Category: Books

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

Book: Pavel Volotovich, Alexey Kovalyov ‘From Panikovka to the Puck’

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Photo albums about my hometown, Minsk, are my weakness. I try to buy almost every one that comes into my sight. So when the book From Panikovka to the Puck came out in December, I managed to order it through friends.

The book was “written” by the same authors who previously produced the biography of the Belarusian band Neuro Dubel. This time, they set out to show where and why the city’s youth hung out in the 1990s — what those places with names like “Panikovka” and “Puck” were, and what actually went on there. I put the word “written” in quotation marks because there’s hardly any real authorial text here. It’s mostly a collection of photographs and quotes — memories from various “scene” regulars of the time — with only very brief introductions by the authors here and there.

Unfortunately, the selection of respondents is very limited. Some are well known to many Belarusians, but most belong to a very narrow circle of people few have ever heard of — mostly the so-called bohemia: musicians, journalists, DJs, artists.

The book gives a certain snapshot of that era. After reading it, you’re left with the aftertaste of those years. At the same time, there are several issues that kept the book from meeting my expectations. Roughly speaking, they fall into two categories: the “places” described and the people chosen to comment on them.

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Book: David Kushner “Masters of Doom”

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It seems like not so long ago I used to get carried away in computer clubs, where you had to move a few squares across the screen from point A to point B, and then there was a masterpiece in the form of the game Karateka. These days you look at a game that’s, say, five years old — ten, heaven forbid — and you already think: ugh, how could we even play that? And yet 35 years ago it was those very squares on the screen that seemed to us like a miracle of miracles.

And that’s why it’s so fascinating now to read the biographies of people who are, essentially, already legends, who rapidly changed both the video game industry itself and society’s attitude toward it. The story of id Software is just such an example.

David Kushner’s book is titled Masters of Doom, making it clear which game is considered the most famous, which name can attract potential readers. Modern players are more likely to know Doom (2016) and its sequel Doom Eternal, and are unlikely to have ever played those very first games.

For me, though, the acquaintance with the company’s games began much earlier — although back then I paid no attention to who actually made them. I remember playing Commander Keen in the school computer lab. And later, when Wolfenstein 3D appeared, it became not only a breakthrough and the progenitor of all shooter games. It was also the first game my father ever played on a computer — and at that time he was about as far from technology as one could be. So, you could say I’ve walked almost the entire path alongside this company — only as a player.

But when I say that the book tells the story of id Software, that’s not quite true. It’s not so much the story of a company as it is the story of its two founders — “the two Johns,” as the author constantly calls them: John Romero and John Carmack, two guys who “created an empire and transformed pop culture.”

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Book: Jonas Jonasson “The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared”

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Swedish writers have been pleasantly surprising me lately. Not that I’ve read a lot of them, but first Fredrik Backman became an insanely “tasty” discovery for me a few years ago, and now Jonas Jonasson. There’s something about these Swedes. They seem to write about life, yet they do it lightly, beautifully, and with touches of humor.

For many years Jonas Jonasson worked as a journalist and television producer (just like my wife), and then suddenly decided to drastically change his life and write a book. And that book sold like crazy—first in Sweden, and then around the world.

The book titled The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared really does begin with the main character, the old man Allan—whose 100th birthday is literally minutes away from being celebrated at the retirement home—deciding to escape through the window. And to get far away before anyone notices he’s gone. What follows is a chain of unforeseen events, in which the old man almost immediately finds himself in possession of a suitcase with a million, a whole group of companions, and a small trail of bodies behind him.

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Book: Leonid Rabichev “War Excuses Everything”

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I was born in the USSR, where the Great Patriotic War was part of the country’s terrifying history. But I don’t recall anyone back then trying to glorify it and shouting “We can do it again.” They did heroize it—yes—and films often added notes of humor, without which, perhaps, war is impossible to endure. Yet they didn’t bombard us with rah-rah patriotism. Apparently because in every family the memory of those times was still fresh. Parents or grandparents remembered that war; many families had lost loved ones.

Then it was also shown from very frightening angles, like the documentary Triumph Over Violence or Elem Klimov’s acclaimed and very heavy Come and See.

Only they didn’t bring to the fore the flip side of any war—that in war there are no absolutely good and absolutely bad. War is blood, brutality, and sheer meanness on both sides; only the degree varies. Yes, many knew about “trophies” taken out from occupied territories, but that wasn’t considered looting, and they certainly didn’t make films about it. In one way or another, war also harmed the civilian population—and by no means only the enemy’s; it’s enough to read the recollections of the partisan movement in Belarus (a few years ago, incidentally, eyewitnesses were still alive).

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Book: Oksana Korzun “How to Move to Another Country and Not Die of Homesickness”

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I can’t really call myself a person with vast experience in moving. Relocating from one apartment to another within the same city is an interesting experience, but it’s hardly something global. However, dropping everything and moving to another country — that I’ve done only once. And even then, my move was relatively easy, since I wasn’t moving into the unknown, but simply transferring to another office of my company. And the company — huge thanks to them — helped so much that I barely had to think about the process at all. Still, in 2014 my wife and I, along with our three children, moved to an entirely different country, and I learned a few things about what such a transition means.

