I was browsing around half price books a few days ago and stumbled across an aisle of books on sale, which is funny since I thought all the books there were on sale. Anyways I stumbled onto this book, "The Advancing Guitarist" by Mick Goodrick, for 3 dollars and went ahead and bought it without much thought.

I've skimmed through it and read the entire commentaries section in the back and all I can say is...WOW! What a total mind ####!

This book, although tedious, actually looks to be quite useful, and not just for a few months, or even a few years, but maybe for a lifetime of guitar playing. He pretty much covers all aspects of guitar playing you can think of, but from a really unique perspective. It's not really a book of licks, chords, or scales, but more a set of philosophies used to develop the thinking of a guitar player.

If a Zen Buddhist monk knew how to play guitar, this is the book he would write after he had played for several decades. It's full of little words of wisdom, and a lot of humor surprisingly.

As far as exercises go, it's all in standard notation, but that really doesn't matter, I suck at reading music, but most of the stuff that's really useful in this book doesn't require any ability to read music. It does however require a basic understanding of theory, chord construction, scales, and basic modes. It's by no means a book for beginners.

His idea of approaching the guitar as if it were a single stringed instrument that just so happens to have five other strings is really interesting. His argument is basically that single string playing is actually more logical to learn and master than position playing. So the whole first section is exercises dealing with playing on single strings. Sort of like sitar playing.

Anyways, you guys, if you happen to be so lucky to stumble across this book I suggest you definitely pick it up.