22 moves with a speculative Bf7 sacrifice.

- Did you see it live?

- Well, I would imagine so.

- I'm sorry?

- Since he's in the same event, I'm sure he would have.

- Who would have?

- Not Hou, Yue.

- Me?

- No, Yue.

[continues ad infinitum]