Tag: reading

Book: Alex Bellos “Can You Solve My Problems?”

No comments

I’ve said more than once that I’ve loved all kinds of logic puzzles since childhood. For example, back when I wrote a review of Gareth Moore’s Lateral Logic five years ago. To solve puzzles like these, you really just need to understand the general approaches, break the setup down into its components clearly, and be able to build logical chains. I got lucky: in school I was taught that by a wonderful math teacher, and later I kept solving things like that myself, whatever I could get my hands on.

Sometimes video games include puzzles like this too. For example, in Dishonored 2, in one episode a gate is locked with a code, and you can figure it out by solving a logic puzzle. The developers also give you a workaround — you can use force or stealth to get the hints from other characters and skip the brainteaser. But I couldn’t resist and spent almost 40 minutes solving it: to my own delight, once I did, I entered the code correctly on the first try. For that I got a separate achievement in the game, but the main pleasure was the solving itself.

But let’s get back to the book. Can You Solve My Problems? by Alex Bellos is another book by a lover of this kind of puzzle, who collected them into a book not with some goal of teaching people to think outside the box (as in the Gareth Moore book mentioned above), but simply to entertain the reader.

Read more

Book: Vayner brothers “The Age of Mercy”

No comments

Ever since childhood, I’ve loved watching detective stories on TV. Later that hobby spilled over into books too (I wore my Sherlock Holmes volumes out back in that same childhood). And among detective stories, I always singled out films and series about the Soviet police fighting the criminal underworld. You can’t not mention epic staples like The Experts Are Investigating and Born by the Revolution.

But one particular favorite for viewers was the four-part 1979 TV film The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin and featuring a wonderful cast. Vladimir Vysotskiy brilliantly portrayed the tough Moscow Criminal Investigation Department detective Zheglov, while Vladimir Konkin played the very young Volodya Sharapov, who joined the force right after the war, where he had commanded a reconnaissance unit. For Konkin, this role was probably the most significant in his entire career—he never played anything else quite as memorable. And the characters outgrew the film itself long ago—making their way into jokes, songs (like Lyube’s “Atas”), and everyday culture.

At the heart of the story is the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department’s fight against a brutal, elusive gang known as the Black Cat, which terrorized postwar Moscow.

I loved this film too. I’ve rewatched it countless times since, and every year I noticed something I hadn’t caught before, simply because I was too young back then. What’s more, as I got older, even my attitude toward the characters began to change (but more on that later).

Read more

Book: “Is It True?”

No comments

This book first caught my attention with its cover—styled like a Soviet newspaper—and then with its blurb, which promised an analysis of a whole bunch of dubious “facts” in modern social and classical media, carried out by “Russia’s most famous team of fact-checkers.”

A lot of people really are used to believing everything they read or hear from supposedly competent sources. But we know that in politics, there’s never the whole truth—even if nobody is lying on purpose. You can still tell only part of the truth and emphasize the facts you need. And if propaganda doesn’t even have the goal of not lying, then pretty much any method “goes.”

That’s why even when you’re just reading something online, it’s always better to at least double-check that the alleged fact is real. Otherwise, you’ll sometimes read some nasty thing and, in righteous anger, come down on someone—or start spreading the news yourself. And then it suddenly turns out it was a fake, and you helped it spread. Awkward, if your conscience isn’t just an empty word.

So reading about fakes—and about things that only seem like fakes—along with a solid breakdown by fact-checkers (which is basically a new profession: checking whether a news story is lying) sounded like an insanely interesting idea.

Read more

Book: Sergey Nikolaevich “Status: Free. A Portrait of the Creative Emigration”

No comments

Almost four years ago, Russia attacked Ukraine. Because of that, many families were forced to flee Ukraine to escape the war. But at the same time, inside Russia it suddenly became dangerous to condemn the war—and even to call it a war. And those who didn’t want to fall silent were forced either to go to prison or to leave, branded in their own country as traitors, “foreign agents,” and even terrorists. (Many Belarusians went through a similar path after the 2020 protests, but that isn’t really related to the book I’m talking about.)

