Tag: reading

Fredrik Backman “A Man Called Ove”

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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.

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Boris Akunin “The Walnut Buddha”

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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.

My rating: 3/5

Alexey Pehov, Elena Bychkova, Natalya Turchaninova “Kindrat”

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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.

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Edward Ross “Filmish: A Graphic Journey Through Film”

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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).

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Eugene Rogan “The Fall of The Ottomans”

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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.

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Richard Rumelt “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy”

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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?

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Mark Manson “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”

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I always thought that the midlife crisis was something out of the realm of psychological fiction, until this “fiction” overwhelmed me personally. And then I began to think about a lot of things and to reconsider much.

That’s when I came across the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. No, it’s not about middle age or even about its crisis. It’s more about the values we set for ourselves and how we do so. What we pay attention to, and what we SHOULD be paying attention to.

Some points are debatable, but overall, the author explains in a rather laid-back manner that many of the goals we set for ourselves, the things we strive for, are not actually what we truly need. Society imposes its values on us, preventing us from living happily and growing personally.

On the one hand, the author shows that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for who we haven’t become or never will be. He demonstrates that it’s often necessary to accept ourselves as we are and not stress over failures. And here lies the second important thing — mistakes and failures allow us to move forward. Self-doubt is a crucial part of our personal growth. In other words, we should doubt ourselves, but we shouldn’t worry about it.

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Michael Harris “The End of Absence”

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Just the other day, my daughter asked me which achievements of humanity I consider the most important and significant. I thought about it, and then I said the Internet. It has truly transformed our lives.

The book The End of Absence piqued my interest primarily because of its subtitle: “Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection.” And indeed, our children don’t understand how we lived without all of this.

However, the book turned out to be quite strange. At first, it draws you in when the author starts talking about how things used to be one way, but now they are another. I’m exaggerating, but that’s the essence: the author shows how the Internet and related services have changed our habits, our pace of life, and so on.

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Christopher Buckley “Thank You for Smoking”

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I don’t even remember why I decided to watch Thank You for Smoking, starring Aaron Eckhart. But the film absolutely blew me away: the main character is a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. Everyone hates him and sees him as another Goebbels, yet he participates in all the talk shows with a charming smile and almost always manages to sway the audience’s opinion.

I’ve watched this film about five or six times, and I recommend it to friends. For a long time, I wanted to read the novel on which the film is based. I even started reading the Russian translation, but I dropped it after about ten pages because it was so poorly translated. So, in the end, I read the book in its original language.

Of course, when you’ve watched a movie so many times and love it, you can’t help but compare the book to the adaptation. In the case of Thank You for Smoking, the differences are quite significant.

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Danny Gregory “Shut Your Monkey”

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The book Shut Your Monkey by Danny Gregory caught my attention with its description. We all have doubts, and that inner voice often tells us unpleasant things that can sometimes make us give up. Danny Gregory suggests visualizing this panicky voice as a monkey that lives inside us and holds us back from growing and achieving success.

The author worked in creative fields for many years, and this is evident in the book’s design: it’s full of sketches and illustrations, with white pages alternating with black ones. It’s clear that he was aiming to create not just a book but a creative piece of art.

While there are some interesting ideas, the book as a whole didn’t captivate me because it lacks a clear, cohesive approach.

It feels more like a notebook where the author jotted down his thoughts and artistic sketches “on the subject” and then decided to publish the whole notebook as a book. Perhaps because of this, it reads quickly and easily—there are no long chapters, just short paragraphs on one thought before moving on to the next.

Unfortunately, that’s where the positives end. At some point, I even found myself thinking that the book felt like the speech of an American preacher: short, concise, emotional, but with an obvious underlying agenda—selling a form of religious fanaticism.

You can read it to reflect on how you deal with your own inner panic monkey, but don’t expect much more from the book.

My rating: 3/5

Danny Gregory ‘Shut Your Monkey: How to Control Your Inner Critic and Get More Done‘buy