Last two weeks I was terribly ill, could do nothing, no computer, no phone chats, no music listening... Even movie watching was finally restricted. As the person who can't just lie in the bed for such a period of time and do nothing I was seeking for some activity and primarily for the thing stated in this blog's name - medicine for melancholy. Thus, Daria Dontsova's books were rediscovered by me to serve as such. And the nicest point is they are perfectly capable of that.
The author's genre is ironic detective. Talking about the latter the plot is enormously complicated. There necessarily is a story, background story and side story. Three dead bodies are never enough. My sister claims that while reading at some point she forgets some characters. I, being told to have excellent memory, can't retell the plot after several months and in a year I will enjoy the book again, as a new crime story. Most likely due to this fact Dontsova is named Russian modern Agatha Cristie. As far as I remember, stories by lady Agatha are quite complicated, but she is way less blood-thirsty, and there is some scent of nobility in all the crimes she describes. I would call Dontsova in this respect Russian Caroline Graham who is the true and recognized modern Agatha Cristie with her brilliant Midsomer Murders.
Surprisingly there is much more in Dontsova's books in addition to peculiar way of crime investigation. The detectives are ironic. Most likely the genre was chosen by her intentionally as she was lying in the hospital with distressing prognosis when she started to write these books. Thus, she makes us to laugh on Russian modern reality in its everyday demonstrations. In addition to that you can find lots of useful advises about how to deal with stress and other daily problems. Daria tries to teach the readers how to behave themselves as well. Taking into consideration that her aim audience is more-than-average citizen of Russia (and even the easy, spoken, "street" language of the books is chosen for that particular reason), you can not stop respecting her, reading advices like: please, do not get dressed in dark, put head-phones on your head and start crossing the road in the dark time in unexpected place instead of the specially created for that reason underground passage.
For late-October-depression treatment I have chosen the books which were available in university for free take-and-put-something-in-exchange. Though I must admit, I violate rules: I take a book and then return it later. And also occasionally I donate couple of kilos of home collection before moving in order not to transport or store it. Returning back to the matter, I started from "Diet for three piglets" - a first book in the series about Tatiana Sergeeva, Detective on a Diet. Then I continued with three items from chain of detectives about Dasha Vasilieva, the Lover/Amateur of Private Criminal Investigation. They were "Third Eye-Diamond", "Legend of Three Monkeys", "Facecontrol for the Main Role". The last in my list was "Shopping in the Cloud-Castle", a book from collection about Evlampia Romanova, Investigation is Carried by Dilettante.
Well, let's start from the easiest part. It is always so easy to criticize. I believe that's the human nature which is the reason. Thus, there are plenty of things I do not like in Dontsova's books. Starting from the ugly truth which is discovered in the process of her character's investigations and is always summarized in the several final chapters. The realities, histories and motives are usually so dirty, that I would prefer not to know about them at all. Though one may argue that they are not far fetched at all and I will absolutely agree. In some sense it is always nice to read the experienced and clever writer.
Second point, her jokes and cases for situation comedy are far away from being intelligent. Some of them are so embarrassingly stupid, I want to close the book. Nevertheless I have rarely not finished reading of Daria's composition. Well, situation comedies are often unbelievably obvious and unintelligent. Humor which is understood by everyone is necessarily quite dull. I must admit Daria Dontsova in this case is clearly the person with awesome philological education and common sense. In addition she doesn't like low humor herself. Still there is something else which catches attention in these books, may be, the deep understanding of irony of our modern reality, which you share as well.
I personally detest series devoted to Evlampia Romanova. The narrator's language is too different from the other series and it takes me around 50 pages to get used to it. Frankly speaking, languages of all the books are quite far from each other. There are rumors about Daria not writing all her books herself. The author says that in order to publish a book per month as she does you need to write 10 pages from 8am till 2pm and then 5more from 9pm till 11 pm, of course everyday, no matter what. I can imagine that she is as that hardworking as Stephen King. Thus I also can imagine situation when the lady might need some personal life in addition to all public events she is a member of recently. Therefore, I might believe that she has a bunch of writers working for her and I do not see anything blameworthy in that. At least she is not the first one. And she must inspire, develop idea, read and edit all her books herself, despite everything. Because the books are all well held in the same style and have usually something like one printed error per book of around 350 pages. Nevertheless, one more reason for me not to like Evlampia's series is that the number of errors there at some parts of the text is annoying.
But what I really love - and this is the turning point towards pluses in my review - is series of books about Tatiana. Detective on a diet is something which is personally close to me. I have the same weight range as the main character of the book and therefore the same problems. We still can only guess where lady Daria gets such a detailed knowledge of health and clothes problems we, ladies of "non-standard" weigh, have, but she describes everything quite excessively and precisely correct even being a tiny lady herself. But I do not want to discuss the same issue of who is really writing those books any more, as I do not see the point, guilt or anything you can blame for at all.
