Tag: I-recommend

Songs: AP$ENT

No comments

After leaving Belarus, I stopped listening to the radio, and as a result I drifted away from the musical atmosphere of my home country. So until the recent wave of bans targeting the singer AP$ENT, I hadn’t even heard of him. But once his music started being blocked practically everywhere — reportedly even at the state level in Russia, as if it were somehow corrupting minds — I decided to find out what kind of artist could cause that kind of reaction.

It turns out that in Russia he came under fire because of the song “Can I Go With You,” which he wrote last summer. There’s nothing overtly controversial in the lyrics — at least not if you don’t know the realities of the musician’s own life. The song unexpectedly went viral on TikTok, spawning countless videos with cats asking to come live at your place and other cute edits. Judging by those clips, many of their creators have no idea what the song is actually about. There are whole compilations of such TikTok videos — and it was precisely thanks to that viral spread that everyone suddenly heard about the track.

In reality, though, the musician hid in the lyrics the bitterness of leaving Belarus, where his wife began facing persecution over her posts. It’s actually spelled out in the song — though woven subtly between the lines. And the author doesn’t deny it; on YouTube he even accompanied the video with the words: “Those who know even a little about what’s happening in my life will understand.”

Read more

Book: Timur Aslanov “I Know What to Tell Them”

No comments

On the recommendation of a good acquaintance, Anton Vert, I read Timur Aslanov’s book I Know What to Tell Them. In the blurb, the author promises to explain how to deal with negative comments about you, your company, and your products online. To do this, he introduces the concepts of the “Light Knight” and the “Dark Knight.” The latter is ready to act tough, respond rudely, and wipe out comments he doesn’t like. However, the greatest benefit comes from the “Light Knight,” who constantly monitors his emotional intelligence and knows how to respond to the substance rather than the tone.

My direct work has never involved responding to user comments; more often I’ve been on the other side of the barricades — and I’ll admit that at times I can be overly emotional in voicing my criticisms. Still, I’ve always tried not to stoop to personal attacks or mudslinging just for the sake of it.

At the same time, I’m active on social media, I have my own blog, and sometimes my position or certain statements can provoke negativity — both from subscribers and from people who just happened to drop by. So I was curious what exactly Timur Aslanov might advise, especially after such a strong recommendation from someone I know.

Read more

Book: Henry Lion Oldie “Invasion”

No comments

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about Pavel Filatyev’s book, which was essentially an account of the first days of Russia’s war against Ukraine seen through the eyes of a Russian contract soldier. Even then, I wanted to believe that all this horror would soon be over.

But two years have already passed since Russia attacked Ukraine, and there’s still no end in sight. As a child, reading about the Great Patriotic War, I used to think that four years of that war was a whole lifetime. By that measure, Ukraine has already been at war for half a lifetime.

The initial shock has long since faded, and any hope of a quick ending is gone for good. And then a book came out by the remarkable Ukrainian authors Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky, whom all fans of sci-fi know under the pen name Henry Lion Oldie.

Both authors are from Kharkiv — a city where, before the war, Russian was heard far more often than Ukrainian, even though its residents considered themselves Ukrainian. Before the war, Oldie were seen as purely Russian-language authors. They wrote in Russian, a language they command better than most Russians do.

But on February 24, 2022, war came to their home; Russian missiles and bombs began to fall on their city. And both of them, Dmitry and Oleg, started keeping a diary.

Read more

TV Show “The History of Russian Computer Games”

No comments

Recently, the streaming service Okko released a documentary series titled The History of Russian Computer Games, about how the video game industry developed across the post-Soviet space—starting with the USSR era.

Anton Vert recommended it to me, immediately pointing out a few downsides. But it’s one thing to listen to smart people, and another to watch it yourself and then share your own opinion that nobody asked for.

