An affair with the book
In this issue our experts speak about their special relationship with books, including those from their early childhood, and about how reading can be a way of finding harmony and peace.
Hennadii Kharchenko, businessman, Kyiv:
“Nowadays, I do not read as much as I did five or ten years ago. This is because now I have a large company to manage, and hence, I only have enough time to read business literature and periodicals.
“I always wanted to succeed. I was well aware that success comes from knowledge. In addition, there was a genuine cult of the book in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. Writers’ audiences filled halls and stadiums. People queued in terribly long lines to buy books, traded wastepaper for scarce publications and entire series... Finally, it was nice to chat with educated, intelligent people.
“Right now, I am reading three books. Two of them were brought from London. However, one was brought by me, while another — by my friend. The first was written in the form of a diary. Its author is a popular television presenter, one of the authors of the popular program Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson. I do not remember exactly the second book’s author, but it has an exciting dynamic plot. It is about a young person who came from the province to the capital of Great Britain and achieved outstanding success there, consistently overcoming obstacles. Finally, the third book is Rules of Management, to which I return time and again.
“I like detective stories by Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Gilbert Chesterton... Previously, I admired Hohol’s works and Russian classics: works by Pushkin, Leskov, Lermontov (especially his Caucasian short stories), Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoyevsky... Not long ago, I have reread Hohol. This was not due to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth. Hohol is simply always relevant. What he, for example, described in Dead Souls, is, unfortunately, still happening in our society. I’ve also reread Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches. In my opinion, modern writers pay more attention to the storyline, while the classics liked the details. Thus, Turgenev was like a painter, building the plot with light strokes of his brush.
“I have a son who is growing up. One of the rules that I’m guided by in his upbringing is not to force the boy to do something, so to say, under the lash. He reads a lot on his own. However, he is interested mostly in information. For example, he reads the histories of his favorite rock bands. I gently hint that it is time to start reading classical literature. But, perhaps, everything is good in its season. My boy is looking for information mostly on the Internet. I am conservative. I never read electronic books, preferring printed ones. Similarly, I don’t download movies from the all-encompassing net, but I buy them on disks. There is a simple explanation: my son and I belong to different generations.
“I buy books myself. Also, I receive them as gifts. Sometimes donators suggest other books for me to read. I also recommend some books to them. I’d advise readers of The Day (having great respect for this publication and understanding that your audience consists of intelligent readers) to read Richard Denny’s Motivate to Win. I buy only those business books that were reprinted at least thrice. The book just mentioned was recently reprinted for a third or even fourth time. As for fiction, I recommend Paul-Loup Sulitzer’s The Green King. He raised all the issues that interest educated and meticulous people, that is, environmental issues, the temptation of money, humanity... The main character, becoming a billionaire, has managed to stay his own man. No wonder they say that the most important thing is to live according to your own personality.”
Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky, writer:
“Reading is a way of life. My father was the director of a House of Culture. And one day, the House’s library burned down. The remnants were moved into our house. Since then, I almost always read. In short, once infected with reading, I remain ill to this day. Also, I have been a professional critic for a decade and half. Naturally, I tried to know everything being done in literature. Due to sheer inertia, I continue to do it now. Also, there is a common desire to read unique books. For example, I am still impressed by an amazing book entitled Study of the Ability to Learn. Its author was the medieval Spanish monk, physician and philosopher Juan Ugarte. He was concerned with problems that interest us even now, namely why some people are intelligent, and others not, why those with a phenomenal memory sometimes happen to have no analytic abilities, and finally, why people who are good in analytical thinking can be so forgetful... Another book stands next to the abovementioned one, and I would especially advise politicians to read it. It is called Accentuated Personalities and was written by the German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard. It is interesting not only because this eminent psychoanalyst offers a classification of psychological types and mental abnormalities, but also because in its second part, he diagnoses some characters of world literature: Don Quixote, Othello, Hamlet... In the mentioned work, philosophy, psychiatry and world classics all are interpreted from a very interesting point of view.
“I ‘swallow’ a lot of books on topics that interest me as a writer. It is known that if you want to write a serious work, you should read the entire library. I am writing a biographical novel about Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky for a long time now. Recently, I have come across a body of publications devoted to Yevhen Chykalenko published by Kyiv’s Tempora. I must say that it is a precious legacy to literature, culture and history in general. I was strongly impressed by Hryhorii Huseynov’s three-volume collection of documentary stories Pristine Snows. He is a phenomenon in our literature. He has populated the parched steppe with Ukrainian history. In fact, he returned it there, with hundreds of names and stories. My list of recommended books would be enormous. As you understand, I have an affair with the book…”
