Singer Syuyumbike Davlet-Kildeeva about favorite books

IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, the singer, poetess and PR specialist Syuyumbike Davlet-Kildeeva shares her stories about favorite books.

I learned to read at the age of four, and since then I have read everything that has not been nailed down. At school I even had the nickname “Bookworm”. I regularly came to the lessons with dark circles under my eyes, because, as a rule, I read until the morning. The parents were unhappy, but I used a weighty, in my youthful opinion, argument: "And what, I wish I had drunk vodka at the entrance until the morning?" - and they retreated.

My love of reading was formed even earlier: the decisive factor was the breakdown of the TV when I was probably eight or nine years old. We lived quite poorly, it was a hard 1998, and we could not fix the device, much less get a new one. My classmates discussed the series Thunder in Paradise every day; I could not keep up the conversation and, with grief, I signed up for the district library. For a whole year, until we bought a TV, I constantly read books. I consider this a gift of fate: without a doubt, I would have been a different person, if the circumstances were different.

For a long time, my faith in the book word was unshakable. In early puberty, faced with important issues of life, for example, how to please a boy, I bought another "Encyclopedia for Girls" - I had darkness in them. It said that the boys first of all pay attention to the shoes, so it should be clean and tidy. I brought all my shoes in order and, pleased, told my mother about my successes. She laughed for a long time and tried to dispel my valuable new knowledge about the world, saying that boys first of all pay attention to something else, but I was adamant. "So it is written in the book. In the book!" - I answered and for a long time continued to believe the texts more than people.

It seems that only at the university I changed this setting to the opposite one and began to approach the reading critically. Because one professor said: "Put every thought into question! Check. Agree or disagree!" - I believed in university professorship even more than in books - but also for the time being. In the same place, in universities where I spent ten years of my life as an eternal student, I learned another important rule: you must read the original sources. Not criticism, not review articles, not clever thoughts about what was read, but only original texts.

At a young age I was omnivorous and could read fifteen detectives Darya Dontsova in a row for nothing, but today, when time has become a valuable resource, I take a closer look at what gets into my head. I follow the fact that literary critics and other leaders write opinions on the most important novelties, and I try to read them in order to understand what is happening with literature. In addition to fiction, I read non-fiction, mostly related to neurobiology and art - this is for the soul. And, of course, I love fat magazines: “New Literary Review,” “Theory of Fashion,” “Session,” “Theater,” and “Art.”

Another useful reading habit: on Sundays, I try to read long texts from the foreign press that came out during the week — this allows you to have a tolerable picture of the world and update it. I don’t have favorite books: if I read the thing to the end, it means that I love it. I read both in paper and electronic form. From bad habits - I constantly take books to the bathroom, because of what they lose their presentable appearance.

Benedict Anderson

"Imaginary Communities"

This book must be read by everyone. Anderson is a British sociologist, and this work is a one hundred and sixty page answer to the question of what a nation and nationalism are. This is a historical excursion, and an attempt at theoretical construction. I read it, in my opinion, even in the first year (of course, in the bathroom), and it really shook me. It seldom happens with theoretical works - so if I can do something in this life as a sociologist, then it is advising you to read it.

The so-called national ideas have a tremendous impact on the consciousness of people and on the course of history; therefore, it is important, speaking of them, not to forget that a nation is not something that exists in the physical world, but a concept constructed, or, as Anderson put it, us imaginary.

Gertrude Stein

"Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas"

One of my favorite literary genres is memoirs and diaries. "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" is the biography of Gertrude Stein, written on behalf of her mistress and life companion Alice B. Toklas. This is a terrific text, both in terms of style and content.

The owner of a cult Parisian studio apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, places of power of her time, created a special world around herself: she bought new art, supported artists and writers, and brought each other who had to be brought together. This book is a guide to Montmartre, a collection of all the Paris gossip of that time, a textbook on the history of art, and a story about the life of the most important people of that time, starting with Picasso and ending with Hemingway.

Isaac Bashevis-Zinger

"Enemies. A Love Story"

Roughly speaking, this is the story of a man who cannot choose between three women - and one of the most popular novels by Bashevis-Singer, the Nobel Prize winner in literature. It was originally written in Yiddish, for a long time in Russian it existed only as a curved translation from some English adapted text. But a few years ago, the Knizhniki publishing house published a novel with a magnificent translation.

The book reveals to us the psychology of heroes injured by the Holocaust, survivors and trying to somehow live on. Here there is my favorite Jewish New York, and the main character, the magnificent sufferer, and famously twisted love lines. In my opinion, “Enemies. A Love Story” is generally one of the most accurate literary statements about the nature of male love.