Russian journalist Sergey Nikolaevich also left Russia after the war began. And then he decided to interview members of the creative intelligentsia—people whom their homeland no longer considers its own—and turn those conversations into a book. That’s how Status: Free. A Portrait of the Creative Emigration came to be.

Nikolaevich focuses specifically on people in creative professions. Among the subjects of his interviews are Kirill Serebrennikov, Renata Litvinova, Chulpan Khamatova, Maxim Galkin, and others.

Based on the blurb, I expected to hear conversations with those who left about how and why they had to go, what the main trigger was, what they’re doing now, and how they’re coping morally—when they’re both enemies to their own country and hated by many Ukrainians, for whom there are no “good Russians” right now.

Read more

Book: German Shenderov, Sergey Tarasov “The Knówer: Bonds of Hell”

No comments

The big discovery of last year for me was Ivan Belov’s Zastupa series; the third book came out just recently, and I’m going to read it as soon as it starts being sold in an ebook version. In my review I praised the first two books a lot, and someone wrote to me that in that case I absolutely had to read another one that came out in the same The Scariest Book series.

That was The Knówer: Bonds of Hell, co-authored by German Shenderov and Sergey Tarasov. Originally, German Shenderov had written only a short story, “Khryashchekhmyl,” which appeared in his short story collection back in 2022. But later he wrote two more stories about the same character, after which Sergey Tarasov joined the series, and together with Shenderov he finished the book—what has now become a novel in stories. And the original “Khryashchekhmyl” became only the first chapter of this book, changing its title to “Atonement.” And already as a novel, the book came out in 2025.

The recommendation—and then the blurb—won me over. The story is set mostly in 1965, in a small Belarusian village, where a local knówer lives and fights evil spirits. Folklore, and on Belarusian soil that’s native to me… I just couldn’t pass it by.

Read more

Book: Boris Akunin “Bashō’s Frog”

No comments

Boris Akunin has repeatedly experimented with the form of his prose, incorporating interactivity in one way or another. Sometimes it was limited to links to video clips that could be opened online by scanning a code from the book; other times it took the shape of full-fledged “quest books,” where the narrative depends on the reader’s choices.

I myself am quite conservative when it comes to reading, so I prefer a straightforward novel, without all these branching paths and detours. External links didn’t appeal to me either when I encountered them before. Still, I decided to give this kind of genre another chance and read Bashō’s Frog, knowing in advance that it is built precisely around choice.

There were several reasons for that:

  • I like Akunin’s work, but I have by no means read everything he has written.
  • This book is about Erast Fandorin, my favorite character created by the author.
  • The narrators are either the Georgian Lazo Chkhartishvili or the Jewish Aron Brazinsky. Both of these colorful peoples appeal to me greatly (especially the latter, since on my mother’s side I am Jewish myself).

The choice of narrators is far from accidental. They are the great-grandfathers of Boris Akunin himself (known in everyday life as Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili). He chose to construct the narrative from their perspectives, imagining how representatives of these nations might tell a story, complete with both real and invented stereotypes.

Read more

Book: Alexander Chernukho “Pigs”

No comments

A music journalist and columnist writing about provincial Belarus suddenly decides to write a novel — and that novel is just as suddenly published and attracts a fair amount of attention. That’s Alexander Chernukho. I had never read his work before: I’ve almost never been interested in music criticism, and Belarusian online media had long since dropped out of my field of view altogether — especially after 2020, when many outlets simply ceased to exist.

As for what the state calls “official media,” it’s hard to describe that as journalism at all. In fact, according to the author himself, those very official outlets became one of the triggers that pushed him to write his satirical novel Pigs. Because how can you not laugh at what they print and broadcast? Though at its core, the book is first and foremost a response to Alexander’s own emotional experience of the events of 2020 in Belarus — just expressed in the form of a comic-satirical novel. After all, it’s well known that the best remedy for anger, bitterness, and melancholy is laughter.

Read more

Book: Marina Pereskokova “Mom, I’m a Team Lead!”

