[Eng] Revisiting Old Hobbies: Chess and Non-fiction Reading

My first ever post in full English! Wow!

I realized that my English writing skill needs some polishing, specifically the popular writing
one. This strange time turned out to be a perfect time to channel the extra energy (and time)
to hone my popular writing skill. While aspiring to be as good as Malcolm Gladwell someday,
let’s take a single step with an eighth-grade level essay on my new routines: revisiting my old
hobbies in chess and non-fiction reading.

I started learning chess when I was a second-grader in elementary school. It did not take
long before I mastered the basics and started to be considered as a strong player among my
age – which is a very low level, needless to say. I was drawn to it to a point where I asked
my parents to hire my PE teacher to be my personal chess tutor. A turning point was when I
(as a third grader) was able to beat a fourth-grader in a game of chess spectated by
practically everyone in my and his class, although to be honest it was not really fair because I
received a lot of help from my PE teacher in finishing the sure-to-win endgame (which I might
probably struggle had I done that on my own). Suddenly I became the chess superstar in my
school.

Although later I quickly lose my interest in the organized chess training with my PE teacher, I
still played for fun with my father and friends throughout the elementary and junior high
school. While I won most of the game with my peers, I was only recognized as equal in terms
of skill by my father in the eight-grade. This routine, however, did not survive throughout the
senior high school and college times due to the increasing academic obligations and I was
more drawn into football, although I played a couple of games in the college since chess was
more common there than it was in my high school.

Revisiting chess was a bit awkward for me. I installed several chess apps on my phone and
started playing against AI at the ELO rating of 1500s. I remember that as an eighth-grader I
once easily defeated a 2000s rated AI (which I think now is way more overrated than its
actual skill), so I was confident I can beat the 1500s one right away. It turned out that I
consistently lost and now only being able to play equally with 1200-1400s rated AI.

While I might lose my skill due to the long hiatus, I think now my opening skill is more refined
that I am able to play a quite variation of chess openings (although for now it is still limited to
d4 and e4 openings). In other words, instead of pinpointing my ability I was able to broaden
my chess skillset. However, the same weakness remains: I am still prone to silly blunder
even after gaining a lot of material advantage.

Reading non-fiction is another story. I only started my reading habit at the end of my 1 st
college year, although my encounter to a non-fiction book started roughly two years before
when I randomly borrowed Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People from the
school library (at the time I did not even know how popular the book was). Before later being
more drawn into thought and philosophy genre, I was familiarizing myself with books by
reading a lot of western non-fiction one, mainly on the self-help and popular psychology
genre. Malcolm Gladwell writings were of a particular favorite of mine (especially David and
Goliath), while others such as Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, Susan Cain’s Quiet, and
James Collins’ Good to Great also fill my bookshelf in the favorite category.

Transforming into a bit of a bookworm at the time, I made a goal to read and review a
minimum of fifty books throughout my bachelor time (and I did it!). However, the review was
mostly poorly written because I was doing it just for the hell of it. Now that my interest in the
non-fiction book resurfaces, I want to make a more thorough review of the books that I read.
My review of David Epstein’s Range and Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
in this blog are the result of that, with my aim now is another fifty thorough review on non-
fiction books (I wonder if I will have time for that).

However, properly reviewing a book takes a lot of effort, mainly because you have to keep
track of the details while not losing sight of the general overview of each chapter and the
book itself. This is not to mention carefully selecting important points of the book to be
highlighted in the review. Even after all that being done, you might still struggle to find the
exact page in which you want to extract the information to be written in the review. Thus, I
usually write notes on a separate piece of paper, keeping track of the general overview of
each chapter and as much as possible mark the page numbers which are important to be
highlighted later.

Another trick that I use is to watch the review/discussion of the book beforehand. This helps
in making sense of what the book is all about, and even sometimes provide a more elaborate
but simple explanation on some of the chapters. There might be times when you are
struggling in making sense of a chapter, only being saved by remembering the usually easier
to grasp explanation in the talk.

I must admit that although I already read a lot of books (probably reached >100 by now),
there are a lot of cases where I finished a book but simply did not understand any of it – or
very little, if any. I hope that my activity of thoroughly reviewing the book can somehow make
me a better reader who can read, understand, memorize, appreciate, and even criticize the
book and connecting the dots with other books (or anything). I know it is not easy, but surely
worth a try!