Category: Books

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

Book: Collection “Rescuers”

No comments

It’s quite difficult to write about the “Rescuers” collection since this is not just a book but a project to help Ukraine, which is suffering from war. Nevertheless, I’ll still try.

After the war with Ukraine began, many Ukrainians were forced to leave their homes, many suffered, and many, unfortunately, died. Like other cities, for more than six months now, one of the most Russian-speaking cities of Ukraine, Kharkiv, has been subjected to daily bombings. And for me, Kharkiv has always been the capital of Ukrainian science fiction, because it was there that one of the most famous and most prestigious science fiction festivals — “Star Bridge” — was held for many years, organized by Kharkiv residents whom I deeply respect — writers Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky, better known to readers under the pseudonym Henry Lion Oldie.

It was Oldie who decided to publish the book “Rescuers,” a collection of Ukrainian science fiction of 2022. The title “Rescuers” has a double meaning. First of all, almost all works in the collection are somehow connected with those who help, who save. Secondly, the purpose of this collection is to help Ukraine fight; all money from the sale of this book “will go to help Ukrainians affected by the hostilities in the war unleashed by Russia.” This is the clear position of the authors.

But besides this noble purpose, I still wanted to get acquainted with what modern Ukrainian science fiction represents today, even if in short form. I’ve known and loved Oldie for a long time, but I don’t always have time to follow new and less well-known authors.

Read more

Book: George Friedman “The Next 100 Years”

No comments

Who among us hasn’t wanted to know the future? Who we’ll become, what discoveries await us… As children, probably almost everyone dreams of that. But over the years, that desire seems to fade into the background—at least, it did for me. The longer I live, the less I want to know what lies ahead. That knowledge often feels too frightening. I want to believe that everything will be okay, that my children and grandchildren won’t face the horrors previous generations endured, not to mention all the disasters that are constantly being fed to us from every direction.

Unfortunately, reality doesn’t care about what we want. And even now, we see things we never imagined we would.

It was at just such a moment that I came across a mention of George Friedman’s book The Next 100 Years, where he predicts how our civilization might live through the 21st century.

Here’s what the Russian publisher Eksmo writes about George Friedman on their website:

George Friedman is a political scientist from the United States, founder and head of the private intelligence company STRATFOR. The company specializes in gathering and analyzing data in the fields of geopolitics, national security, and economics. As the organization’s lead expert, Friedman works alongside a professional team of analysts to collect macroeconomic and political information from a wide range of sources and develop geopolitical strategies. His books are also devoted to these topics.

In other words, the author doesn’t make predictions out of thin air—he bases them on a deep understanding of geopolitical realities and the patterns that shape the development of civilizations. This is his professional field of expertise.

Read more

Book: Dr. Sandi Mann “Why Do I Feel Like an Imposter?”

No comments

I’m 45 years old. And I’ve achieved nothing.

Even though many people around me say I’m a successful and competent leader. But they just don’t get it—I’ve just been lucky.

…Those could have easily been my words. And to be honest, I’ve definitely had moments like that, especially during the harder times. But this is exactly how many people feel—and scientists have even come up with a name for it: imposter syndrome.

At some point, people start to believe that they don’t deserve the praise or reputation they’ve earned. In their own minds, their achievements feel like occasional flukes—definitely not the result of their own talent or hard work. And this feeling is only becoming more common. Studies show that up to 70% of people now experience imposter syndrome to some degree, including both adults and teenagers.

Technically, “imposter syndrome” isn’t classified as a mental disorder—it’s not considered an illness. And when the majority of people seem to be dealing with it, it’s hard to say whether it even counts as a deviation from the norm.

Sandi Mann’s book Why Do I Feel Like an Imposter? explores this exact phenomenon. And while the Russian edition’s subtitle promises to help you “stop downplaying your success and constantly proving your worth to yourself and others,” the truth is this book likely won’t solve the problem for those dealing with this mindset. The original subtitle is a bit different: “How to understand and cope with imposter syndrome”.

