Category: Books

Notes about everything related to books, including reviews of books I’ve read

Top Science Fiction

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I rarely write reviews on the books I’ve read. But sometimes I get the urge to create a list of the best ones. This list is subjective, and it’s definitely not complete—there’s surely something I’ve forgotten. I tried my best to avoid spoilers. So, here’s my list of the best in science fiction and other fantastical genres.

James Corey, The Expanse series

This is an amazing series. There’s a continuous chain of events, but each novel stands on its own as a complete work. It’s been a long time since I’ve come across such solid science fiction. The world is incredibly well thought out, particularly the relationships between people within the Solar System. They have started to consider themselves different races: Martians, Earthers, and the inhabitants of the Asteroid Belt. There’s hatred, contempt, codependency, and a fragile peace between them. Against this backdrop, an external enemy emerges—one that isn’t immediately obvious, and internal forces try to use it to their own advantage…

It’s very rare for an author (or authors) to manage to keep an entire series interesting, but this is one of those cases.

Not too long ago, the books were adapted into a TV series. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ve heard it falls short of the books, with the storytelling altered to suit cinematic needs.

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Sasha Galitsky “Don’t Be Afraid!”

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I can’t say I was over the moon about Sasha Galitsky‘s first book, Mama, Don’t Worry!, but it offered a very interesting perspective on aging, with unconventional thoughts and advice. It was definitely worth reading, and I even added it to my recommended list.

Almost immediately after, I found out that Sasha had written a second book on the same theme—Don’t Be Afraid! But this time, instead of talking about how to get along with the elderly, he focuses on how not to fear aging yourself, as reflected in the subtitle: How to Grow Old Without Losing Your Mind.

The first book was based on the author’s blog posts, which was quite noticeable, but the second book really disappointed me. It feels like an attempt to recycle the same theme and material for a second time.

Once again, it’s filled with brief sketches and thoughts, presented in the form of micro-chapters. It even seems like the thoughts were written first, and only later was there an attempt to come up with clever titles for them.

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Henry Lion Oldie “Odysseus, Son of Laertes”

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odissey

Well, after reading The Grandson of Perseus and A Hero Must Be Alone, it was finally time to reread the third book in Henry Lion Oldie‘s Achaean cycle, Odysseus, Son of Laertes. This book chronologically concludes the story of the Heroes, descendants of the Olympian gods, although it was written second, long before The Grandson of Perseus. And in my opinion, it differs significantly from the other two books in how the authors approached the narrative.

As much as I enjoy A Hero Must Be Alone, this book, both the first time I read it many years ago and now, turned out to be challenging to get through. Especially in the beginning, I found myself frequently pausing and then forcing myself to continue. For me, there were too many metaphors, too much emphasis on beautifully crafted language and unspoken meanings, to the point where I started losing track of the main plot. And the plot itself is quite fragmented here, constantly interspersed with flashbacks and memories from other times.

To understand certain things, you need to have a solid knowledge of both mythology and the story of Odysseus (outside of this book). Only then can you compare and grasp some of the nuances in the narrative. Otherwise, you’re left with even more questions. Some parts are direct references to A Hero Must Be Alone, not just to the myths about Heracles but specifically to their interpretation in the previous book of the cycle. Of course, as the book says, “answers are the killers of questions.” But it feels unsettling when you have more questions than understanding. I know many people love Oldie for these hidden meanings, but for me, this was more of a drawback.

Odysseus is primarily known for his role in the Trojan War and the long story of his return home from that war (ten years is no joke). However, we see almost nothing of that famous journey here. Instead, we are shown how the war began in the first place, why everyone became so fixated on Helen of Troy, and why the gods needed the war in the first place.

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Lyudmila Petranovskaya “If It’s Difficult with a Child”

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The book If It’s Difficult with a Child by Lyudmila Petranovskaya is part of the “Close People” series. I decided to read it almost immediately after finishing the first book in the series, The Secret Support: Attachment in a Child’s Life. The first book focused on the various stages of a child’s development and how their behavior changes significantly during each stage. In this new book, the focus shifts to something else—how to deal with challenging situations when “it’s difficult with a child.” Both I and Lyudmila Petranovskaya are careful not to say “a difficult child” because it’s usually the situations that are difficult, while the child often becomes difficult due to the circumstances.

In this book, the author also addresses various situations, but one of the main messages is to try to see things from the child’s perspective and to understand why they act the way they do. Often, once you do, their behavior seems much more logical and even obvious.