Secondly, the investigation description is full of funny situations happening to the main character-"detective" and other people around. It brings you to the atmosphere of Russian modern reality. It gives you an opportunity to notice funny elements in quite tough, fast and rude pace of life. It teaches you to perceive daily idiotic situations with humor and mental laughter instead of rage and anger. This trick cheer readers up and catch their attention. One more detail is the obligatory epilogue in every book - which describes how the justice was implemented, all the problems settled down and good characters improved their lives. This finale complement the positive image created by a book and brings reasonable hope for the best future.
Additional puzzle for me is always the title and the cover picture of the book. The title will be explained precisely closer to the end of the book by Dontsova as well. But their is also some, a bit more metaphorical reason for the choice. The cover picture is usually the compilation of some objects, events, characters from the plot, which symbolizes some additional idea. These two things occupy my attention immediately while I read the book, before I open it, after I close it and while I spot it on the table. They are some kind of supplementary mystery to solve while tracking the murderer.
If you still making your decision about whether to read Dontsova's books or not, then this last paragraph is for you. Every single book has one-evening format. It is also all-Russian recognized as the best book for metro travelings. The style is as undemanding as possible, the language is as easy as can be possible imagined. Reading won't occupy any computational powers of your brain at all. If you are a foreigner who tries to learn such sophisticated thing as Russian language then these books might be a good and easy start for you. They are claimed to have too many cultural though, but language can be studied only along with culture.If you are principal non-lover of Daria's books then may be you can try one. It is not that difficult at all and after that you will have grounds to advocate your opinion about these multiple awarded author. But beware to get hooked - you can never know how many useful things you can learn from optimistic housewife vigorously loving pug dogs.
Monday 1 November 2010
Tuesday 7 September 2010
Our Iceberg Is Melting. Changing and Succeeding under Any Conditions, by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber
Today I have finished the very famous book all over the world, especially in management circles - "Our Iceberg Is Melting. Changing and Succeeding under Any Conditions", written by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. My edition of the book was the translation into Russian, sponsored by Coca-Cola HBC Eurasia ("Наш айсберг тает, или Как добиться результата в условиях изменений. Джон Коттер, Холгер Ратберг).
Here we should stop for discussing the first peculiarity. If I translate word by word the title of the Russian translation back into English, I will get "Our Iceberg Is Melting. How to Succeed Under Changing Conditions". From my point of view, the title is absolutely different. I hope that is because of the simple fact - the necessity of constant change in organization is yet not obvious in Russian managerial community and should be advocated additionally. Which is in its turn omitted by changing the title a little bit.
The book is a joint project of Mr.Kotter and Mr. Rathgeber. John P. Kotter is a world-famous guru in change management and leadership, who already published two bestsellers devoted to the same issue before: "Leading Change" and "The Heart of Change". Ratgeber took emperor penguins from the cover of one of them and made them the main characters of seminars based on the books. After cooperation of two authors based on this trainings and additional research, the "Our Iceberg Is Melting" appeared itself to the world, comprising the knowledge of two previous books with the additional experience on the topic in question gained afterwards.
Yes, the main characters of the book are emperor penguins. For those who are sure that these creatures can't teach him anything, I can tell that unfortunately these particular penguins are more clever than most of us. The idea of introducing the concepts through these beautiful birds is to ease the atmosphere of learning managerial practices. In non-stressful form of fairytale - which is also believed to be remembered the best, and in any case better than scientific literature, especially from managerial field - the real recommendations, working in case of change management are presented, the 8-step algorithm developed by Kotter.
The algorythm is unbelievably clear:
Prepare the ground
1. Create the feeling of "great necessity"
2. Gather the strong team
Decide what to do
3. Create the vision of success and strategy for its achievement
Make it true
4. Put vision into everybody's head
5. Inspire the others on actions
6. Support quick victories
7. Don't give up
Secure the result
8. Create a new culture
The whole tale describes every step in details on example of penguins' colony - quite an abstract example and at the same time so cute, nobody will have any internal contradictions with that. If you by any chance hate penguins or know everything about change management already, still consider reading this book. You can use it as simple exercise for cheking your superior knowledge on the issue: try to imagine what penguins should do before reading the following chapter and then compare what answer Mr. Kotter has prepared for you. In any case the book is so thin, even in verbose Russian, so it will make your business trip more relaxed and entertaining.
For those who love penguins and is not acquanted with the matter, my advise will be - do not rush to get notebook and pencil to write the important issues down and do not stress on analyzing every word. The main idea of every chapter is plentifully repeated in the end of each chapter. In the last chapter the whole sequence of steps is presented once more. And finally, in the end of the book the Kotter's 8-step algorythm is summarized. So relax and enjoy. And if you will miss something, the book is so short that you can read it again in no time.