Read more

Book: Ilya Ilf, Yevgeni Petrov “The Twelve Chairs”

1 comment

The first time I read the books about Ostap Bender was in my teenage years. I don’t think that’s the best age for such reading, but the book was on our shelf, I had heard a lot about it, and I already liked the film version of The Twelve Chairs directed by Mark Zakharov. Probably because of the songs — but still, I liked it.

I remember that I read both The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf back to back. I really enjoyed the first book, while the sequel left me with a feeling of melancholy. That impression of the duology stayed with me for years. However, I recently decided to reread them as an adult, to see how my perception might have changed.

Looking at the editions currently available, I came across an expanded version titled “the most complete edition.” That piqued my interest, so I chose to read that one.

In case someone out there either doesn’t remember or has never heard of this book (which would be hard to believe), here’s a brief summary. The setting is the 1920s. A former nobleman, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, lives a modest life as a registry office clerk when he suddenly learns that during the revolution, his mother-in-law hid the family jewels inside one of the chairs from their noble furniture set. He throws himself into a frantic search — and is unexpectedly joined by a stranger, Ostap Bender. In reality, it’s Ostap who takes the lead in the hunt. Thanks to his wit and the skill of a “great schemer,” he masterfully navigates even the trickiest situations. Poor Ippolit Matveyevich is hardly a match for him.

Read more

Book: Eva Mozes Kor “The Twins of Auschwitz”

No comments

Josef Mengele is one of the Nazis whose name is synonymous with the atrocities of the Hitler regime. He was not only personally responsible for sorting prisoners at Auschwitz but also conducted horrifying experiments in his camp clinic.

One of his “projects” was an attempt to understand the nature of twins. Because of this, twins had a slightly higher chance of survival—not being sent directly to their deaths—even if they were unfit for labor in the camp. However, Mengele never considered them human and subjected both adults and tiny children to monstrous experiments. To him, they were nothing more than test subjects.

Eva Mozes Kor was one such twin, destined to die so that Mengele could observe how it would affect her sister. But against all odds, Eva survived. After the war, she wrote her memoirs about her time in that hell.

Eva lived with her family in Transylvania when the war arrived. Her father wanted to escape to Palestine, where Jews were beginning to build their own state, but her mother couldn’t bring herself to leave everything behind and take the children into the unknown. Because of this, their once well-off family was among the first to experience the hatred and cruelty of their former neighbors. And when they finally decided to flee, it was already too late.

Read more

Book: Alex Krol “The Theory of Castes and Roles”

No comments

Alex (Alexey) Krol describes himself as an “entrepreneur, author, lecturer, and film producer.” Judging by his LinkedIn profile, he has had an impressive career, managing multiple companies before stepping back to take on roles at lower levels. Along the way, he also worked in game development.

Recently, he has been focusing more on writing and designing concepts, particularly in the fields of gaming and NFT mechanics.

However, I only learned about his professional journey after reading his book The Theory of Castes and Roles, which is what I want to talk about here. The book has received quite high ratings across various popular bookstores and review platforms. Moreover, several of my acquaintances spoke about it with great enthusiasm. While I take online reviews with a grain of salt (even though I write them myself), recommendations from people I know usually carry more weight—though, of course, tastes may differ.

The book itself is quite short and presents a theory developed by Alex Krol himself. The core idea is simple: in this world, resources are limited, and not everyone will have enough. You are either in the role of a “slave” (at the lowest level) or you secure a place among the powerful elite, with all the accompanying benefits—high salaries, yachts, villas, and so on. But between these two extremes, there are many intermediate positions that largely determine who you are and what you are worth.

