Category: books

From Vision to Bookshelf: Launching “Recommender Algorithms” | October 13 2025, 11:54

Finally, I have released a book! It is called Recommender Algorithms — it contains more than 50 recommendation algorithms with mathematical explanations, detailed descriptions, and code examples.

It all started early in the spring in Germany, when I attended the ACM conference and made the first sketches of the book’s structure, analyzing reports on the RecSys stream. And now, six months later, the book has been published.

Why did it appear? Because there is no single, accessible source either online or in print where the recommendation algorithms of various types and purposes are thoroughly examined. There are articles focused on narrow aspects, but to collect and systematize the developments — from fundamental to the most recent — until now, it seems, no one has managed to do it for some reason. Maybe no one needed to. Suddenly, I found I needed to. I don’t know if I succeeded, but I am eager for your feedback.

Available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. There is a Russian automatic translation (surprisingly, but very decent), but I do not know how to sell it yet.

https://www.testmysearch.com/books/recommender-algorithms.html?FB

(This is not my only book, but today — just about this one.)

Decoding Solr and Lucene: Engineering Insights and Algorithms | October 06 2025, 17:11

Preparing a book for publication on Solr&Lucene. What do you think about publishing such a translation on Amazon? 🙂

The book is about algorithms and under-the-hood engineering. I haven’t seen books from this angle yet, maybe someone will find it interesting.

Aladdin’s Chinese Roots and the French Connection | August 30 2025, 11:39

In the original tale of “One Thousand and One Nights,” Aladdin is a boy who lives with his mother in China (!). It is often emphasized that the story takes place in China, but the names of the characters are still Arab. Some believe that Aladdin is Chinese, although of course nationalities did not exist back then.

Moreover, it’s generally complicated with where the tale originates. In “1000 and One Night” (or Arabian Nights) Aladdin was added by the French translator Antoine Galland, who was told the tale by “Maronite Hanna from Aleppo” Hanna Diyab, even the date from the diaries is known – May 5, 1709. Over the course of a month, Diyab told him fifteen more tales. Ten of these, including “Ali Baba,” were later published in the last four volumes of Galland’s “Nights” (1712–1717). Thus, “1000 and One Night” was written by a French translator based on motifs from various places.

Writes twenty-year-old Diyab, the one who told the translator.

“There was an old man who often visited us. He was in charge of a library of Arab books. He read well in Arabic and translated books from this language into French. At that time, he translated the book Tales of 1001 Nights. This man asked for my help with some issues he did not understand, and I explained them to him. The book was missing several nights, and I told him the stories I knew. Then he supplemented the book with these stories and was very pleased with me.” (MS Sbath 254, f. 128a)

Cycling for History: A Book and An Unexpected Glimpse into 1930s Migration Trends | August 24 2025, 18:27

I couldn’t resist and bought the book Great Depression in Perceville, VA, where I arrived by bike. I still don’t know how to carry it back for an hour in cycling clothing without a backpack. Interesting note on a random page

Translation:

AMTORG RECEIVES 100,000 APPLICATIONS FOR 6,000 QUALIFIED JOBS IN RUSSIA

(Business Week, October 7, 1931, pp. 32–33)

NEW YORKERS make up the bulk of Americans who have decided, at least for now, to tie their fates with the Russians. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois contribute the highest number of applications for the new call for “6,000 qualified workers,” with Michigan, Ohio, California, and Massachusetts also being well represented.

The “Amtorg” office in New York received over 100,000 applications for these 6,000 job slots. Just one morning alone saw 280 applications. All states except ten were represented. Alaska and Panama also contributed one applicant each, and 18 Canadians wanted “to try their luck in Russia.”

Industrial states, naturally, provided the largest number of applications, but others were represented as well. Iowa, Texas, and Idaho also contributed some number of qualified workers.

Since it is widely known that Russia is “industrializing,” most applicants are skilled workers in machinery, railroads, metallurgy, automotive manufacturing, or the construction industry. A look at the qualifications of 280 applicants from one “typical” morning showed that specialists of all professions were looking for work, even if it meant moving to Russia and being paid in rubles. Among them were: 2 hairdressers, 1 funeral director, 2 plumbers, 5 painters, 2 cooks, 36 “clerical” workers, 1 lathe operator, 9 carpenters, 1 aviator, 58 engineers, 14 electricians, 5 salespeople, 2 printers, 2 chemists, 1 shoemaker, 1 librarian, 2 teachers, 1 cleaner and dyer, 11 auto mechanics, 1 dentist.

About 85% of the applicants are U.S. citizens, only 40% of whom were born in the country. 60% of the foreigners primarily come from Eastern Europe. A few African Americans applied, but their numbers are small, as most of them are unskilled workers.

Women constitute only a small portion of applicants, although many wives decided to accompany their husbands in this endeavor. Most workers applying are married and have children.

Three main reasons for wanting to get a placement are named: (1) unemployment; (2) dissatisfaction with conditions here; (3) interest in the Soviet experiment. Almost all foreign workers declare that they do not intend to stay in the USSR. Among engineers, only 10-20% plan to stay.

——

This is 1931, one of the most challenging years of that period. Somewhere in the mid-thirties, it started to improve, and it must be said, WWII ultimately defeated it.

Decoding “Carboy”: A Journey Through Language and Autobiography | August 20 2025, 04:02

Rereading Feynman’s autobiography, this time in English, and my eyes stuck on the word carboy. It turns out that it’s the same as lady jeanne, and the same as demijohn – essentially lady jeanne in French (dame joanne). In short, it’s just a bottle.

From Miniare to Miniature: The Evolution of Book Illustration | August 14 2025, 14:52

How interesting, the word “Miniature” turns out not to derive from minimus (Latin), meaning “smallest”, but from miniare, meaning “to color with cinnabar or red lead”.

The word is connected to the practice of book illustration in the Middle Ages. You have probably seen images of medieval manuscripts with dense black text and a large, decorated initial letter. In the earliest bound books, they were not so ornate—just a big letter, colored red to stand out. In Italy, the verb miniare referred to the stage of painting red initials, usually left until last, and the art of illustration itself was called miniatura.

Over time, these initial decorations became increasingly complex, evolving into fully developed scenes with little figures, animals, and buildings. But, of course, since the scenes had to fit into the corner of a page, they were very small. And therefore, because a miniature in a book was like a tiny painting, the meaning of the word expanded—it came to denote any small version of something larger.

Exploring Must-Have Russian Books for Science and Art Lovers | August 10 2025, 14:01

Can you recommend some interesting books to bring (or order) from Russia to the USA, considering my interests (popular science, primarily local non-translations from English, as I can read the originals in English, and perhaps drawing) and various other intriguing things (see part of my collection)?

Time Bending Flights: Greeting Seattle a Quintillionth of a Second Younger | July 19 2025, 05:19

It’s funny to stare at a sentence in a book that says when you fly to the other end of the USA, you become younger than everyone else by a quintillionth of a second — at the moment when you’re sitting on the plane flying to the other end of the USA.

Hello, Seattle!

Treasures in Translation: A Glimpse into Rare Russian Reprints | July 09 2025, 01:27

Nadia from Russia just brought me three books I ordered. “The Art of Color” by J. Itten, “Americans and Everyone Else” by I. Kurilla, and this one, Holodkovsky’s commentary on his translation of Faust. Interestingly, it seems that these commentaries are not available in Russian.. to be more precise.. in modern Russian. There is a reprint of the original 1914 edition, created based on a high-resolution electronic copy that was manually cleaned and processed, preserving the structure and spelling of the original edition, and it seems it was not translated into modern Russian. However, there are no difficulties in reading the reprint.