On top of that, because of my job I’ve always communicated a lot with foreigners, and after 2010 that kind of interaction only grew — including business trips. That’s when I began to notice the cultural differences more clearly and look for ways to bridge them.

Unfortunately, after 2020, many of my fellow citizens were forced to leave their homeland. And in 2022, the brutal war with Ukraine made many people flee anywhere they could, sometimes leaving part of their families behind. Questions about moving — how to do it properly, what to expect — began to come up more and more often. I started keeping a separate document about the specifics of moving to Cyprus (in Russian) and tried to advise people who had already relocated or were just planning to.

And in those conversations, many recurring themes came up — some of which left me at a loss, because I simply didn’t expect to hear them from people planning to move abroad. Probably because I’ve always taken every matter too seriously, never making decisions without preparing thoroughly and learning everything I could. But not everyone is as crazy as I am.

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Book: Mark Manson “Models: Attract Women Through Honesty”

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Eight years ago, blogger Mark Manson explained to the whole world that living with a sense of not giving a damn is actually the best option — even an art. No need to stress about things. Later, he developed this idea further, clarifying that if you’re still stressing, then it’s absolutely pointless, because really “Everything Is F*cked.”

However, he began his writing career with completely different topics: he explained to men how to properly land a woman. What for many years has been called pickup in the pickup artist community, though in his advice he went much further. Later he slightly reworked this book.

Since I liked his writing style in the first two books, I decided to read this one as well — though to be honest, the subject doesn’t concern me much these days, when I have a wife and five children. But it turned out that the book is not at all what you would expect from its title and annotation.

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Book: Arkady & Boris Strugatsky “Monday Starts on Saturday”

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Ah, it’s hard to write about such a classic, one that has been known to everyone for many decades. But I still decided to give it a try.

The thing is, Monday Starts on Saturday was the very first book by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky that I ever read. And that was back in my distant childhood. I remember laughing out loud at some episodes, trying hard not to show it, since I had to read some of them in a clinic while waiting my turn for physiotherapy.

Since then, the book has retained a sense of eternal joy and a smile for me, and that is why in my adult years I was very afraid to reread the story: what if I perceived it completely differently, and those childhood impressions faded? Nevertheless, the second time I also enjoyed it, and now I have read it for the third time. But this time I had a specific goal — to think about what had changed in my feelings and perception of the story compared to childhood, and also after so many years separating the everyday life of the book’s characters from today’s realities.

The book tells about the work of a programmer in an institute of sorcery and magic. Nothing less. Complete with all the trappings of Soviet research institutes of the 1960s–70s.

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Book: Ilya Varlamov “Travel Notes”

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Ilya Varlamov is a remarkable blogger (and now also a vlogger). For many years I enjoyed reading his journal — his notes about many countries were quite informative and always accompanied by wonderful photographs. More recently, I’ve also found him likable as a person because of his civic stance.

In 2014, the publishing house “MIF” decided to release his travel notes as a separate book. This edition caught my eye, and I decided to read in one place everything I had previously skimmed through in his journal.

However, the book turned out to be a huge disappointment. I don’t know who initiated the “paper” version, but it was done in a completely senseless way and with no clear idea of who it was for.

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Books Worth Reading (2017–2022)

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I am sometimes asked which books I would recommend reading. For the blog, this is generally not difficult — it’s enough to open all posts with the tag “I-recommend.” But since it’s been almost five years now since I revived my blog and began writing about the books I’ve read, I decided to put together a selection of non-fiction books I’ve read during this time that fall into the category of “you must read them.”

I have already written detailed reviews of all these books, so this time I’ve selected only the very best, grouped them by topic. For each book I give only brief recommendations on why they are worth reading, but you can always open the link to the full review. I hope this will be useful to someone. So, let’s begin.

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Book: Bulat Okudzhava “From School to the Front”

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Since my youth I have liked the work of Bulat Okudzhava, though back then I knew him only as a performer of songs. At home we had several of his records, and I enjoyed listening to the entire collection of my parents’ music. A little later I discovered Okudzhava also as the author of music and lyrics for many film songs, which I still enjoy listening to today.

Among other things, Bulat Okudzhava wrote quite a few songs for war films. I am sure almost everyone knows at least “We Face Deadly Fire” from Belorussky Station, or “Drops of the Danish King” from Zhenya, Zhenechka i ‘Katyusha‘. Okudzhava’s songs were able to convey the full range of feelings, and between the lines you could sense that the author knew what he was writing about.

And then I came across a book by Okudzhava from the series “My War,” in which veterans’ memoirs are published.

From School to the Front is not a single work but a collection of recollections that can formally be divided into “novellas” and “stories.” Formally — because this is not fiction, but rather the memoirs of Bulat Shalvovich, conveyed in his own manner.

The book begins with excerpts from interviews with the author, and only then come his writings. Okudzhava’s childhood was not easy. His father was repressed, and his mother also endured prison as the wife of a repressed man. And then came the war, at the start of which Bulat Okudzhava was only 17 years old.

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