The book Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek initially caught my attention because of its title. It immediately sparks different images in your mind, and you start imagining what the author meant by such a title… so it was worth reading to find out.
I read it almost in one go and took more notes than with any other book I’ve read. However, I struggled for a long time to decide what rating to give the book, as well as what I really liked and what still needs further thought. That’s why I’m writing this review three weeks after finishing the book.
The book is about what it means to be a leader and what the right company culture should look like.
I tried reading the much-hyped book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I didn’t like it from the very first pages, where the author began praising himself. But I tried to stick with it. I read about 80 pages and eventually gave up. There’s too much “fluff” and verbosity. Maybe there are some interesting ideas, but it’s too hard to find them.
I’ll start with the strong points. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman is the best piece of fiction I’ve read in at least the last five years. I didn’t even know about this author until my wife recommended the book to me, saying, “Read it, it’s about you.”
Fredrik Backman is a Swedish writer who started out as a truck driver, then began writing articles for a newspaper, eventually opened his own blog… and later wrote the novel A Man Called Ove about a character who first appeared in his blog. And his life changed. The novel became popular, was adapted into a film in Sweden, and was later nominated for an Oscar. After that, Fredrik Backman continued writing, and his subsequent novels are also said to be very good.
The book tells the story of a simple man, Ove, and begins on the day he retires. No, Ove isn’t exactly a simple man. He’s a person with very straightforward views on life (compared to many others), yet he has a strong backbone and firm beliefs. Beliefs so firm that they can lead him to fight for justice through official channels for years, or refuse to speak to a neighbor for twenty years because of them.
The latest book in the fictional subseries History of the Russian State in Novels and Stories is a supplement to the volume about Tsar Peter the Great and consists of just one main novella. As with all of Akunin’s books, the writing style is very light — I practically “devoured” the entire novella. But as for the content… I liked the documentary volume about the tsar less than the earlier ones in the series, and this novella didn’t turn out to be much better.
There are interesting characters here, but the author doesn’t allow them to fully develop. Moreover, the novella is more about Japanese Buddhist teachings than about the era of Peter the Great. It’s a story about a “path” with a lowercase ‘p’ and the “Path” with an uppercase ‘P’. With lessons on how one should live and what is most important in life.
As for the events taking place and the country and time period through which this path unfolds… that’s all not particularly important.
It was an interesting read, but it feels like Akunin forcefully tied it to Peter’s era.
I really love Alexey Pehov’s work. For me, he’s already become a kind of personal brand — I buy any new book of his as soon as it comes out, even if I don’t plan on reading it right away. My wife and I have different opinions on which of his books is the best. As for his collaborations with Elena Bychkova and Natalya Turchaninova, I had only read a few novellas and stories before, and over ten years ago, I started the vampire series Kindrat.
I say “started” because, at the time, only the first volume had been published. I read it, but it seemed weaker to me than Alexey’s other solo works (yes, I know they’re not exactly solo). So, for many years, the books from that series were left on the shelf.
But recently, I decided to give the series a second chance, especially since the topic of vampires has always interested me. Since I have a peculiar memory for books, I began by re-reading the first volume. Interestingly, my feelings about it remained exactly the same after ten years. But now I didn’t have to wait for the second volume to be released, so I started reading it right away. And you know what? It worked. The pacing of the narrative changed dramatically, the “annoying” moments from the first book disappeared… and in the end, I read the entire series with great pleasure.
How badly I wanted to read this book! And how great my disappointment turned out to be! It’s much easier to list what’s wrong with this book than to find anything good about it.
In Russian the book is titled How Film Works: Theory and History of Cinema and was marketed as “an extensive study presented as a stylish and engaging comic.” But contrary to the title and description, it’s not about how cinema works at all. Frankly, the translators share some of the blame here, as the original title is Filmish: A Graphic Journey Through Film, which didn’t claim to be about how cinema works, nor about theory or history.
