In the past 2021, we have witnessed the publication of countless excellent works. In addition to sales, the authoritative rating is also very worth referencing. Although the rating is not the only criterion for judging, it can reflect the reader's reading perception and attitude to a certain extent, so the score from the reader is also an important measure.
The following is based on the Douban score of 9.0 and above, and recommends the excellent books published in 2021. If there is any omission, please feel free to leave a message to add, and welcome everyone to discuss their new book in 2021 in the comment area!
*Scoring data is current as of December 21, 2021
01
The Forbidden City and Royal Life
Editors-in-chief: Wan Yi, Wang Shuqing, Lu Yanzhen
Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press
Douban score: 9.9
The Forbidden City and Royal Life is one of the "Three Books of the Forbidden City". By displaying a large number of royal daily necessities, precious cultural relics and historical documents stored in the Forbidden City, combined with the layout of the existing palace, the book comprehensively and thoroughly introduces the political activities in the life of the Qing Palace, such as ceremonies, government affairs, armament, and hunting, to daily details such as living, taking, and recreation, and even the customs and beliefs in the palace, so as to restore the Qing Dynasty court life in an all-round way for readers. Fully disclose the actual situation of food, clothing, shelter and transportation in the Chinese Imperial Palace for two thousand years, and unfold a mysterious picture of court life with physical objects. In order to pursue the reproduction of historical scenes, photographers have been working all night to capture extremely difficult night scenes and special scenery. In particular, in order to trace the relics of the Kang and Qian Emperors' southern tour of the Northern Hunt, they actually traveled tens of thousands of miles, and many of the pictures were obtained from the wind and rain, severe cold and heat, ensuring that the pictures were of high quality and at the same time artistic and historical functions.
02
Born in purple
Written by K.J. Parker
Publisher: Sichuan Science and Technology Press
Douban score: 9.8
Born in purple, a novel by K.J. Parker. It contains a total of nine stories that are independent of each other and share a world setting. In the works, fights, alcoholism, selling souls, making contracts with demons but being the great writers of the world? Single-mindedly looking for demons in the dog's head, but never paying attention to the people around him, is it talented or the shame of a warlock? Is the scroll in the bottle hidden in the Golden Scale Temple a recipe for the world or a Pandora's box? Is the beggar the emperor or is the passerby turning over and becoming the protagonist? This series of interesting stories exists in a worldview setting, and a close reading can reveal inextricable connections. This is a reading experience that writers can provide: enjoying the story while exploring Easter eggs, which also gives the work a unique artistic charm.
03
The Law of Stories
Author: Shi Aidong
Publisher: Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore
Douban score: 9.7
Folktales are a structurally stable combination of functions, a self-organizing system, a tree of life. Once the story begins its life course, it will grow on its own, graft itself, blossom on its own, bear its own fruit, and will also mutate with the change of time and space, and die with the increase of life entropy. In the story, what kind of personality the hero has, what equipment is needed when he leaves his hometown, when the magic assistant will appear, why the traitor is always the hero's uncle, why misunderstandings are always unavoidable, all plots have a relatively stable structure or routine, and all the routines are the optimal results of specific functions that restrict each other. The structure of the story is both stable and growing, and in the seemingly disordered growth, there is always some optimal configuration and optimal ending. A specific problem always corresponds to a specific way of solving the problem. Every popular folktale is the best way to play in a particular language game. The author proposes many interesting terms and patterns in the book, which makes the work both professional and interesting.
04
How to Read Foucault
Author: Johanna Oksara
Publisher: Lucida Beijing United Publishing Company
Foucault was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, and his research on intellectual archaeology, genealogy, ethics, and other ideas reversed the research orientation of modern philosophy, laid the theoretical foundation of various disciplines, and profoundly influenced our way of thinking about controversial topics such as power, disposition, madness, and crime today. Edited by the famous contemporary philosopher Simon Krichli, each book is written by authoritative professors and experts in various fields, and the content is in-depth and simple, which is an excellent introduction to reading these master thinkers. In this book, Johanna M. Focusing on the important themes of Foucault's thought, Oksara carefully selects ten key texts, interprets and analyzes them in detail, and provides a series of clues to help readers move forward and make their own discoveries and understandings of Foucault's thought.
05
"Childhood Art Museum"
Author: Li Jie
Publisher: Lefu Culture Beijing United Publishing Company
Douban score: 9.5
The author Li Jie is an art museum curator who has planned the I START Children's Art Festival, starting from the small "I" (I), to build a childhood art museum with both imagination and action for children and adults. The museum not only continues to focus on children's creativity, but also encourages them to speak their inner voices. It may be unique in China, breaking the traditional "no noise, no noise, no hands" exhibition form, integrating more children's perspectives into the exhibition, making children the absolute protagonists, and trying to provide an ideal place to take more care of children's spiritual and psychological possibilities. In this art museum, children can work without interruption, express themselves without restriction, and cooperate with artists on an equal footing. Here, the child is no longer the "other" in the high gaze, no longer the wordless majority, but the spokesman of the self. Here, we see the amazing creativity and action of children in undefined and unrestricted trust; we see the spontaneous healing and growth of children after removing the disguise of parents and societal expectations and masks. Here, children complete one creative project after another, presenting new and insightful thinking that is no less than that of adults. This is an expression of children's action on the land of China, and an ideal new future that makes childhood glow with its own unique value.
