Tag: reading

Book: Debbie Tung “Book Love”

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The very existence of my book blog makes it clear that I read a lot and love books. But what few people know is that this love isn’t just a casual hobby; it’s a deep passion for collecting and cataloging that started in my childhood. Once I could afford to buy books with my own money, I would purchase far more than I could actually read. It brought me immense joy to lay out my collection, admire the covers, and revel in my growing library… “My precious!”

For a long time, I resisted transitioning to digital formats, but circumstances eventually forced me to. I simply had no more space for physical books, and it was far easier to bring an e-reader on business trips than to lug around several books (though I still remember carrying a 950-page tome with me everywhere and reading it at every opportunity).

Why am I telling you all this? Debbie Tung’s book Book Love immediately won me over the moment I read the synopsis: “If you love the rustle of book pages, the smell of fresh ink, find bliss in bookstores, and devote all your free time to reading or searching for new books, then this comic is about you and for you!” I thought to myself, this is exactly about me! Plus, the book was described as “a sharp, subtle, and humorous take on people who are deeply in love with books.”

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Book: Victor Hugo “Les Misérables”

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Almost everyone from my generation is familiar with Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in one way or another, even if they don’t realize it. How is that possible, you ask? Easily! During my childhood, there were a few heroes every Soviet schoolchild was expected to look up to. Off the top of my head: Malchish-Kibalchish, Arkady Gaidar himself (legend has it that he commanded a regiment as a teenager), Pavlik Morozov (whose heroism is now questioned, but back then he was unequivocally a hero who suffered for the revolution), and—Gavroche. The boy who was shot by cruel soldiers at the French barricades while trying to gather bullets for the rebels.

We all knew about Gavroche because the episode of his death was included in the school curriculum for foreign literature. It was even explicitly noted that this was an excerpt from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. However, I doubt many paid much attention to that detail back then. Moreover, the way literature was taught in schools was such that few students were inspired to revisit or explore the works of these authors in depth later on.

So, I knew about the novel, I fully understood that it was a classic of world literature, and I could even point out exactly where it sat on the bookshelf at home 😉 But I never really felt inclined to read it. Then, in 2012, Hollywood released a film adaptation of the musical based on the book. Since I enjoy musicals, I watched it with great pleasure—without having the faintest idea what it was about. I loved Hugh Jackman’s performance (I like him in everything, really) and Russell Crowe’s as well. And a couple of scenes with Sacha Baron Cohen as Thénardier were pure burlesque! Several songs made their way into my playlist, and the story itself seemed intriguing, even though the musical presented it in a very superficial way, often leaving questions about what was left out. That’s when I decided—it was finally time to read the book.

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Book: Alexey Savchenko “Game as a Business”

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Alexey Savchenko is a name well-known in the Russian gaming community, and not just there. For some time, he officially held the position of Evangelist for the Unreal game engine, and even now, many still refer to Alexey by that title. Open in communication, always ready to help—a remarkable colleague. When he announced that he was planning to release a book about the gaming business, I had no doubt that it would be worth purchasing and reading.

Although Alexey is now primarily involved in working with business partners, he has had a long journey and knows game development from many different angles, including as the owner of his own studio. In his book Game as a Business, he set out to describe all aspects of the gaming industry and project development—”from dream to release,” as the subtitle states.

Alexey structured the book along this very path, beginning with “I have a dream… I want to make games.” From there, he meticulously yet accessibly explains what awaits an aspiring game developer on the road to creating their dream game and, ideally, achieving fame and fortune.

It is evident that the author has a deep understanding of the subject, and the book is both accessible to industry newcomers and engaging for professionals. Despite my many years in the gaming industry, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

One of the most valuable aspects is how Alexey begins his advice by helping newcomers understand what lies behind their dream. Does the aspiring developer truly want to create their own game? Are they ready for the challenges this path entails? This guide is specifically for people who have decided to start their own business and are willing to risk their time, money, family relationships, and ambitions. Because if all you want is to make games, then joining an established studio is also an excellent path to consider.