In 30–40 minute episodes, the series talks about different milestones in the industry’s formation—first in the USSR, and then across the entire territory of this former Soviet empire. At least, that’s how the series is sometimes positioned (I’ll come back to this in more detail later).

Read more

Book: J.K.Rowling, John Tiffany & Jack Thorne “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”

No comments

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is, first, a play—and second, it was written with J. K. Rowling’s involvement, but still not by her alone. Both of those facts affect the way it’s presented. A play doesn’t really need vivid descriptions or direct access to the characters’ thoughts and feelings. You can’t show all that directly on stage; interpretation is the job of a specific director and a specific production. And having two co-writers as well also makes a difference.

Chronologically, the story begins almost exactly where the last novel of the main series ended—where, in the epilogue, we were shown the now-grown-up Harry, Hermione, and Ron seeing their children off to Hogwarts. Among them is Harry’s second son, Albus Severus Potter.

Up to this point, I hadn’t written reviews of any Harry Potter book. I mean, why would I, when tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people have read them already, so everyone knows what they are and what they’re about. But with this play I decided to make an exception.

Read more

Book: Dmitry Glukhovsky “Outpost”

No comments

I hesitated for a long time before picking up this book, because I have mixed feelings about Dmitry Glukhovsky, shaped by his Metro series. On the one hand, it’s genuinely a very interesting concept and execution; on the other, while I liked the first novel, Metro 2033, the second—and especially the third—mostly surprised me, and even disappointed me.

And even though I’d heard plenty of feedback about Outpost, I only got around to it after the war with Ukraine began, when almost everyone started saying that Glukhovsky had “seen it all coming” back then. That’s when I got genuinely curious: what exactly was it that Dmitry Glukhovsky supposedly predicted?

The novel opens by showing us a small settlement near a bridge across the Volga, by what used to be Yaroslavl. And now this is the very border of the state. Because at some point, a war broke out in the country, the mutiny was put down, but everything beyond the Volga can no longer be called inhabitable land, since some kind of weapon made it unfit for life. And the people at the outpost on the border are tasked with watching this single route into the cursed lands—just in case, so that no kind of nastiness crawls out of there.

And the lion’s share of the first volume is taken up by a description of life in this settlement—the remnants of all of Yaroslavl, where, judging by the description, only a few dozen residents are left alive, scraping by, somehow living, and even raising children. But the way this everyday grind is described, in my opinion, is drawn out too much. The plot moves very slowly, and all these abundant domestic details feel depressing at first.

Read more

Book: Maxim Katz “The History of the New Russia”

No comments

Russian history—past, present, and future—is being discussed a lot right now, and in completely different terms. I’m also interested in how exactly we all ended up at the point we’re at now. Boris Akunin wrote an entire series about the history of the Russian state from ancient times all the way up to 1917. Alexander Yanov tried to make sense of the history of the ‘Russian Idea‘. And the blogger and politician Maxim Katz constantly discusses current events, projecting them into the future, while still keeping historical realities in mind.

You can feel differently about Maxim Katz, but he’s definitely a pretty interesting storyteller. I respect his opinion, even though he’s often overly wordy, suffers from heavy self-repetition in his blog, but at the very least he tries to be objective and not lean too hard into emotions (which, for example, I’m very far from always managing).

Recently, Maxim released a book, The History of the New Russia, in which he laid out his view of how the Russian Federation developed starting from the late Soviet Union.

Read more

Book: Kir Bulychev “Those Who Survive”

1 comment

Kir Bulychev is most often regarded as a children’s science-fiction writer. When people hear his name, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the adventures of Alisa Selezneva.

However, Kir Bulychev wrote many works that are anything but children’s literature. Among them, probably the most well-known is the novel Those Who Survive, originally published in Russian under the title Posyolok (The Settlement in English). Initially, Bulychev wrote only the first part of the story, titled The Pass, which was published as a standalone novella in 1980. Only eight years later, in 1988, he wrote the second part, Beyond the Pass, and only then did the book become a single novel known as Posyolok.