Read more

Book: Art Spiegelman “Maus”

No comments

A comic book about the genocide of Jews? Sounds unusual, but why not? The important thing is to convey knowledge, and the method is secondary. Some people read books, some only watch movies, and some consume information exclusively through comics. And it’s long been foolish to think that comics are just for kids or the unintelligent. As the history of manga shows (see my review of Frederik L. Schodt’s “Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics”), sometimes comics can convey more knowledge than a specialized encyclopedia.

So the existence of such a comic didn’t surprise me at all. What did make me slightly wary, though, was the prestigious award it received. I have this odd quirk—I tend not to trust overly hyped or award-winning works. It seems to me that these awards often follow their own internal logic, which doesn’t always correlate with actual quality.

Maus by Art Spiegelman is “the only comic book to win a Pulitzer Prize,” as proudly stated on the cover. And it tells the story of a Polish Jew, Vladek Spiegelman, who struggled to survive after Nazi has occupied Poland but ultimately ended up in a concentration camp with his wife.

Read more

Amazon: The Death of the MOBI Format?

No comments

No matter how hard competitors try, Kindle e-readers remain among the most popular in the world. A major factor in this is their seamless integration with Amazon’s vast library of e-books, making it incredibly convenient for users to buy and read books directly from the platform.

However, there has always been one frustrating limitation—Kindle devices have traditionally supported a very restricted set of formats. If we exclude image files, Kindles could only handle TXT, Microsoft Word documents (DOC), and Amazon’s proprietary e-book format, commonly known as MOBI (with file extensions like .azw or .mobi, depending on the version). This is where competitors have tried to outdo Amazon by offering support for a wide variety of formats. But in reality, do we even need an excessive number of formats?

Read more

Book: Konstantin Borisov “How a Good Developer Can Avoid Becoming a Bad Manager”

No comments

One of the best books I read last year was a relatively short but incredibly useful guide by Konstantin Borisov on conducting interviews—“To Hire or Not to Hire? Or How to Interview a Developer.” I now recommend it to everyone, whether they are conducting interviews themselves or preparing to be interviewed. It gives you a much clearer understanding of what a potential employer is like and whether they are worth considering.

But Konstantin Borisov also wrote another book—“How a Good Developer Can Avoid Becoming a Bad Manager.” The topic may not seem obvious at first, but it’s actually incredibly relevant. In the IT industry, it’s well known that top specialists often get promoted simply because they excel at their tasks. One day, you’re a great developer, the next, you’re mentoring a couple of interns. Before you know it, you’re made a lead developer, then given a team to manage, and suddenly—you’re a manager.

I went through a similar path myself, though for a long time, I tried to balance both roles. I loved mentoring specialists and building teams, but at the same time, I still wanted to be a hands-on developer. Eventually, I realized that trying to do both was making me worse at each, and I finally made the decision to fully transition into management.

Read more

Book: Ben Elton “Two Brothers”

No comments

I haven’t written in my blog for a long time, but I’m returning with a book that has unexpectedly become highly symbolic of current events—when one country, under the pretext of “brotherly help,” wages war against another. And a third, also supposedly “brotherly,” sometimes helps the first, sometimes tries to stay on the sidelines. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Since childhood, I was taught that we must never allow the return of Nazism. I was psychologically crushed when, at around 12 years old, I saw the film “Triumph Over Violence“ (in Russian its title literally means ‘An Ordinary Fascism‘) on TV (I even felt physically sick from what I saw). For many years, I’ve continued reading and reflecting on how the dehumanization of entire nations and the transformation of people into monsters become possible. Documentaries, memoirs, and historical works are often far more terrifying than any fiction because with fiction, you can always think: “Well, this is just made up—things couldn’t have been that bad.” Even though you know they could. And they were. And now we see just how easy it is to “repeat it”—ironically, by those who, on a genetic level, should have carried an unshakable aversion to repeating it.

But sometimes, there are brilliant books on this very subject, and “Two Brothers” by Ben Elton is one of them. Perhaps because it is based on the real-life story of the author’s own family.

Read more