Book Review | SovietMen

A vote for the apocalypse

Posted on July 15 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of Into the Vortex by Brian Eckert.

Alt-lit is like a rock band’s first album. Brimming with raw energy, uninhibited, ready to take on the world. The band’s second record gets professionally produced and is much more polished – critics usually proclaim the second or third album the best – and yet many fans will declare the initial, rough recording their favourite.

Alt novel Into the Vortex is more like a second album, written in effortless, self-assured prose with nary an awkward simile or clumsy wording as we expect when venturing away from Penguin.

I assumed this was not Brian’s first rodeo but was surprised to see that according to his website, this is his maiden book. Either he has precocious talent or a brilliant editor. Perhaps both.

[Edit: the website seems to have been suspended. Alt cred recognized.]

Literally Marx

Posted on April 20 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

I knew Karl Marx was an unwashed, financially irresponsible, bourgeois twit who knocked up his unpaid servant and refused to acknowledge his son.

But what was communism all about?

My usual policy is to read the Big Books. However, I satisfied myself with summaries of Das Kapital rather than tackle the whole thing. Life is short and it didn’t seem worth my time.

Instead I had a look at the much shorter Communist Manifesto:

All the way down

Posted on March 17 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Review of Under the Nihil (pronounced like the river Nile), by Andy Nowicki.

Many saints are lunatics.

Catholic figures such as St Catherine of Siena seem driven by inner demons that combine with contemporary values. The same might be said of secular martyrs – soldiers who insist on doing ever more tours of duty in some unwinnable hellhole; Western doctors choosing to work in African war zones; animal shelter ladies. Julian Assange, Edward Snowden.

A normal person lives his life, tries to get a job, get married, raise kids and pay off the house. He might give twenty bucks to the Salvos at Christmas, help the odd beetle back onto its feet and consider himself a good sort. For the average person, it is enough to obey the law and not to be too obnoxious.

The protagonist of Under the Nihil decides at a young age to become a priest. He is troubled, socially awkward, unpopular. Religion gives him strength and direction. One day, he thinks, I’ll be a priest and everything will be okay. I’ll have a vocation helping others. He prays and waits for this release from his uneasy life.

This hit a nerve.

But after years of training he fails the final hurdle: the psychological test. The seminary kicks him out because he’s nuts.

A hard road

Posted on January 25 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of 6 to 6 by Mather Schneider.

There are some careers that inevitably push their people towards misanthropy. Cops, criminal lawyers, prison guards. Social workers.

Taxi drivers.

Mather Schneider was a cab driver in Tucson, Arizona for 15 years. This is a collection of stories he collected along the way. A few make the spirit soar; most leave the spirit muddied and lying in the gutter. In a good way.

A customer review of my book

Posted on October 9 by Nikolai Vladivostok

A reader has reviewed The Poor Man’s Guide to Financial Freedom.

Pukeko from the United States says:

Even if you are not in the target audience, get it. You will learn something, and then give it to your kids.

If you’ve also read the book, please leave the review. Unless you didn’t like it, in which case shut up.

I’m kidding, ya munchkins. Honest and balanced reviews are great because that way potential readers know they’re real.

Also available on many other platforms.

Adam Piggot reviews The Poor Man’s Guide to Financial Freedom

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if I had had this book a few decades ago my life would be significantly different now in a financial sense.

Read the full review here.

Also available on many other platforms.

Write a review

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Thank you to everyone who picked up a copy of my book, The Poor Man’s Guide to Financial Freedom. I’ve sold quite a few now.

The lady pictured above said she got some great ideas from the book, though she neglected to make the cover visible in this shot. She did send some photos where the cover was visible, but other things were also visible so I can’t post those. You know I’m a gentleman. Very honest, too.

Unfortunately I don’t yet have any reviews for the book on Amazon. Reviews are vital because they let potential readers know that this is a legit book that others have read, and give them a sense of whether or not it’s what they’re looking for.

If you’ve read the book, please leave an honest review on Amazon or wherever you bought it. A thousand thanks.

And if you haven’t heard of this book I’m talking about, here it is:

Also available on many other platforms.

Lady writers

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Breathtakingly cheeky book review of several books I have mostly not finished, including To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and Tirra Lirra by Jessica Anderson.

I looked at several ‘greatest books’ compilations in order to get a stack of stuff to read in YouTubeLess Africa, and Virginia Woolf’s name kept popping up.

Orright, orright, says I, and I got a collection of her books for a buck.

The most highly recommended one was To the Lighthouse, so I started there.

I’m about a quarter of the way through and Read More

Dirty Genji

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu.

There was once an article in Return of Kings. I cannot remember the exact theme of it, and nor can anyone else, because it contained a single throwaway line that completely distracted everybody from the point and was the sole topic of discussion in the comments. The author had casually claimed that women with large dogs actually root them. With an assertion like that, any sensible arguments that may have been made in the article were immediately forgotten in the mayhem that ensued.

For me, The Tale of Genji was like that. The Prince, Genji, did many things – he seduced princesses, sometimes rather forcefully, won favour with the Emperor, was exiled by the new Emperor, was rehabilitated – but all of it kind of pales into insignificance when we consider that one thing that he did.

Reading other reviews, it seems that I’m the only one who’s so distracted by it. Other, more mature readers are able to accept that Read More

Booze, bombs and booty

Posted on April 14, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of My Life as a Mexican Pirate: A True Story by Mark Zolo.

Mark Zolo always took things a bit too far. Back in the day I would check his site, Naughty Nomad, for its city reports before taking on a new international gig. I liked to know beforehand whether dating would be possible there, and whether this would get my head cut off.