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Book: Alexey Krivitsky “Agile Retrospective Kickstarter”

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Lately, I have been actively rereading various books and articles about Agile, and sometimes even exploring new material. In my opinion, Agile methodologies offer a lot of valuable practices, but one of the most useful ones is retrospectives—meetings where the team can look back, reflect on what has been done, analyze their experiences, and choose a few experiments to improve how things are done.

When people implement different Agile methodologies, they often forget that flexibility is not just about introducing daily stand-ups and breaking tasks into short sprints. It is fundamentally about learning from experience, adapting, and evolving. Without retrospectives, this does not work. That is precisely why retrospectives are so important. However, even these meetings can either be conducted properly and effectively or simply for the sake of formality (“because it is required”). For this reason, retrospectives are sometimes the subject of not only individual articles but even entire books.

Agile Retrospectives Kickstarter is one such book. Although it was written by a Russian-speaking author, Alexey Krivitsky, it was originally written in English, with the Russian version created later with the help of his colleagues.

The book itself is relatively short, just over 50 pages. The author, a practicing Agile coach, shares his experience in conducting retrospectives. However, he does not do this by providing an extensive set of examples or academic knowledge. Instead, he has compiled experiences from many sources into a highly condensed “retrospective cheat sheet,” offering a collection of possible exercises for conducting effective retrospective meetings. Alexey candidly admits from the outset that he did not invent any of these exercises (or at least does not remember inventing any) and even borrowed the methodology for breaking a meeting into several stages from other coaches. His contribution was to compile all of this into one relatively short guide that can be kept handy and used whenever preparing for a retrospective.

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Book: Constantine Koptelov “Order in Chaos”

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Sometimes even I fall for advertising, especially when it’s promoted in a reputable community. A few weeks ago, I came across an invitation to a free webinar on strategic sessions in a remote setting. It’s clear that the topic of remote work is being exploited by just about everyone these days, but I’m genuinely interested in the subject of strategic planning in general (and this is a good moment to remind everyone of the excellent book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt). At the same time, I’ve spent many years building workflows with remote teams. So, this webinar touched on two areas of interest for me.

The webinar was hosted by Constantine Koptelov, someone I hadn’t heard of before. However, the hour-long presentation flew by almost unnoticed. I took several notes during the session and became so intrigued by the topic that I immediately purchased Constantine’s book, Order in Chaos: Objective and Key Results (OKR), which I’ll tell you about today.

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Book: Roman Papsuev “Tales of Old Rus’. The Origins”

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Once, Roman Papsuev, also known online by the nickname Amok, began drawing characters from Russian fairy tales in the style they might be depicted for computer games, purely for fun. He shared his first sketches online for everyone to see. These illustrations quickly went viral, with articles about them even appearing on international platforms. That’s when Roman decided to take on the project more professionally, giving rise to the world of Old Rus’.

His illustrations continued to gain immense popularity, and the release of an artbook was only natural. In 2018, I bought and eagerly flipped through (calling it “read” doesn’t quite fit) the book Tales of Old Rus’. The Beginning. It was a classic artbook — lots of illustrations with minimal text, but all beautifully executed.

Later, Roman released a second book, titled almost the same: Tales of Old Rus’. The Origins. Based on the description, it was essentially the same book, but this time the author added significantly more text: he started describing the characters, explaining why they were depicted the way they were, and so on. The illustrations, however, were mostly the same. So I thought, why would I want to go through the same thing again? Still, I bought the book, if only to support the author.

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Book: Frederik L. Schodt “Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics”

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At one point in my work, I had to closely engage with the manga and anime industry (in the entertainment field, it’s quite normal for different areas of the entertainment industry to overlap: many games and movies are based on anime, and vice versa). However, I could never say I was a fan of this genre (unlike my older daughters). In my childhood, we didn’t have many comics, let alone their Japanese form in the style of manga, and my exposure to anime was limited to a couple of animated films that were allowed on Soviet cinema screens. I vaguely remember two: Taro, the Dragon Boy (which I really liked as a kid) and, later on, Puss in Boots: Travels Around the World. But we didn’t even know back then that this was anime.