No comments

This year I’ve been reading fewer books on professional topics, but the ones I do read I choose very carefully. I didn’t pick up Mom, I’m a Team Lead! right away: first I listened to colleagues’ feedback, then I looked into what other readers were saying about it. And only after that did I decide it was worth reading myself — because the topic of growing from an individual contributor into a manager has always interested me. I myself spent a long time trying to sit on two chairs at once, until I finally moved fully into “pure” management (although I still don’t shy away from working with my hands when there’s no other choice).

The main goal the author set for herself in this book is to show how any manager needs to grow — starting almost from the very first steps, when just yesterday you were simply an executor (even a highly skilled one), and today you’re already responsible for other employees in the company. Marina breaks down the main fears and typical mistakes along this path. And that alone is extremely valuable, because not every young manager is lucky enough to have a good mentor who can help them deal with such fears and challenges.

I have to admit, though, that at first I reacted somewhat skeptically when Marina mentioned that she gained virtually all of her experience (10 years) in a single company with a single culture — one she was clearly very lucky with. Because she was genuinely fortunate: she had a manager who helped her grow, and the team relationships were built according to healthy rules, judging by her descriptions. But the harshest school of management is learned when things aren’t so rosy. And the lack of such tough experience is felt a bit in the book, because it’s easy to act “correctly” and “by the book” when the company and leadership allow you to. You need to be even more prepared to grow and solve problems in situations where circumstances make that much harder.

Of course, one might say: “Why work at such a company? Go find another!” But that’s not always possible — the job market doesn’t welcome everyone with open arms, especially young and inexperienced managers. And besides, there are no ideal companies in the world. There are better ones and worse ones, and far more of them will be not quite what you’d like (I personally believe that if all companies were ideal, strong managers would barely be needed at all). And finally — the harsh school gives you far more problem-solving skills, meaning you’ll be fully capable of working even in good conditions later on. But the other way around? That’s far from guaranteed.

Read more

Mosab Hassan Yousef “Son of Hamas”

No comments

Hamas hasn’t left the news cycle—both in a negative light and, from pro-Palestinian quarters, in a positive one. Yet back in 2010 a book came out about the organization that shows it from the inside—and hardly in a laudatory vein.

It’s called Son of Hamas, and with good reason: it was written by Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the seven founders of this Palestinian group. The eldest child in his family, Mosab was raised fully in line with Hamas policy. At 18 he was arrested by Israeli law enforcement for attacks on Israeli soldiers. About a year later he was released and for a long time became his father’s trusted aide.

Only no one knew that from that moment he spent nearly ten years working for Shabak (Shin Bet), Israel’s security service. During that time he managed to prevent numerous terrorist attacks and save many lives on both sides. He helped in the arrest of high-ranking Hamas operatives, and in 2007 he left the Middle East; three years later he was granted political asylum in the United States—something that required Israeli services to officially reveal his identity.

Mosab renounced Islam and in 2005 was secretly baptized in Tel Aviv. Since then he has been an outspoken opponent not only of Hamas but of Islam as a whole.

Read more

David Gay “The Tenth Circle: Life, Struggle, and the Destruction of the Minsk Ghetto”

No comments

Right now, when the whole world has turned viciously on Israel, when denying the Holocaust is fashionable and being an antisemite has suddenly become not shameful again, even politically correct, it is a hundred times more important to remind ourselves what real genocide is. At least to oneself, because those unwilling to hear won’t hear anyway.

Books about the Nazis’ “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” have always held a special place on my list. Because, as I’ve said many times, for me this is not an empty phrase and not a “Zionist fabrication.” And then, unexpectedly for me, the BAbook publishing house began selling a book I had never heard of before, even though it was first printed back in the USSR. Now, its author, David Guy, has decided to reissue it, in part in response to the October 7 massacre in Israel.

And I’m grateful the book caught my eye, because people know very little about the history of the Minsk Ghetto. The one that’s usually on everyone’s lips is the Warsaw Ghetto, vast, on whose ruins—among other places—the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 fought, only to be crushed by the Nazis when Soviet troops were already not far off. The ghetto itself has been shown more than once in cinema, and Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning The Pianist is almost entirely devoted to the story of one Jew in that ghetto.

Read more