In a conversation that I have seen between the writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte and his readers and followers on Twitter you can read a tweet in which he answers the question of: Is the book digestible for a 13 year old child, or do I wait a little longer?:
@coloreskiosco Lo de Leontxo is more for adults. Wait a while.
And although I have not finished reading the book, I am at it and moving at a good pace, it can be said that It is not a children's book although it is a permanent reference book for them because they can read it by opening the work on any page and be fascinated and very excited about the stories it tells. In time, they surely want to know more and there we can help guide, encourage and passionate them.
And is that Leontxo García has written a book that overflows passion for chess, the same one that he indicated to me in the dedication when I bought the book (in the image at the Madrid Book Fair) and in which you can read that that passion is what will keep us together. I am sure that it is a general wish for all who acquire and read the book.
So if you are a great chess fan and very aware that the goal is not to create champions at discretion, this book is a must for know the current chess situation and the recent past Leontxo has been more than a protagonist because he has lived it, spread it and transmitted his passion to others in a contagious way.
The book has three clearly differentiated parts, the first explains The mysteries of chess, is the part that I am about to finish and of which I highlight its episode with Bobby Fischer, full of emotion, in addition to a precise and detailed tour of the history of chess.
I still have to read the part dedicated to Chess teaches to think and that has a lot to do, it seems to me, with the extraordinary work that Leontxo is doing contributing to chess becoming a subject in the school as well as extending its application to many social causes, as many as sixteen, and that we have It has also been presented in Peques and Más in recent articles that are included below.
The third part, also pending reading, is called Chips and neurons, more than two centuries in check in which in addition to explaining the history of Kasparov and the machines of IBM, a story that did not attract my attention at the time, and now I want to know and recover. I also think that it will explain the current situation of the machines and their ability to become the true enemy of professional chess players because of the advances in programming that have allowed recreate algorithms that can approach human logic and abstraction (although keeping passion still far away).
The book is tremendously exciting and reading it is, after seeing Leontxo speaking live, how to listen to him. It maintains its rhythm and its ability to explain the scenes as if you were there. Although what surprised me most about the book is that Leontxo is like a movie character that He has always been in the best moments of contemporary chess of the twentieth and twenty-first century. And the beautiful thing is that he has shared it live, always faithful to the newspaper El País and especially in this book in which he collects, orders and classifies all the knowledge of his last 30 years.
The prologue of the book is from José Antonio Marina which takes the opportunity to explain the advances in the knowledge of the human brain and how they can be related to the practice of chess. I think Arturo Pérez-Reverte is a big fan of the book, which is why I read on Twitter and will also be with him presenting the book next Monday, June 17, 2013. The book is edited by the Editorial Crítica, in the collection Drakontos directed by José Manuel Sánchez Ron, physicist, historian and disseminator of science and academics of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language. Leontxo has also indicated that it will be on June 17 at that presentation.
So I will continue reading the book of Chess and science, mixed passions and I will be very attentive to the next events that have to do with chess. After hearing and reading Leontxo, I do believe that this extraordinary and ancient sport has a potential to help the training of children, to improve their ability to concentrate, to value effort and especially to learn from victories and defeats.
