So, the earth has completed another revolution, and we come to 2022 AD.
2021 is the second year that the pandemic has swept the world, and it is also the second year that the hardcore book club has been launched. In the past year, we've made some new attempts, such as starting more live streams, launching podcasts, and launching the Blade Book Awards. We've worked hard to adapt to the changes brought about by social media and online innovation, and we've been lucky enough to meet you who opened this tweet at this moment.
Maybe we have all imagined the possibility of a "parallel world", in which the epidemic does not exist, we do not even understand what "nucleic acid" and "Omikron" are, masks are not necessities, everything is so "normal". But we really can't travel through parallel worlds like the heroes in the movie, we have and only have the present.
In fact, the present moment is lucky enough for us. At the very least, through thin pages, the infinite possibilities have unfolded from the present.
Here's a summary of the past year for a few editors, and maybe you can treat them as your best friends and start a new journey together as you read.
"What a luxury such a magnificent trip"
Xiao Feng
Most of the reading in 2021 was done on the subway. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, I moved from the city center to the suburbs, commuted for an hour and a half, and suddenly had a lot of time to read every day, which may be the most efficient period of reading in recent years. Recently, economists have advised young people, "Don't spend too much time on commuting, it is better to rent near the company and spend time investing in yourself and enriching yourself." I can only enrich myself with reading.
It's not always true that it's full, and most of the time it's empty, like reading a lot of books on travel and bird watching. During the first week of moving to the countryside, commuter subways cross the plains of the Pearl River Delta estuary, and sometimes you can see the orange sun rising from the other side of the estuary, and on the dried fish pond where the fish have just been caught, there are speckled sandpipers and egrets feeding on the mud pond. I often think that I should find an early morning departure and bring a telescope to see which plovers have flown from Siberia or the North Pole to this small beach, but have not been there.
The first book to be brought to the subway during this time was "The Herding Life: A Collection of Lake District Stories", written by James Rebbenks, a shepherd in the Lake District of northern England, who worked for a time in London from the countryside to Oxford University and worked for a while in London, working as a trainee editor in a busy magazine, replacing an assistant editor who had just been fired. Every day at lunchtime, he could sit on a bench in the square and "marvel at the pretty girls pouring out of the fashion magazines and trendy buildings."
He felt very strange, and finally understood why the lake area where they had lived for generations was classified as a national park, and why so many tourists always ran to his hometown with hiking guides and camping guides. These places exist "so that those who have been living like this can escape, can feel the wind blowing through the hairline, and the sun is sprinkled on the face." He chose to return to his hometown and become a most ordinary shepherd, although every year he had to worry about the loss of the flock, the trade, and the winter, but the connection between man and the land was still as closely linked as his father's generation.
Of course, few people have the opportunity to return to their hometown to inherit a farm, and many more people are in what Xiang Biao calls "suspended", looking for some solid value and dependence all their lives, such as the "love" described by Jan Martel in "The Portuguese Mountains":
"Love is a house with many rooms, a room for love to eat, a room for love to entertain, a room for love to bathe, a room for love to change clothes, a room for love to rest... Love is a house where new emotions gush out of the pipes every morning, sewers wash away yesterday's quarrels; open the bright windows and the breeze blows in and smells of kindness. Love is a house where its foundations are unshakable, its roofs indestructible. ”
It's been two years since the pandemic and everyone wants to get back to normal life as soon as possible. At the end of the year, a blog post on Weibo was posted, and the blogger mentioned a fact that people ignored or did not want to admit: the protracted pandemic has actually transformed the world, and even if the epidemic subsides, the "world" is not the "world" before the epidemic. Therefore, these two years often look for a kind of comfort in travel books, and miss the world of yesterday like Zweig.
That's the life of the mid-20th century: David Attenborough traveled freely across continents, searching for dragons (i.e., Komodo dragons), butterflies, and tracking the ancient animal armadillo; ecologist Deborah Kramer, by helicopter, self-driving, hiking, from Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America, along the coastline of the red-bellied sandpipers, to the Arctic where they breed; the entomologist Dave Gulson traveled from Europe to South America to study the migration and population changes of Bear Peak, and to rest deep in the Rocky Mountains. Drink a bottle of frozen beer.
Reading it now, how luxurious such a magnificent trip is. If there is any wish for the new year, it is nothing more than to write a few more manuscripts, read more books, go to the mountains to see more birds, and go to Baiyun Mountain before you can go to Rocky Mountain for a beer.
Recommended book list
A Life of Grazing: Lake District Tales
By James Ripbanks, translated by Yin Nan
Ideal Republic | Guangxi Normal University Press, 2018-7
The High Mountains of Portugal
[Canada] by Jan Martel, translated by Jacob
Unread | Beijing United Publishing Company, 2017-11
David Attenborough's Nature's Journey
David Attenborough, translated by Li Xiang, reviewed by Zhang Jinshuo
Yilin Press, 2021-11
The Bee Hunt: An Entomologist's Round the World
By Dave Goulson, translated by Wang Hongbin / Ran Hao,
Desperate Situation: The Epic Journey of the Sandpiper and the Horseshoe
By Deborah Kramer, Shi Yujie / Yang Ziyou
The Commercial Press, 2020-8
"Those who are deep in their desires, their chances are shallow"
Cao Jili
Looking back at the reading experience in 2021, I feel the heavy weight of thinking more and more. In the common narratives of the past, reading represented inquiry, and inquiry was thinking, and thinking itself was considered an answer. But at a time of uncertainty, reading-style thinking is somewhat pale, not to mention extravagantly talking about the answer.