So what is it actually about? If I were to sum it up briefly, I’d say this: it’s a collection of completely unrelated paragraphs that try to appear as a scholarly article with deep insights. More often than not, these “insights” come from other people, whom the author frequently quotes throughout the book. This is criticism in its worst form, where the writer attempts to explain what the filmmaker intended to convey, or what they were thinking. But reality shows that often the filmmaker wasn’t thinking about anything of the sort (there’s a great example with the horse in the film Afonya, which Georgiy Daneliya wrote about in his memoirs).
Living in Cyprus, where the island has been divided into two parts for the past 40 years and the topic of the Turkish occupation is very painful, I suddenly found myself increasingly interested in the history of these lands. At some point, I realized that I actually knew very little about the Ottoman Empire, whose influence on the local way of life would be foolish to deny. Then, I randomly came across a book by Eugene Rogan titled The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East.
I must say, that most people from Soviet and post-Soviet backgrounds know more about the Great Patriotic War. Even about World War II as a whole — less so (for example, in school we didn’t really study the war in the Pacific that the Americans fought). And as for World War I — even less, with only the basic clichés: gas attacks, trench warfare, Archduke, and revolution ending the war. I personally had no idea that there were battles in the Middle East at the time. That’s why I found it extremely interesting to learn about life there and why the war led to the collapse of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire. From Soviet history, I remembered that Russians had fought the Turks for centuries. But I knew much less about the details. Here, however, a Western author painstakingly reconstructs the history of that time, also relying on Turkish sources that are now available.
Some books come into your life at just the right time. I first noticed Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy a few years ago and bought it immediately. I didn’t get around to reading it right away, but once I started, it suddenly became very popular among my colleagues, which gave me the chance to discuss various points with them.
A year passed, my thoughts settled, and I realized that the book was so good that it deserved a more thoughtful re-read. So that’s what I did this time.
So what is this book about, and why did I read it twice in roughly a year and a half?
About a year ago, I asked on my Facebook about a song that had a big influence during childhood or adolescence. The question wasn’t about what you were listening to, but what became your anthem or influenced you in some way.
For example, I was a fan of “Laskoviy May,” and I had all their albums on cassette (my wife still loves to remind me of this fact). But after them, I switched to the band “Kino,” and it was their song that helped me in life for a long time, specifically the words “You must be strong,” etc.
But today, I started thinking about something else. We live, we grow, and we listen to different music for different reasons. Sometimes we just like the melody, sometimes the lyrics. Even now, in most songs, I perceive the voice and lyrics more as another instrument in the song. For me, the melody is more important than the words.
However, there are still songs where it’s the lyrics that truly stand out. My example is Pink’s song “Dear Mr. President.”
And even more rarely, the lyrics not only stand out on their own but also deeply resonate with your mood and sense of self during a particular life period. Recently, for me, this song unexpectedly became Pavel Volya’s “Mama, We Are All Getting Older.” Before this song, I didn’t even know Volya wrote and performed music.
Here’s the song on YouTube, though this is a slower version performed with “Gorod 312,” while I prefer the more energetic solo version. But the music video was only made for the joint version:
It so happened that I had never watched Roberto Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful. I had heard of it, vaguely knew the plot, but had never seen it.
I decided to correct this, as I’ve never avoided the topic of Jews and Nazism — I’ve watched all the significant films and read many books on the subject.
But the film turned out to be different from what I expected. The first half is a sort of prelude, with nothing about Nazis. It’s about the main character — what he’s like in life. Both the character and Benigni’s acting style (he plays the lead role) were a bit irritating, but I managed to endure it, waiting for other developments.
However, as soon as the film started addressing the story of Jews and the concentration camp, I couldn’t take it anymore. Knowing how Jews were really treated and what happened in the camps, this buffoonery irritated me too much. It seemed to me that this couldn’t have happened in reality. In my opinion, it felt more like an insult to what actually happened.
Maybe I’m wrong, but at some point, I realized that I didn’t want to and couldn’t continue watching. I simply turned off the film, though I understand that many people love it (8.6 out of 10 on IMDB).
