Sex blogger Tatiana Nikonov 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, sex-blogger, writer and lecturer Tatyana Nikonova shares her stories about favorite books.

I can't answer the question if I have any favorite books. There are those who have seriously affected you at some stage, but they don’t give anything further - and you don’t turn to them anymore. There are those to which you return once every few years and each time you find that you are already reading a completely different work, because it has changed itself: this is always the case with Anna Karenina or the Forsyte Saga. And there are also books that you enjoy in the first place, but over time this also passes. At twenty, I had a long list of favorite authors and books; by forty I had only love of reading.

I read fifty-sixty books a year, including re-readable books — it doesn't work anymore. Much goes very slowly: the text must be lived through and left at least for a few days in order to understand what I think about it outside of the process. In my youth I read more and drunkenly, and in my childhood I was one of those children who were driven to take a walk, selecting books.

Before, it was important for me to have access to books. I remember well the times when publications had to "get it." I read at a party, because the texts were not borrowed, I handed over trash, exchanged books with acquaintances, scoured the libraries - there was little choice in a small provincial town. We read a lot of things in magazines with continuations from number to number - we cut out pages and intertwined them. So, I read Heinlein for the first time in the magazine “We”, and Agatu Christie - in the Uzbek “Star of the East”. It was enough to lose one issue in order not to know what happened next, and in ten or fifteen years I read part of the works again with amazement. On the other hand, maybe this has developed my imagination: while you are waiting for a month with a new issue with a continuation and silly illustrations, you will think up a dozen variants of the plot development. There were always classmates around me who wrote something themselves, now it would probably be called fan fiction.

I didn’t write anything and now, when I am preparing the first book (a sex-study-tutorial for teenagers), I sometimes feel like an “unreal welder”: it is believed that the passion for this is revealed very early and constitutes the core of a writer's personality, but I have never had it. But I think that sacralization of literary work does not benefit anyone - neither the writer nor the reader. People write when they cannot but write, but this need may arise in different circumstances. And reading is an active process when the reader collaborates with the author. Therefore, it’s not the books that are important, but what they bring to our life - this can only be what we are ready for.

Recently I have been reading a lot of scientific stuff, but the ability of authors to spread into a thick book something that could be put into a couple of long articles is often annoying. A good example of how not to do this is “Mutants. About genetic variability and the human body” of Armand Marie Leroy. You are involved in reading in such a way that when at the end of the chapter you are warned that the next one will be about Dr. Mengele, you set aside for a couple of weeks: everything is described very vividly, and vividly about Mengele is something very scary. If the book would be boring, it would scroll further, it would not scare anyway.

Charlotte Bronte

"Town"

My favorite novel of all that the Bronte sisters wrote, even despite Charlotte’s characteristic didacticism. And the most undervalued, in my opinion, is just a couple of TV screenings (the latter in 1970), although the book deserves no less fame than Jane Eyre. The main heroine, poor orphan Lucy Snow, works as a teacher in a boarding house in foreign lands, futilely brings up pampered rich students, understands a lot about the shortcomings of her loved ones, experiences unrequited love, but, despite the hardships she faces, becomes stronger and freer and flourishes thanks to amazing courage before the blows of fate.

Lucy does not shine nor noble husband, or suddenly fallen down state, nor a miraculously found family. She has only herself, her diligence and the ability to accept herself, open up to other people and give them a chance. Lucy is experiencing ups and downs, honestly analyzes her feelings, and this is one of the heroines whom I cannot help but sympathize with at whatever age I may re-read the book. A novel about the power of the human spirit with a lively, controversial and imperfect main character, who finds happiness in work, because a person cannot live without happiness at all.

Mihai Chikszentmihayi

"Stream. Psychology of Optimal Experience"

One of the books that turned my life around. “Flow” is often referred to as business literature explaining how to make people work more and more efficiently. In fact, this is primarily a list of the main questions about the meaning of life and a set of tools that help you get more pleasure from any activity. The book is a guide on how to choose your job and how to organize it, so as not to painfully serve the clock, forcing yourself to perform tedious actions, and make the process fascinating, immerse yourself in it, enter the state of "flow" - with high concentration, excellent performance - and, most importantly, to receive great satisfaction.

This book helped me not only to restructure the approach to work, but also to find some answers to the eternal questions: why I live, what I want, what kind of life I need, what really is valuable in it for me - and even change the vector of activity. My friend, the psychotherapist Elena Perova, translated the book into Russian, and this is a good example of how important it is for professionals to take translations. Sometimes potentially extremely useful literature loses everything in translation.

