Which books can help me improve my chess ?

@biscuitfiend 's advice (#16) is probably one of the best offered. But the fallback that it is demanding, boring and difficult. And people today don't like boring, they want to have fun all the time.

It's like any other sport. You can't be a good soccer player if you don't do conditional training (jogging, gym...) and most basic movements 90% of the training time. If you just want to play soccer and have fun, you can't expect to improve.

@LukaCro Another analogy that applies: any musical instrument and scales.

If only I could figure out an appropriate analogy to cooking. Then I might eventually be able to cook something worth eating!

@biscuitfiend good analogy!

As for the cooking, I heard that one sushi master makes his apprentices just to cook rice for first year or two :) Once they can cook perfect rice every time, they can move on.

"Chess Fundamentals" by Capablanca, "Common Sense in Chess" by Lasker, "My System" by Nimzovich, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, they are all difficult books. Do not read!

What you can read is Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Fischer. It is a very straight forward book and is suitable for your chess level. You can also read the first two chapters (max 3) from Silman's Complete Endgame Course. This book is great for learning because it starts from the easiest ideas and in every next chapter things get tougher and tougher.

But first of all you should practice simple forks, pins, discovered attacks and checkmates. But not mate in 2 or 3. Practice a lot of mate in 1!

It depends on what you really need to improve/learn

#24
"Chess Fundamentals" by Capablanca treats the fundamentals: it starts with the 5 basic checkmates, basic endgames all basic stuff. That is not a difficult book. It is only 60 pages.
"The reader may therefore go over the contents of the book with the assurance that there is in it everything he needs, and that there is nothing to be added and nothing to be changed." - Capablanca

#24 "My System" isn't all that difficult, but sometimes it feels like as if it were written by a comedian as it contains a lot of examples of very strong GM's destroying some random patzers and then he comes to the conclusion that his "(my) system" is perfect and that you will lose terribly if you don't apply it in your games, because look on how this amateur who doesn't know about "my system" gets annihilated by Alekhine, but somehow he is oblivious about the fact that around 99,9% of the chess players would lose to Alekhine whether they know about "My System" or not xd. But I guess most of its ideas still apply, although it might benefit from an upgrade with newer examples to prove the ideas exposed in the book as almost nobody really plays anymore in the way described in the book.

For those looking for an update to "My System" (a book I have never read), perhaps check out "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy: Advances Since Nimzowitsch" by John Watson (a book of which I have read the introductory sections; looks like an interesting read, even if you haven't read "My System").

"My System" is more advanced than "Chess Fundamentals".
The assertion by Nimzovich is that if an amateur studies "My System" and applies it, then he will not be annihilated by Alekhine, as he will then make sound moves.

@PixelatedParcel has given you a wonderful option, randomly looking at some of your games you lack opening fundamentals, like moving a developed piece twice in the opening, go through that book several times. After you are done with that;

1. get Sliman complete endgame course, study those endgames up until 1800 FIDE page, master all those beginner and intermediate endgames first, you don't need to read the whole book!, that's why i love this book, you say you want to be a good middlegame player?, well for now you need to master this endgames first, cos you will know what to do in the middlegame, example if you are up a pawn in middlegame, you will immediately know that by exchanging all the pieces you will be left with a winning endgame and you can use the technique you learnt from that book, same case applies when defending.

2. Do chess tempo tactics. I somehow do prefer doing tactics there, make sure you set the settings as standard and hard, tactics will start at 1600 level. Do atleast 50 per day.

3. Study a few opening theory, i would recommend you to play 1 .e4 , check out this Youtube channel 'HANGING PAWNS' playlist of e4 theory is very wonderfully explained for beginners

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFWI3gkizZg&list=PLssNbVBYrGcCa4bJH7JqmUZs3qNdSWUkG

What i have told you here will help you reach Rapid 1900 Lichess, play more Rapid or longer games, when playing tournaments don't berserk, cos that will put pressure on you and make you play bad chess. Also make sure you analyze your all your games(lost or wins), but before you unleash stockfish, think for yourself where you might have gone wrong, and try to rectify it, only use stockfish AFTER you have finished analyzing on your own, use the feature 'LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES' its very useful.