The book which has taught me a lot

         I can hardly imagine my life without reading. Apart from being a great source of pleasure and relaxation, books are undoubtedly our constant mentors. They provide you with a lot of practical advice and plenty of food for thought.
         From all of the books I have already read (which is still a drop in the ocean), I would like to single out the one under the title “Two Capitans” written by V. Kaverin. It has got quite a complicated plot; but roughly speaking the book tells us the story of a man (Alexander Grigoriev) who devoted his life to finding what had been left from the expedition headed by a polar explorer capitan Tatarinov. All the members of the expedition died because capitan Tatarinov’s cousin deliberately provided them with the worst equipment, dogs and food. Grigoriev’s life got tightly connected with Tatarinov’s family. He wanted to reveal the truth and that is why became a polar pilot. In the end, following the motto of his life “То strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”, Grigoriev successfully reached his goals having overcome all the diffuculties.
        I would say that this book touches upon eternal problems and topical issues. Among them are love and hatred, friendship and betrayal, purposefulness and many others. First I read this book many years ago at school when I was quite naive and trusting. It was then that I got acquainted with some unpleasant traits of person’s character and began to value positive ones more. So it was sort of the turning point in my outlook. Partly, this very book taught me to be persistent and not to give up. And when I reread it, it affirmed my views on various important subjects.
       Unfortunately, many modern books are written only to get more money and are aimed at entertaining people. You can hardly find any new ideas in them, something that hadn’t been said or noted before. But the overall picture is not that sad: undoubtedly, there are talented authors and their books tend to be even closer to the readers (than classical ones) as they describe modern reality.