06
"Back to the Seeds"
Author: García Márquez
Publisher: New Classics Nanhai Publishing Company
Douban score: 9.4
This is a light-hearted and easy-to-read full record of Márquez's growth, documenting García Márquez's 40 years of growth, 50 essays, more wonderful news reports than fictional plots, anecdotes, humorous and profound, satirical social commentary... The master writer tells the story that is closest to life, and the perfect combination of lightness and depth is suitable for everyone to read. Flip it open and instantly enter the world of Marquez! From the vicissitudes of Latin America to the various "urban legends" of various countries, the reflections and perceptions of writing, life, and reading... The style is distinct, the themes are diverse, and the excitement remains unchanged. A heavyweight selection of essays that helps readers understand Márquez, but also an easy-to-understand and good-looking non-fiction writing model, a vivid and interesting, accessible non-fiction writing master class, the great "storyteller" Márquez's growth secrets and interrogations, taking us to know a more wonderful daily life than fiction.
07
"Real Look"
Author: James Wood
Publisher: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House
Douban score: 9.3
Since James Wood published his first critical collection, Breaking the Box (1999), he is considered a leader in English literary criticism. He judged both the most prestigious classic writers (Flaubert, Dostoevsky), the most recent important writers (Hrabar, Sebard), and the important contemporary writers (Elena Ferrante, Helen Garner). He established an intellectual, sharp and precise set of critical standards, and presented this set of standards in its own article. "True Look" is a selection of Wood's critical prose over the past two decades, and the arrangement is clever, and the adjacent two pieces often reflect each other, reflecting Wood's magnanimity in addition to sharpness. In addition, this book also supplements a series of critical articles published in the New Yorker on contemporary writers who have attracted great attention in the literary world in recent years, expanding the territory of Wood Review to Berlin, Italy, the Balkan Peninsula, Australia, etc., comprehensively demonstrating the depth and breadth of Wood Review.
08
Ellen Poe's Dark Tales
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Publisher: Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House
Douban score: 9.2
Ellen Poisso is famous for his horror novels, and he once said in the preface to The Collection of Strange Tales: "If terror has always been the subject in many of my works, then I insist that that horror is not Germanic, but psychic—I have always interpreted it only from the reasonable source of this horror, and only driven it to a reasonable result." "This "Ellen Poe Dark Tales: Illustrated Collector's Edition" carefully selects eight representative "The Collapse of The House of Escher", "The False Mask of the Red Death", "Trap and Pendulum", "Leaked Heart", "Black Cat", "The Truth of Mr. Valdemar's Case", "A Barrel of Montea White Wine", "Jumping Frog" and other eight articles, using the classic translation of Professor Cao Minglun, an expert in Poe Poe's research, with the full-color award-winning illustrations of the illustrator Jesús Gavan, who won the Spanish National Illustration Award. Whether it is for readers who are reading Po Shen for the first time, or po fans who revisit the classics, it is the best choice for reading and Tibet.
09
《FASHION FOOD！
History of Japanese Pop Food Culture
Author: [Sun] Sanko Hatanaka
Publisher: Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore
Fashion Food is not simply a service for the enjoyment of taste, but a food that is consumed by the masses in the same dimension as popular culture such as clothing, music, art and manga - this is the popular food in Hataka's mind, that is, fashion food. In this book, Hataka Miyoko will lead you back to the history of popular cuisine that began in the 1970s, exploring how Japanese society has run towards the "tiramisu explosion", how the consumption of information has enveloped Japan's food culture, and how the phenomenon of "everything is popular food" has been formed today. The author believes that all food contains a certain amount of information, and when we enjoy food, we not only eat the food itself, but also enjoy the information it contains. It's just that in the era of hungry food, people pay more attention to the "amount" of food, and pay less attention to information. Once the "quantity" is guaranteed, the "quality" of food at the material level (mainly nutrition) has become the focus of people's attention, and after the nutrition standard, it has officially entered the stage of pursuing information. The information age of food is the era of "eating not only with the mouth, but also with the brain". At the same time, it is also an era in which food information is detached from the material properties of food, as a fashion element for people to enjoy.
10
"See the Jokes"
Author: Huang Yongyu
Publisher: Writers Press
This is a collection of palace-level poems, written by Huang Yongyu, an old man of ninety-eight, who has maintained a lifetime of cleanliness and fun. This book is a complete compilation of his poems, including more than 150 poems composed between 1947 and 2021, spanning more than 70 years, some of which such poems as "Wife, Don't Cry" and "Heard from Fengtai", etc., have become famous pieces, and are also precious records of specific historical periods, seeing human nature and human feelings, seeing historical reflections. Other poems, such as "Non-Dream", written by the poet at the age of ninety-five, still have precious feelings of compassion and are deeply moving to read. This collection of poems is a lyrical expression of the author's experience and emotions, and a witness to the historical changes of the times. The author is a person in the painting world, and therefore, the text is eclectic, unrestrained, wise, enthusiastic and frank, from which you can read the love, compassion and gratitude that run through your life.
11
"The Way To Cross a Street"
Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: Guangdong People's Publishing House
This is a rare historical work by the talented American writer David Foster Wallace, which is a wise, profound, entertaining and readable history of infinite concepts, and a journey that challenges abstraction and the limits of imagination.
To cross a street, one must first cross one-half of the street; to cross one-half of the street, one must first cross a quarter of it, to cross a quarter, must ... Since Zeno proposed the dichotomy, the simple question of "how to cross a street" has plagued human beings for more than two thousand years, and how many of the top minds have been balded has become the most abstract and obscure mathematical concept. Wallace uses his trademark whimsy, spicy and unique style, and footnotes longer than the main text to show this history of wandering in the middle of the street. His words are as intelligent as the mathematical concept of infinity.
12
Urban Space in Negotiations: Urbanization and Nanjing in the Late Ming Dynasty
Author: Fei Siyan
Publisher: Zhejiang University Press
Douban score: 9.1
In the late imperial Period of China, urbanization was at the heart of development. In this book, the author argues that the seemingly continuous urban sprawl is actually interrupted by all sorts of "dynastic urbanism." Historians, he argues, should see urbanization not as a byproduct of commercial development, but as a process shaped by the institutional framework and cultural trends of each dynasty. This feature was particularly evident in the Ming Dynasty, where the nature and outcome of urban development proved to be defined by the rural ideals envisioned in the early Ming Dynasty. Taking Nanjing, a metropolis in the Yangtze River basin, this book shows how during the Ming Dynasty, urban residents used the institutional and cultural resources developed for the countryside to reshape the status of the city. The discovery of "dynastic urbanism" offers a new way of understanding the urbanization of late imperial China in this field, making it possible to compare urban histories that are truly meaningful.
13
"Piranesi"
Author: Suzanne Clarke
Fantasy master Suzanne Clarke is the second novel of sixteen years after her debut in 2004, The English Magician, a crossover between pure literature and fantasy fiction, a fable book depicting lonely people who are "isolated" in a foreign country in the era of social distancing. "Piranesi" is a mysterious story about a man living alone in a labyrinthine house. It beat out five other novels and received a £30,000 prize. After publishing the author's first novel 17 years ago, it gives us a truly novel and unexpected fantasy journey that blends different genres and challenges people's preconceptions about books. She has created a world that both transcends our wildest imaginations and profoundly tells us what it means to be human.
14
"Goodbye to the Shining Stars - Twenty Tang Poems"
Author: Jing Kaixuan
Publisher: Nanjing University Publishing Co., Ltd.
Douban score: 9.0
This book is not a research monograph, but a poetry essay, which is a travel of the author in Tang poetry. When talking about these twenty poets, the author tries to show his most important works, but does not make a comprehensive evaluation, but takes a different perspective on each poet. The author tries to find conceptual and valuable things in Tang poetry, such as the Chinese's heavenly and human moments, self-awareness, time concepts and ways of feeling, as well as the poet's mental journey, aesthetic taste, price quality and artistic skills. In addition, several appendages are included, discussing the tang dynasty monk poetry, women's poetry, endorsement style, and the role of the scholar. The value of Tang poetry is eternal, it is a long echo of human nature. In this particularly difficult period, re-reading Tang poems may have a deeper feeling.
15
"The Autumn of the Patriarch"
The literary adventure of García Márquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, is a book that is lonelier than One Hundred Years of Solitude, more confusing than Love in the Time of Cholera, and about a person who "has everything" but has nothing. He was so lonely in his glory that he had not even a single enemy left. He lives to rot. Magic realism is a pure work: colorful images, strange materials, writing the pole of power, the pole of desire, the pole of loneliness, and the pole of literature! As a literary work, "The Autumn of the Patriarch" is much more important than "One Hundred Years of Solitude". When no one remembers whether Aureliano in One Hundred Years of Solitude is a man or a street, Fall of the Patriarch will save me from being forgotten. Of all my works, this novel is the most experimental and one of the most interesting artistic adventures for me.
There are some high-scoring new books on the rest:
Literature: "The Birth of water margin", "Sick Crane", "Nightingale"
History and Culture: "Crossing the Heart of Asia", "Book of Twentieth Century Art", "Westward Shadow Chronicle", "Yi Dynasty", "Imperial Skills", "Reform of Song Dynasty China", "Passion, Technique and Method", "Flying Geese", "Mr. Smith to China", "Why Do You Study Marx Today", "Shadow of the Ottoman"
Social Documentary Category: "Left Behind", "Dream Addiction", "Luck Bait"
Picture Book Comics: "Flower of the Forest", "Four Seasons in the Suitcase", "5,000 Kilometers per Second"
Welcome to add and discuss in the comments section!
Editor丨Liao Ru painting, Gu Mingyue (intern)