Vladimir Nabokov

"Hell, or Joy of Passion"

The funniest book I've ever read. Usually, speaking of Nabokov, they talk about the language and structure of his works and make a complicated face, because reading Nabokov is a good tone and a way to show that you can master not only the “easy”. But "Hell" is just a great entertaining novel, in which readers have the opportunity to feel smarter than they used to think of themselves, sorting out the difficult in places, and not the puzzle in some places.

Some time ago I distributed almost all the books that I had, I left only textbooks and a few necessary ones, which I often refer to. “Hell” is one of them: I open it when I feel that it’s time to do something, despite the widest range of misfortunes described there and the proprietary nakokovsky longing for the crunch of a French roll. He is so famously cracking down on his cardboard heroes and demonstrates the conventionality of the narrative, that reading turns into unrestrained merriment - and forgive the novel for everything. In fact, my favorite book by Nabokov is “Pnin,” besides, reading it with feminist optics can be almost painless. However, "Hell" - the most attractive.

Leo Tolstoy, Ben Winters

"Android Karenina"

Winters wrote the first two novels in the mashup genre: a classic work is taken, something completely foreign is introduced there, we are looking to grow. Winters raises complex questions about human intervention in the environment or its future. “Reason and sentiments and sea bastards” - steampunk about humanity, which is facing extinction. Only the sea, the enraged sea creatures are around, and it seems that Leviathan is about to rise - but ordinary people are still interested in their relationship and their own role in this world. As a result, Marianne becomes an engineer, and the whole novel gives away much more to Victorianism and the industrial revolution than to the Regency era.

"Android Karenina" is also a steampunk, but of a completely different sense. Russia lives happily ever after, discovering the wonderful metal Groznium, from which they make intelligent machines and robots that provide all human needs. There are antigravity trains running between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Levin does not mow, but goes to dig in groznyevye mines. Thoughts about the relationship with the serfs are replaced by reflections on the role of the creator of thinking mechanisms, free will and the possibility of reverse control. I love “Anna Karenina” very much, I reread it once every few years. In the "Android Karenina" from the novel there were only horns and legs, but this is a rare and surprising insight into the notorious mystery of the Russian soul. For example, the statement of one of the characters who established the dictatorship that people in Russia must suffer and give up an easy life in order to save the soul. The fact that Anna ultimately binds to terrorists is not at all surprising.

Olivia goldsmith

"Favorite of the month"

Once upon a time I read a novel in one sitting with someone at a party, almost in the last century - it seemed to be a poketbook, and I completely drowned in history. The form is chiklit with detailed descriptions of who was wearing what, and the content is caustic satire on show business. The cosmetics brand is going to sponsor the series to sell more products to young girls and their mothers, and comes up with a retro story with young, unknown actresses to reach the maximum audience. They find a blonde (naive), brunette (smart) and red (sex). As a result, it turns out that the blonde girl is sleeping with her brother, the brunette is a forty-year-old theater actress-loser redrawn by a plastic surgeon, and the redhead has a very special, scary and sad secret.

Recently re-read, and the book is clearly about the nineties, but still as fascinating tells how Hollywood devours people and their loved ones. True, it is now noticeable how bad it is translated. For example, the dog there is called "Oprah, because it is black and smart."

Charlene Harris

"Chronicles of Souki Stackhouse"

A whole series of novels and stories about a telepathic waitress from a small town in Louisiana, in whose world vampires received a synthetic blood substitute, declared themselves and began to demand ordinary civil rights. In the “True Blood” series based on the motive (you can watch before reading, almost everything is rewritten), the story turns into a metaphor for LGBTiK’s struggle for their rights, besides in the most racist states. In the books, more attention is paid to adventures (werewolves, fairies, werewolves come to light - and Suki understands that her own gift is completely normal against the background of what is happening), but the main thing is the gradual development of the heroine herself, who is looking for her love, but is not going in search lose yourself At first she is ready to literally dissolve in the first partner, but gradually becomes more demanding on what the relationship is turning into. She may agree to just meet without the prospect of something serious, but she never promises to give something that is too much for her. Suki is experiencing an enchanting romance with a high erotic glow, but will not exchange a bond for him that has grown out of friendship and deep mutual understanding.

As a result, sex turns out to be what she has learned and what can bring to a new relationship - besides, she can just enjoy it, without loading it with additional expectations. Suki still has everything very vital: she is independent, but young and not rich, she has no savings, an old house, no medical insurance and permanent injuries as a result of life among evil spirits (this is a source of constant concern because in case of which she simply cannot pay medical services). Like the heroine, Suki sometimes infuriates (she infinitely takes a shower, puts her hair and does makeup), but then it stops annoying because it is part of her life: she lives in a hot place, she is regularly doused with blood, and she is mostly painted to get more tips.