Umberto Eco

"How to write a thesis"

Umberto Eco is not famous for this book, but I can not say about it. When I was writing a diploma, the most difficult was to start it - I could not do it for about five months. When all the terms burned with a blue flame, someone advised me to read this text. Know, unknown, I am grateful to you. On the one hand, these are simple guidelines, tips and instructions for students who are faced with such a task as writing a thesis. On the other hand, this is a stunning artistic text, imbued with a love for the academy, for the very essence of research work and for students. Wider - talk about awareness and sincere passion in everything that you do. At one time this book gave me courage, courage and inspiration.

Will gomperz

"Incomprehensible art. From Monet to Banksy"

The problem of many books on contemporary art is that they are written in arrogant language, using terms and references that are understandable only to a narrow circle of selected art critics, and it is very difficult to read them. So, in the hope of dispelling the darkness of ignorance, I acquired a huge sensational encyclopedia "Art since 1900", but it is absolutely impossible to read. I even went to a seminar where they tried to make out this book by reading chapters with an intelligent man — but that did not help either. Therefore, the Gompertz book was a salvation and outlet for me - I can safely advise it.

She wrote a journalist who is well versed in contemporary art - and this is important. Gomperz told the history of art of the XX century, which is quite difficult to understand on their own, simple, bright and figurative language. Interesting details and catchy phrases do not make you bored while you are sorting out all sorts of trends and "-isms", so if you have long wanted to understand what happened to art in the previous century and how you can talk about it, this rather thick book is exactly what you need.

Romain gary

"Promise at dawn"

I love Romain Gary for the fact that he deceived everyone and was the only one in the world who received the Goncourt Prize twice, which is against the rules. The story is this: ten years after receiving the award, the writer released a new novel under the pseudonym Emil Azhar, inventing a legend and calling Azhar his gifted nephew. I chose between this novel Emil Azhara "All Life Ahead" (I adore) and the autobiographical "Promise at Dawn". I appreciate them, probably, equally, but the Promise at Dawn has become the book that will remain in my heart forever.

For me, this is not only an amazing biography of the writer, which is impossible to believe, but, first of all, the story of a very unhealthy relationship between son and mother. I cried terribly twice - when I read the novel and when I looked in on Wikipedia to find out how this life ended. “You can explain everything with nervous depression. But in that case, it should be borne in mind that it has been going on since I became an adult, and that it was she who helped me adequately to do the literary craft,” Romain Gary wrote these words before how to commit suicide.

Orhan Pamuk

"My strange thoughts"

This is not a book - it is a song in honor of one of the best cities in the world. Istanbul is one of the main characters here: the city lives and breathes, it grows and changes. Pamuk, in love with his city, tells his story with the words of a street vendor: who else can better know and feel the huge expanding anthill on the shores of the Bosphorus. “Museum of Innocence” Pamuk, by the way, I could not read - it turned out, not at all mine. And "My strange thoughts" - this is the beauty of the language, and all the recognized literary abilities of the author, and in a sense, a sociological study. Read in one breath.

It also seemed to me that there was a feminist optics in the text. Orhan Pamuk scrupulously writes out female heroines, speaking about the difficulties faced by the liberated women of the East. There are so many injustices, pains and humiliations in these fates, the reader sees for himself - and it’s impossible not to become a feminist after reading it.

Helen Fielding

"Bridget Jones's Diary"

I advise you to read in English and not to disregard the second part - it is, in spite of everything, no worse than the first. This is probably one of the funniest texts I've ever met in my life. And the episode not included in the films, in which Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth, I reread in moments of the blackest melancholy - and it dissipates.

I do not want to pronounce the obvious, but the literary basis in this case is much larger than the films that made Bridget Jones the heroine of popular culture. The books have a corporate British humor, accurately recorded the life of a young journalist and seeks to find answers to eternal questions. And, again, the most important thing is that it is very, very funny.

Dmitry Vodennikov

"Promise"

The Promise is a book of poems by the poet Dmitry Vodennikov. I first heard about him when the composer Alexander Manotskov spoke about Vodennikov's cycle "Poems to the Son" as the most important poetic statement on the topic. It was on a series of poems about me evenings that took place in House 12 - ibid, without departing from the ticket office, I took a bottle of wine, sat down to read these poems and seemed to go out into space.

I have a corpus of my favorite poets, which either expands or contracts, but since then Vodennikov’s works have been separated from him. I found answers to important questions in these poems. The author himself says: "Poems should help people live." His poems do it.

Arkan Kariv

"Translator"

I stumbled upon the name of Arkan on Snob, where several of his short stories were published. Something in them hooked me, I went to see what else happened with the author, and came across the novel "Translator". How I laughed when I read it, you can't imagine. Having finished reading, I decided that the author is my soul mate and I will certainly marry him, but fate decreed otherwise.

This is an excellent example of the so-called Moscow-Israeli prose, a novel, as I understand it, largely autobiographical. A light and cheerful text immerses the reader in an atmosphere that I love very much - in the world of talented slobs with a good sense of humor - and talks about Jewish life in Moscow, about repatriation to Israel, and about the word that, as we all know, was at the beginning .