Authors recomend you to discuss the reading in any group and in any form in order to remember the ideas better. I would also like to rise the discussion in the comments thread. In my humble opinion the book is explaining the main ideas of reengineering of organization in a simple and understandable manner. The suggested algorythm is exactly the same list fo recomendations any guru on Business Process Management or Reengineering will give you.
Nevertheless the R-word is not mentioned at all. Why so? My idea is that the word "Reengineering" itself is not so popular among business people and managers or carries some bad memories and associations created by misunderstandings - I myself didn't succeed perfectly in defending Master Thesis' paper devoted to Business Process Management in Business School and am plannig to return to IT-faculties. I have only one more idea, which is even more crazy than this. May be, field of Change Management and Leadership hasn't intersected yet with Business Process Management and Reingineering yet. Then why? They state pretty much the same ideas. The only difference is in the origins: the former raises from business theories, the latter has its root in IT, quite deep roots though.
I really liked the ingenious idea of the book and the positive spirit. Authors claim that book has its success and helps in introducing management of change ideas to masses. I agree - it is impossible to describe the same useful material in more easy and entertaining way.
Here we should stop for discussing the first peculiarity. If I translate word by word the title of the Russian translation back into English, I will get "Our Iceberg Is Melting. How to Succeed Under Changing Conditions". From my point of view, the title is absolutely different. I hope that is because of the simple fact - the necessity of constant change in organization is yet not obvious in Russian managerial community and should be advocated additionally. Which is in its turn omitted by changing the title a little bit.
The book is a joint project of Mr.Kotter and Mr. Rathgeber. John P. Kotter is a world-famous guru in change management and leadership, who already published two bestsellers devoted to the same issue before: "Leading Change" and "The Heart of Change". Ratgeber took emperor penguins from the cover of one of them and made them the main characters of seminars based on the books. After cooperation of two authors based on this trainings and additional research, the "Our Iceberg Is Melting" appeared itself to the world, comprising the knowledge of two previous books with the additional experience on the topic in question gained afterwards.
Yes, the main characters of the book are emperor penguins. For those who are sure that these creatures can't teach him anything, I can tell that unfortunately these particular penguins are more clever than most of us. The idea of introducing the concepts through these beautiful birds is to ease the atmosphere of learning managerial practices. In non-stressful form of fairytale - which is also believed to be remembered the best, and in any case better than scientific literature, especially from managerial field - the real recommendations, working in case of change management are presented, the 8-step algorithm developed by Kotter.
The algorythm is unbelievably clear:
Prepare the ground
1. Create the feeling of "great necessity"
2. Gather the strong team
Decide what to do
3. Create the vision of success and strategy for its achievement
Make it true
4. Put vision into everybody's head
5. Inspire the others on actions
6. Support quick victories
7. Don't give up
Secure the result
8. Create a new culture
The whole tale describes every step in details on example of penguins' colony - quite an abstract example and at the same time so cute, nobody will have any internal contradictions with that. If you by any chance hate penguins or know everything about change management already, still consider reading this book. You can use it as simple exercise for cheking your superior knowledge on the issue: try to imagine what penguins should do before reading the following chapter and then compare what answer Mr. Kotter has prepared for you. In any case the book is so thin, even in verbose Russian, so it will make your business trip more relaxed and entertaining.
For those who love penguins and is not acquanted with the matter, my advise will be - do not rush to get notebook and pencil to write the important issues down and do not stress on analyzing every word. The main idea of every chapter is plentifully repeated in the end of each chapter. In the last chapter the whole sequence of steps is presented once more. And finally, in the end of the book the Kotter's 8-step algorythm is summarized. So relax and enjoy. And if you will miss something, the book is so short that you can read it again in no time.
Authors recomend you to discuss the reading in any group and in any form in order to remember the ideas better. I would also like to rise the discussion in the comments thread. In my humble opinion the book is explaining the main ideas of reengineering of organization in a simple and understandable manner. The suggested algorythm is exactly the same list fo recomendations any guru on Business Process Management or Reengineering will give you.
Nevertheless the R-word is not mentioned at all. Why so? My idea is that the word "Reengineering" itself is not so popular among business people and managers or carries some bad memories and associations created by misunderstandings - I myself didn't succeed perfectly in defending Master Thesis' paper devoted to Business Process Management in Business School and am plannig to return to IT-faculties. I have only one more idea, which is even more crazy than this. May be, field of Change Management and Leadership hasn't intersected yet with Business Process Management and Reingineering yet. Then why? They state pretty much the same ideas. The only difference is in the origins: the former raises from business theories, the latter has its root in IT, quite deep roots though.
I really liked the ingenious idea of the book and the positive spirit. Authors claim that book has its success and helps in introducing management of change ideas to masses. I agree - it is impossible to describe the same useful material in more easy and entertaining way.
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