The story is built around a spaceship that crashed on a distant planet many years ago. The planet is not exactly hostile; rather, it is simply what an alien world should be — not Earth. It has its own flora and fauna, which were never meant to coexist with humans. As a result, survival is extremely difficult for the crash survivors. The entire world is against them, and after the catastrophe almost none of the technological marvels of the future remain. Those who avoided immediate death are forced to focus solely on survival in this unwelcoming environment — and even that does not always succeed.

Over the years, they have become increasingly primitive in terms of everyday life, yet they have learned how to survive. Children born on this planet know nothing of any other life; they learn about it only through lessons in the small school of the Settlement. Even those who were born before the crash were very young at the time and remember almost nothing of life “before.”

Read more

Book: Ilya Varlamov, Maxim Katz “100 Tips for a Mayor”

No comments

Ilya Varlamov has been talking about urbanism in his posts for years, urging mayors of various cities to listen to him. And Maxim Katz, better known as a politician and political blogger, actually did a lot together with Ilya on improvement and city-planning issues. In 2020 they joined forces and published a joint book, 100 Tips for a Mayor. So they wouldn’t have to repeat themselves over and over again, as the saying goes. It’s easier to write everything down once in a book and then hand it out as an instruction manual.

And the book really does contain exactly one hundred tips—one hundred chapters. Yes, some are a bit superficial, and at times there are small repetitions. But what won’t you do for a nice round number in the title.

At the same time, the authors chose a structured approach. The entire book is divided into several sections:

  1. Development
  2. Transport
  3. Public spaces
  4. Semi-public spaces

And many chapters are phrased explicitly as advice. For example, “Create mixed-use neighborhoods,” or “Don’t make one-way streets.” In each chapter-tip, they first develop and justify their idea, richly illustrating everything with photographs (so the book can easily be considered a photo album — there’s more photography here than text). After explaining the idea comes a section titled “How to do it right” — recommendations on the best approaches, as well as “Successful solutions” — examples of where, when, and by whom things were done well. More rarely there’s a chapter “Where this has been done here” (meaning in Russia, of course). Yes, there aren’t many success stories in the authors’ home country, but each one shows that with the will to do it, it can be done.

Read more

Book: Fredrik Backman “Things My Son Needs to Know about the World”

No comments

Before Fredrik Backman became world-famous — and before Tom Hanks himself starred in a film based on his book — he was a blogger. And in the same year his debut novel A Man Called Ove was published, a small book titled Things My Son Needs to Know about the World came out.

And it’s not a work of fiction at all. This is Backman the early blogger, pure and unfiltered. The book is made up of several sections-posts focused on a single theme: what the author, as a young father, wants to tell his son about life in this world. What he believes should matter to him.

But all of this is written in the form of letters — a monologue intended for his son, who will one day be the reader. In fact, Backman opens the book by apologizing to his son in advance for the next 18 years (until he comes of age).

I honestly don’t know whether I would have been able to write something like that 22 years ago when my first daughter was born. Probably not — I simply didn’t have enough life experience yet. And now I understand that my list would be enormous, spanning several volumes.

Backman, however, chooses to outline the main topics right away — the things his son absolutely must know. These include:

  • Motion-sensitive bathroom lights
  • IKEA
  • Soccer (football)
  • Stuff (whether possessions are worth worrying about)
  • Being a Man (that’s literally what he calls the chapter)
  • God and Airports (don’t ask why they’re in the same topic)
  • The Singing Plastic Giraffe (and similar toys gifted to young parents by well-meaning childless friends — friends who will soon cease to be friends)
  • Clashes with other parents on playgrounds (ah yes, those “experienced mothers of one child”)
  • Good and Evil (how could he skip that)
  • Starting a Band (an essential stage for every teenager)
  • Love
  • And “When I Hold Your Hand a Little Too Tight”
Read more