In this world that has been completely changed by the epidemic, in this era when the bonds of trust are broken one by one, in the background sound of noisy and screaming, reading brings me relief rather than reading brings me only a short escape. The escape here, of course, does not refer to some kind of vulgar pastime, but to a briskness after letting go of utilitarianism. I no longer expect to learn something from a book, no longer carefully transcribe amazing sentences one by one, no longer obsessively urge myself to think, reading becomes pure and pleasant.
"Those who are deep in their desires, their heavenly opportunities are shallow", perhaps only with this kind of wandering state of mind can one day truly meet with the answers they want.
The two books that impressed me the most in 2021 are not new books, one is Hu Xudong's "Go to His Brazil" at the beginning of this century, and the other is Yao Xueyu's "Li Zicheng" written in the second half of the last century.
Hu Xudong is a poet and a professor at Peking University, but this book "Go to His Brazil" proves that he is also a good travel literature writer and columnist. During his two years of study abroad in Brazil, he set up columns in China to introduce the customs and social conditions of the other side of the world, which were later published in a binding manner and repeatedly mentioned during the World Cup in Brazil and the Olympic Games in Brazil.
Just like Hu Xudong said to himself in the re-edition of the book, two years of sloppy viewing, far from understanding a country, always being regarded as a "Brazilian expert" at home, he often feels afraid. But in this small book that is not perfect but good enough, the most precious thing is precisely the enthusiasm for the exploration of the exotic, which is not uncommon in the former travel literature, and which has repeatedly guided the latecomers to explore more distant places.
Today, Hu Xudong has passed away, Brazil is still a distant and strange country, and for us, this long-standing enthusiasm is gradually extinguished, which is the most regrettable.
As for Mr. Yao Xueyu's "Li Zicheng", it is a tome that lovers of historical novels cannot get around. Stripped away the strong mark of the times, this solid and detailed big book still has a heavy ideological weight. There are already too many feelings about history, not much to repeat, what impressed me is that in the book, when Hong Chengyu went out to meet the Emperor Taiji, he saw a poem with an inscription wall "Man Jiang Hong" on the upper floor of Shanhaiguan City, the style is somber and desolate, which should be the creation of Yao Xueyu's mouth of the ancients:
"Looking north at the Liao River, I stared at it for a long time and broke my heart. The battlefield is quiet, but smell the sad geese, a few clear voices. Thirty years of conquest, the tide fell in front of the building. Ask the wasteland martyrs who have not returned to their souls, by whom? Sealing the territory is heavy, such as children's play. At the imperial court, strife was raging. Sigh jin ou is broken, loyalty is uncountable. After the most painful nine sides passed the head, the hero wiped out tears of sadness. The chanting poem is generously entrusted to the army, and the king is resting. ”
Those who are familiar with historical events should be able to feel the helplessness of this historical cycle, because what greets Inspector Hong will be a failure that the Ming Dynasty cannot bear.
Whether reading travel literature or reading historical novels, this feeling of time often bubbles up in my heart, and the alternation of time is probably one of the most important propositions when Chinese read and write. I remember that when I finished reading "Jin Ping Mei" a year ago, I thought of the end of "Dream of the Red Chamber": the latter was the collapse of the building, "it was like eating all the birds and throwing themselves into the forest, and the land was really clean", the former was the reincarnation of the dead, Ximen Qing was still a rich family in the next life, and Wuda was still a villager in the next life. In the reincarnation of rebirth, the rich family is still the rich family, the poor are still poor, and at this point, the despair of "Jin Ping Mei" is deeper than that of "Dream of the Red Chamber".
In the pages of the book and the rotation of time, as our understanding of the world continues to increase, expectations gradually lower, so disappointment is not so easy to come – this may be one of the sources of pleasure brought by reading.
"Go to His Brazil"
By Hu Xudong
Nanjing University Publishing, 2012-6
"Li Zicheng"
Yao Xueyu and Yu Rujie made up for it
Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 2016-3
"It's a little comfort,
Make yourself and the world less abominable."
Cheng late
Reading is a very personal matter for me, so when I know that when I want to write the "annual reading summary", I am a little confused, typing on the keyboard, and the most used is the delete key.
I often wonder (maybe "mind-wandering" would be more precise) reading where and what the friends we tweet are and what they're doing. Renting a room in a house? The comfort of home? Roommate chat is the background sound of the dorm? Is there a kitten in your arms, or a pillow? Have the green plants by the window just finished watering? Did you just finish cooking and still have the smell of cut ginger on your hands? Is the child playing with toys? Did you just receive a New Year's gift today? Did your phone vibrate just when you read the article?