After a closer encounter with it, I decided at some point to study the subject in more depth. Some aspects seemed quite strange to me, as someone raised in a completely different culture. For instance, when we were preparing to launch World of Tanks in South Korea, our Korean office practically created all the training materials from scratch, and to me, these pages on the site looked wild — it was a huge scroll of content in the form of a manga-style comic. But that’s just how they’re accustomed to receiving information.

As I delved deeper into the topic, I learned many interesting facts that all anime fans know, but the average person probably hasn’t even heard of. For example, many well-known Western franchises either have Japanese roots or were simply “borrowed” from Japanese creators due to a rather unique approach to copyright at the time. Here are just a few prominent examples to give you an idea:

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Book: Henrik Kniberg “Scrum and XP from the Trenches”

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Not long ago, on the last day of 2020, I wrote a review of the book Kanban and Scrum — Making the Most of Both, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in implementing Agile methodologies. However, this book was not the first by the author, Henrik Kniberg. His first book, published in 2007, also drew on his personal experience with agile methodologies and was titled Scrum and XP from the Trenches. Kniberg himself admits that he wrote this relatively short book over a single weekend, when he felt a strong urge to share his experiences with others.

This time, I won’t delve into the specifics of agile methodologies or why I’m singling out Kniberg’s books in particular, as I covered that in my previous review. Instead, I’ll briefly describe the book itself.

It’s also a very concise account of how he and his teams implemented various practices from Scrum and Extreme Programming in their work, with concrete examples and specific descriptions of the pros and cons. He’s not afraid to admit mistakes and point out what can go wrong. This is quite normal for agile methodologies, where much is governed by the motto “experiment and see what works best for your specific team.” The key is to frequently evaluate what’s been done (unlike older methodologies, where you might work for a year only to realize that you’ve been doing it wrong all along).

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Book: Shaun Bythell “Confessions of a Bookseller”

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Exactly two years ago, I wrote a review of Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller, which I thoroughly enjoyed and recommended to anyone who sees paper books as more than just bound sheets of paper. This real-life diary of a real secondhand bookseller unexpectedly became a global bestseller, even to Bythell’s surprise, so it’s not surprising that a sequel followed.

If the first book was recommended to me by a friend, I discovered the second one quite by accident. Still, riding the wave of unforgettable emotions from the first, I immediately added it to my “to read soon” list. The new book, titled Confessions of a Bookseller, closely mirrors the structure of the first — it’s again a diary spanning a single calendar year. Once again, each day he records the number of online orders received and processed, the number of customers in the store, and the earnings. In other words, absolutely nothing has changed. Do you like my diary? Here’s part two. The cover of the first book featured the little bookshop itself (which really looks like that; there are now many photos of it online), while the second book’s cover shows Shaun Bythell himself in his shop. By the way, the likeness is accurate — here’s what he looks like in real life:

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Book: Elena Rezanova “Never-ever”

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“Midlife crisis.” A cliché term that encompasses many things but most commonly refers to a moment somewhere in the middle of life (since each person has a sense of how long they think they’ll live), when many start asking themselves questions like “Have I been heading in the right direction all this time?” or “What’s the purpose of it all?” The real problem isn’t the questions themselves but the fear that the most productive years of life may already be behind them. And people who start asking these questions essentially trap themselves, especially if they’re unhappy with their current situation or it simply no longer brings them joy (which, in essence, is the same thing). Getting out of this psychological dead end is very challenging.

Elena Rezanova’s book Never-ever is precisely about this situation and what can be done about it. Elena worked for many years in HR (the Russian language still lacks an equivalent for the English term “Human Resources,” but these are people who theoretically help employees develop, can serve as a psychological “shoulder to cry on,” and also resolve interpersonal conflicts in the workplace). At some point, however, she and her husband realized that their reasonably successful careers no longer brought joy to either of them. They decided to make a radical change, something neither of them has regretted, as they found new, fulfilling pursuits that continue to bring them happiness.

I had marked this book as “something I’d like to read” a while ago, as that very same midlife crisis eventually caught up with me as well (even though I have a wonderful family and have achieved a lot in my career).

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