I did minimum two year contracts. It’s a factor. Don’t come for me.

But when I went on a week-long trip somewhere, I really could not be bothered trying to pick up girls and find a place to take them in a hostel dormitory. The one time I went to Russia (Saik! I’m not Russian), I was far more interested in hiking and seeing historical sites than bedding local women. Between finding a place to stay, avoiding pros, and bringing along clothes suitable for a nightspot, it didn’t seem like it was worth it.

To Mark, it is always worth it.

For me, [traveling alone] meant doing just enough sight-seeing to stave off guilt, then bar hopping and chasing tail.

The places he’s been and the things he’s done to experience danger and pick up hoochimamas are astonishing. As a result, this is the most bizarre and extreme travel book you’ll ever read.

I remember back in the day, he Read More

It’s finished!

Posted on April 11, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

I’m offering free review copies of my new e-book to bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers etc. If interested, PM me your Kindle email address.

Wot dat?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email

You don’t need an actual Kindle, you can download the Kindle app for free on your phone or device.

Pssst, it’s available for sale already, on soft release. I’m gunna spruik the living bollocks out of it soon, but for now, I suggest you check the free preview to see if it’s what you’re looking for.

Friend or foe? The strange case of J.M. Coetzee

Posted on April 8, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, with reference to other books by him and some by Dostoevsky.

I have always felt that I ought to like Coetzee. Ever since I was in uni and the tutor pointed out that one bit in Foe where it seems like Character 1 is knocking on Character 2’s door but if you read carefully it’s the other way around, I’ve had an admiration for linguists like savage Papuans have for sorcerers. This led me to take Noam Chomsky seriously for too long.

But I didn’t actually trouble myself to Read More

Intellectuals are bad, mmkay?

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson.

There are very few books that I have read twice. One was The Lord of the Rings, which I read when I was eight and later when I was fifteen and actually understood it. The only other I can remember off the top of my head is this one. I happened to look something up for some reason, got distracted by the chapter on Sartre, and ended up reading the whole thing again. The antics of this intellectual crowd are highly entertaining. My favourite was the list of drunken injuries that befell Hemmingway, which stretches over three or four mirthful pages.

I thought about inserting here a check-table of intellectuals and their sins but concluded it would be too much work and you wouldn’t be that impressed anyway. So instead I will Read More

Lockdown survival guide 5: reading material

Posted on April 3, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

It’s come to this: people are looking for books to read.

This is my second collection of random, short book reviews. The first can be found here.

These are books that I liked, but didn’t have enough to say about to justify a whole review post about them. Hope you find something enticing.

Poor Folk, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is the first novel by Dos. It is a series of Read More

The thoughts of an emperor

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius.

Poor old Marcki-poo. High-born and bookish, he wanted nothing more than to go to Athens and study philosophy. But duty called him to other things: in the age of the Five Good Emperors, starting with Hadrian, each new one was chosen for his virtues rather than because he was the son of the old one – though none of the previous four had had sons, so that was easily done. And Marcus Aurelius felt the unwanted tap on the shoulder.

He insisted, against the wishes of the elite, that his Read More

About Facts and Fallacies

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell.

I can’t do any better than Thommo’s first paragraph, so here it is: Read More

Great poems for men, part 11

Posted on December 16, 2019 by Nikolai Vladivostok

James Shirley (1596-1666) was certainly serious about this one when he wrote of the futility of pursuing empire when we all end up in the ground, anyway. And then the colonized people will winge and whine at you for CENTURIES, even if you wiped out cannibalism (PNG, Fiji etc.), widow sacrifice (India) or people (Ireland). Surely it’s not worth the trouble. Seriously.

It is interesting that Shirley wrote this just before Read More

Random reviews – Ibsen, Vox Day, Kipling, Lovecraft, Aaron Clarey and more

Posted on December 10, 2019 by Nikolai Vladivostok

[Written in Africa]

I probably like writing reviews more than you like reading them. For me, it’s a way of getting my thoughts straight about what I read and consolidating in my memory whatever is most significant. It is not an assessment of how good a book is; if it were rubbish I would not bother writing about it at all. Rather, it is just whatever thoughts were inspired by it. This is why I often get sidetracked and end up talking about that girl with cerebral palsy who I totally failed to pick up and who was probably a lesbian anyway, or that metre-long shit I once did in the bathroom of an Indian restaurant in Shinjuku.

The problem is, I read a lot of good books – indeed, some outstanding and moving books – and yet I have nothing much to say about them. I could sum up my thoughts in a paragraph, so I haven’t bothered writing a review.

Now that I’m just finishing up the biggest reading period of my life, I feel like these books deserve some sort of recognition here at the People’s.

So here we go: my ultra-brief assessments of other good books I’ve read:

The Complete Works of Ibsen

The plays are Read More

Great poems for men, part 10

Posted on December 9, 2019 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Sad and Lonely Wallpaper (59+ images)

Book review of Delphi Poetry Anthology.

Continuing to Shakespeare’s sonnets, I think we can skip the Eighteenth because you already know it. In the Thirtieth he gets into a maudlin spiral, but finds a way out: Read More

Great poems for men, part 9

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Nikolai Vladivostok

Book review of Delphi Poetry Anthology.

I promised very old English poems. Such poems ye shall have.

In fact, we shall begin by going all the way back to anonymous, traditional ballads, apparently Scottish.

In the following story, Lord William tries to ride off with Douglas’ dirty slut of a daughter, so Douglas and his seven sons go out to meet him in battle. William is injured, the couple escape and spend just one night together. By midnight he’s dead and by the next day she is, too. They bury William and a brier grows over his grave. And then . . .

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: