Month: May 2020

The Russian Teacher “50 Deadly Sins in the Russian Language”

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50-grehov-russkogo

There’s a concept known as “grammar Nazi,” even covered on Wikipedia. It started as an internet meme and refers to people who are extremely meticulous about language accuracy. Naturally, it has no actual connection to Nazism or fascism, though the joke went far enough that an emblem, based on Nazi symbolism, was created for the term (and rumor has it this even led to law enforcement issues).

But the term has taken root, and people often use it in conversation—when correcting someone, they might say they’re a “grammar Nazi” and thus don’t tolerate such mistakes.

I was naturally lucky; Russian came easily to me in school, even though I didn’t study the rules all that much. I have an internal sense of the language. Over time, I’ve always been interested in the meanings of rare words and in which words people most commonly misuse. I even corrected some of my own speech mistakes as soon as I learned about them.

Then, just the other day, I stumbled upon a book called 50 Deadly Sins in the Russian Language, with a bold cover to boot. Naturally, I couldn’t resist picking it up.

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Song: Palaye Royale “Lonely”

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Today, I’m featuring the song “Lonely” by Palaye Royale from their album The Bastards.

The band is relatively young, and I discovered them thanks to my eldest daughter. It’s an interesting time when your kids start recommending music to you. Back to the song—it’s got a fantastic music video that perfectly aligns with the lyrics, and the song itself has a lot of energy.

Interestingly, the song is based on the lead singer’s personal experiences, as he mentions in the comments.

Maxim Ilyakhov, Lyudmila Sarycheva “The New Rules of Business Correspondence”

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novye-pravila-perepiski

If anyone remembers, I really didn’t like Write, Shorten by Maxim Ilyakhov and Lyudmila Sarycheva, a book on editing texts. Judging by the number of likes my review received on Goodreads, I’m far from alone in this opinion. As a result, I had no intention of reading another book by these authors. However, a colleague first recommended it to me, then another gave it a high rating. So, I decided to give them a second chance—anything’s possible.

From the very first pages, I felt this might have been a mistake, although my opinion shifted slightly later on. As before, there are some practical tips in the book. But let’s break it down step by step.

The authors begin much like they did in their previous book: first, they highlight how poor the world of business correspondence has become, the old ways we were taught for years, and how outdated those norms are. Now, they claim, they’ll teach us how to do things right. At least this time, they spared us a pompous comic about their battle against evil. But the tendency to exaggerate and sometimes paint a bleak picture without much basis is still present right from the start.

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Reza Aslan “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”

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I am not a religious person; I do not believe in God, and, in general, I am very cautious about any religion. I certainly see a significant difference between a deity and the institution of worship built around it. However, religions are a huge part of modern civilization; they have influenced the development of humanity and continue to do so to this day. Therefore, I have always been interested in what lay at the origins, where various teachings began, and what truth has reached us through the ages versus what is merely interpretation and speculation from later generations.

Christianity is over two thousand years old, and everyone except the laziest knows the canonical story of Jesus, but what truly happened? From a historical perspective, who was Jesus of Nazareth? What took place two thousand years ago? This question is explored by countless researchers, presenting history from various perspectives, sometimes creating masterpieces of literature (Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is worth mentioning). People try to find logical explanations for the contradictions in this history, as demonstrated in the recently described book The Gospel of Afranius by Kirill Yeskov.

But there are also works by genuine historians based on numerous sources. The book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan is one of them.

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Song: Splean “Pass This to Harry Potter If You Happen to Meet Him”

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I’ve decided to start a small music section on this blog, where I’ll occasionally share songs I like—either found online or heard somewhere. I’ve dabbled in this before, but now I’m giving it a bit more of an “official” touch.

And for the first post: a very recent song by the band Splean. It’s quite fitting, as I’ve finally decided to read the Harry Potter series. The song is called Pass This to Harry Potter If You Happen to Meet Him:

 

Mark Manson “Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope”

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Mark Manson caught my attention right from the first book of his that I read, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, which I discussed previously. Mark is 36, a popular blogger, and recently an acclaimed author.

He has a fairly cynical outlook on the world, yet he presents this perspective with a sharp and interesting style. We’ve read about not caring in his first book; the new one shocks right from the title, setting the tone with Everything is F*cked, while the subtitle complicates it further: A Book About Hope.

Like the first book, this one drew me in from the start, though I hit a point where I stalled, setting it aside and only returning a month later.

It’s hard to pinpoint a central theme in this book. It seems to build on the previous ideas that you should keep things simple, that the world can’t be changed, but you can change yourself. Yet it doesn’t feel entirely cohesive. Manson structures the narrative so one idea flows into the next, but afterward, you realize the connections don’t hold together that tightly. At least, I found the connection too artificial. Still, this doesn’t stop the book from being good.

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