I’m a librarian in a chess school. It’s Banned Book Week, so I’ll mention the one time I wanted to ban a book (but didn’t, and didn’t even shelve it so I could not find it later).
A chap named Robert J. Richey hit some Bay Area chess clubs years back, promoting his first (there are more than one now, unfortunately) chess book, Blitz Chess Puzzles.
I bought one, because if a chess book author is so desperate for sales that he’s going club to club, that dude either needs to sell some books, or be treated at the Burger King.
I learned that Richey doesn’t play chess. He can’t play chess. While Richey was generating his books about trains and other topics he actually knew something about, his brother challenged (dared, more like it) him to create a chess book with the chess skills he possessed (that is, none).
There is a copy in the Berkeley Chess School library, because excluding it would’ve been the wrong thing to do. The bookseller at the Kolty Chess Club has a copy on this table, and when he wants to annoy me, he waves it around.