This applies to many situations where something is forbidden for the child but allowed for adults. There are countless examples, starting with “you have to go to bed at 9 PM” or “you can only play on the computer for half an hour.” The child sees that their parents don’t go to bed that early, so why should they? Or if their father spends most of his time in front of a monitor (regardless of what he’s doing), why should the child be limited to just half an hour? Simple prohibitions no longer work in such cases, as the child doesn’t see any logic behind them.

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Yuval Noah Harari “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”

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A few months ago, I got the impression that everyone in my reading circle had gone crazy over “Sapiens” by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. Nearly everyone either read the book or expressed their intent to do so.

The reviews from those who had read it were overwhelmingly positive (for example, on Goodreads, the book currently has an average rating of 4.45 out of 5, based on almost 300,000 (!) ratings). And since I love history, I couldn’t pass it by.

Jumping ahead a bit, I’ll say that my rating turned out to be significantly lower than the average. Here’s why.

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Henry Lion Oldie “A Hero Must Be Alone”

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“A Hero Must Be Alone” was the very first book I read from the works of Henry Lion Oldie. Probably because I’ve loved Greek mythology since childhood. I remember how this novel opened up a new author for me back then. Soon after, I read the next book in the “Achaean Cycle,” but I didn’t get to the third one until many years later. Although “The Grandson of Perseus” is the third book in the cycle, it’s the first one chronologically, as it tells the story of Amphitryon, the mortal father of the legendary Heracles.

After reading it, I decided it was time to go back to the beginning and reread “A Hero Must Be Alone“, the book I loved so much in my younger years. This year marks a special anniversary for the novel—25 years since its first publication. A solid milestone for a test of time. I’ll admit, I was a bit apprehensive because I’ve been burned a few times when rereading novels I had the fondest memories of, only to realize that each book has its time, and now it no longer resonates with me as it once did.

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Boris Akunin “The Life of Remarkable People and Animals”

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Boris Akunin is an extraordinary author. Whatever he writes, it always turns out to be interesting. True, some of his books may not be great overall, but they are always engaging to read. In much the same way, I used to follow his posts on LiveJournal, where Boris Akunin would share notes about people and events that piqued his interest.

The book “The Life of Remarkable People and Animals” is essentially a collection of those posts, gathered under one cover and published in book form.

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Sasha Galitsky “Mama, Don’t Worry!”

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Interestingly, the book Mama, Don’t Worry! by Sasha Galitsky was given to me by my wife. Not with any specific intent, she just liked the description, and she knows that in recent years I’ve been very interested in the topic of growing up (see my previous post, which touches on this as well—We Will Sing With the Voices).

The book has a subtitle: How to Learn to Communicate with Elderly Parents Without Losing Your Own Mind? It’s not that my parents are elderly yet (may they outlive us all), nor that I’m losing my mind when talking to them. But it’s interesting to explore why this issue might arise at all, and where I might end up in my own “development.”

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Patrick Lencioni “Death by Meeting”

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Before diving into the book Death by Meeting, I’d like to share how I first became acquainted with the author’s work.

Patrick Lencioni is a very unconventional business writer and consultant. He is best known as the author of the bestseller The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This isn’t a typical management book—many refer to it as a business novel. I’m not sure if Lencioni invented this style or if someone else had done it before him, but when I read the book, I found the approach intriguing. It’s a book about management, but written as a work of fiction about the life of a team. Essentially, he takes a business problem, “creates” a company and characters around it, and tells a story that illustrates how to solve the problem in question.

I read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team about five or six years ago, and I really liked it. That’s when I realized the author had earned his own spot on my “to-read” list.

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Brandon Webb, John David Mann “Mastering Fear: A Navy SEAL’s Guide”

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We all fear something—some things more, some less. And some fears begin to eat us up from the inside. The recently released book Mastering Fear tries to show how to change our attitude toward fear. Not to defeat it, because fear will remain, but to stop falling into a state of shock or paralysis because of it.

Formally, the book has two authors, but all the descriptions state that it’s a book by former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb, and the narrative itself is built as though it’s told by one person. So, let’s assume that John David Mann simply helped Webb “package” his thoughts properly.

Webb did indeed serve as a U.S. Navy SEAL, was a sniper, and later trained snipers. So, he’s immediately seen as someone who “knows no fear”—a real macho who eats fears for breakfast by the hundreds.

However, using his own past as an example, he shows that soldiers are simply trained to control their fear. He then shares his method for managing fear. He says: “You don’t need to fight fear. You need to accept it.”

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