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I should be very grateful if you could let me have your opinions of Fujisawa's 'Dictionary of Basic Tesuji', of which Slate and Shell has published a translation. (The already existing page hardly deals with assessment; it mostly confines itself to translation issues.)
And if I have the first two volumes, the 'Tesuji for Attacking' and the 'Tesuji for Defending', does that mean I need not bother to buy 'Attack and Defense' (by Ishida/Davies)? Many thanks in advance!
Bob McGuigan: This book is one of the best available in English. I don't know whether you have looked at the pageFujisawa Tesuji Dictionary and the related discussion page but there are many statements there as to the value of the book, not just translation issues.
I haven't seen the Fujisawa book yet, but I can tell you that Ishida/Davies is mostly about whole board thinking and positional judgement--it's a very different sort of thing from a tesuji dictionary, so it would make sense to buy both.
I've got both "Attack and Defense" and then the first two Tesuji Dictionaries. (I understand there's a 3rd and 4th volume out now, or soon to be out. I do not have those.)
I would say they are very good and also very different. As noted, "Attack and Defense" is sort of a wordy treatise on positional judgement and the value of defense and so forth. For something much more concise and to the point, I would recommend Yilun Yang's Fundamental Principles of Go.
The Tesuji dictionaries are very good, but do not expect them to look like a joseki dictionary. While everyone knows that choice of joseki and joseki development does depend on the whole board, there are still ways of thinking about the variations. Not so with tesuji. They are always so dependent on situation that it's very difficult to categorize them. So what the Fujiwara books seem to do is work on them by connection strength and either work on cutting or defending.
So will you be able to browse through the tesuji dictionary and remember some sequence? Probably not. However it is EXCELLENT for problems and seeing situations you can exploit where previously you might have gone a simpler route to avoid a little reading.
I hope this helps.