Sinclair Lewis

"It is impossible with us"

Lewis in 1935 published a novel in which the United States elected a populist president who gathered the electorate with calls for the return of traditional values, patriotism and a conservative agenda. As a result, he immediately establishes a dictatorship, censorship, punishment without trial, concentration camps and the arbitrariness of local authorities. No one believes to the last that this is possible, therefore every change in the situation is perceived as the last of horrors, after which further deterioration is impossible. But all, of course, wrong.

The protagonist, a middle-aged journalist and newspaper publisher in a provincial city, is trying to protest, but for a long time he does not reach where everything moves. His daughter and mistress more quickly understand the unacceptability of what is happening. Hero Jessup is just a pattern of tunnel thinking and refusing to admit that any of the most terrible changes are real, be it political will from above. His complacency of a recognized intellectual prevents him from meeting face to face with reality, until she puts a boot over this person. The most unpleasant thing, of course, is that the novel is still relevant: you read with a heavy sense of recognition and think, and where are you in this story?

Ann Lecky

"The servants of justice"

Fantastic novel, the first of the trilogy, which collected an incredible amount of awards; when you read it, the brain explodes. The main character is the mind of a combat spacecraft in an interplanetary empire, where there are no gender differences. It practically does not distinguish people by sex (it’s not visible under clothing), and for the sake of simplicity, everyone, including herself, defines women as women and talks about them in the feminine gender. At the same time, the heroine does not have any specific female personality, although you notice this not immediately.

I read in Russian and do not know how it is presented in English, but to note for myself the periodic indignation of "determine who already is before you" and the subsequent "so, and what difference does it not affect the plot?" fascinating and a little sad - the basic firmware does not disappear anywhere. But the main thing is that it’s just a very good novel, a political detective story about military autocracy mixed with transhumanism is not for the benefit of mankind - this also happens.

Another book answers the question of what will happen if you think of a way to do everything (spoiler: nothing good). The civilization also described in the novel does not limit sexual contact, and because there is no difference in gender roles, the possibility of marriage as a social express also disappears. Perfect organization of this society with a complex caste system and inhuman star expansion can not be named, but it is interesting to imagine how it would work.

Kate Summerskale

"Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace"

A documentary book about the scandalous divorce proceedings in Victorian England, when divorces became possible and just complicated and expensive, and not terribly expensive and unrealistic. Mrs. Robinson (whose husband was cold, appropriated all her money and needed her mostly as a producer of offspring) fell in love with a young and popular doctor, a family friend, and even married. She described in detail in the diary the vicissitudes of their romance, and once her husband took the diary, read it and, on the basis of this written confession, started a divorce. However, it turned out that Mrs. Robinson, most likely, had invented everything, and in her diary she described the desired, and not the reality.

Summerskale picks up documents, messages in newspapers and correspondence and decides who was accused of and what, why the words written for personal use were considered confessions, what was the role of diaries as a literary genre, and why the court looks so ridiculous from our point of view. For example, the defendant tried to declare insane, because the "normal" women, in the representations of the time, such horrors never wrote. The book reads like a fictional novel, and tells the truth, without any illusions about how people lived who had everything - except for the most important freedoms and the ability to dispose of themselves at their own discretion.

Jacqueline Suzanne

"Valley of Dolls"

Recently, I passed a test in which I had to distinguish the erotic scene from the "female" novel from the scene in the novel "big." The "Valley of the Dolls", of course, passes through the first category, but with ideas it is full, as in the second. This, in my opinion, is the best book by Suzanne, because when she tries to portray a subtle psychologist, it is somehow embarrassing to read, but when she tells how to eat, it is impossible to break away, despite all the signs of the "female" novel: it is flat, like a pancake, and actually very poorly written. The book shows the lives of three friends for twenty years immediately after the Second World War. One was driven out of poverty to wealth and fame by talent and perseverance, while simultaneously forgetting about humanity. The second was looking for true love, trying to sell themselves at a higher price, and everyone around used it. The third got the best of all thanks to her attractiveness, luck, and a good start from a good family, but her romantic illusions and puritan upbringing spoiled her life.

They call puppets a variety of drugs: usually girls start with barbiturates to calm down and sleep, because life is full of disappointments, and then they switch to larger doses and a more varied assortment. "Долина" - не агитка о вреде веществ, а рассказ о том, что происходит с женщинами в высококонкурентной среде, где они всего лишь расходный материал. Они пытаются сбежать оттуда ненадолго, не имея смелости уйти навсегда и навыков, чтобы справиться с разочарованиями. Я иногда жалею, что не прочитала "Долину" до того, как мне исполнилось двадцать: это пронзительная книга о неизбежности боли. Да, это не "большая" литература, но честная, доступная и не оставляющая иллюзий.