"Reading" in the age of social networking is a strange thing, and the distance between books and us seems to be getting closer and closer, but in fact it seems to be gradually drifting away. "Recommended books" are always easy to seem preachy, so I try to go to "Amway" books that have touched me this year.
In the last week of 2021, after watching the lavish "New Year's Celebration film" "Don't Look Up", scientists played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio observed that a comet was about to hit Earth, and humanity still had more than six months to prepare.
The comet in the vastness of space in the movie is a metaphor for the current epidemic, but it reminds me of a book that has touched me deeply this year and given me great comfort. Its English edition was published as early as the 1980s, and the Chinese edition was just two years before it was released. The pamphlet is called "Astronomical Pilgrimage to the Looker", in fact, its English name is The Soul Of The Night, which literally translates to "the soul of the night".
It's even hard to say whether the pamphlet is popular science or prose, but on almost every page, it can bring me a great shock. It's like a love letter to "Night" and "Universe."
The sentence that often appears in the book is, "Planets erupt spores." Galactic breaths. The spiral and windmill galaxies spin like prayer wheels. "For thousands of years, fragments of the moon have been falling like raindrops to the earth." "The area is a mountain of stars, a thick silt of light, and a mess of stardust. I saw the big fish leaping in the river of heaven flapping their tails, and the starry birds hiding their feathers under their wings. ”
When distances are measured in light years and time is measured in billions of years, human stupidity, selfishness, and calculation; their own incompetence, fragility, and clumsiness all seem to become less abominable.
But I also seem to have a preference for novels that write about our "incompetence, vulnerability, clumsiness, and even ferocity." This year's two novels have shocked me tremendously. One is Huang Liqun's "Room by the Sea", and the other is Lin Zhao's "Tidal Chart". Both writers' novels are first contact this year, but both have a sense of "weirdness". I was deeply impressed by the "Bu Operator" in Huang Liqun's novel collection, and the aria style of writing writes the confusion and impermanence of fate very lightly, but at some point you can always remember. Lin Zhao's "Tide Map" has a majestic weirdness, I love the beauty of her words, and even this aggressive beauty allows me to ignore the plot.
Another change in reading this year, which is also closely related to my mentality, is that this year I suddenly realized the deceptiveness of popular words and terms. Once people hide behind big words, they are prone to become condescending, numb, and vain. So what struck me the most this year was the solid, excellent homework, professional, non-sensational non-fiction.
"Dear Library" uses a fire as a clue to connect the history of Los Angeles and the lives related to the library. The book shows how the author has turned a humble, even "boring" topic into a fascinating non-fiction work with the texture of a detective novel after solid research.
"Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" is another kind of non-fiction, the author frankly records the frustrations he experienced as a counselor, and presents the details of psychological counseling to the reader in detail. By writing, she gives the reader comfort and heals herself.
Reading is something that gives me great pleasure, but I am also reminding myself more and more that I don't have to be too "mythical" about it, it may be more like a small comfort, making myself and the world less abominable.
"Astronomical Pilgrimage to the Looker"
[Beauty] chet Remo, translated by Gao Shuang
Unread | Beijing United Publishing Company, 2019-12
"Room by the Sea"
By Huang Liqun
Republic of china| Henan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2021-8
Tide Chart
Lin Zhuo sighed
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2022-1
Dear Library
By Susan Orrin, translated by Wenzel
New Classic | Wenhui Press, 2021-5
"Maybe you should talk to someone"
By Lori Gottlieb, translated by Zhang Hanxiao
Guomai Culture | Shanghai Culture Publishing House, 2021-7
"Travel to the desolate and exotic land of the so-called 'good mountains and good waters'"
Hao Han
If I hadn't been given the task of reading this editor's reading experience, I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to seriously go back in time to the books I've read in a year. As an editor, I deal with books more or less every day, but many books are read with specific needs, which is often not an immersive reading state. If you think about it, there are only a few books that can leave a deep impression in a year, and they have really been associated with the confusion and state that belong to the self.
The first is the biography "Becoming Beauvoir", which was recently ranked first on Douban's 2021 foreign literature (non-fiction) list. I don't always read biographical works, but this book came to my reading horizon unexpectedly because of a friend's recommendation.
The process of reading this book is very interesting because it is like a re-walk and adventure of beauvoir's life course.
Although there is too much gossip and legend around this well-known female intellectual, I must admit that I have the interest and motivation of these street tabloids. I would like to know what previously unknown details were revealed in the new Beauvoir letters and materials?
In this respect, the book does not disappoint, such as the love between Beauvoir and her lover Algren, and even the fierce letters, which give you a different level of understanding of the lives of her and Sartre's partner - you will know that Sartre is far from the center of their relationship. Gossip is only one aspect, but more importantly, I always have self-reflection from Beauvoir's complex and entangled emotional encounters, and her new understanding of the concepts of "morality", "freedom" and "existence" in the process of love and harm. There is a passage in the book that impresses me: "It was also on that day that Beauvoir remembered freedom again, and she wrote in her diary: 'Only through free choice and improvisation can the true self be revealed.' ’”
The Fall of Edward Barnard is a collection of Maugham's short stories that I often take with me this year, most of which I read on a journey or on a business trip, and that's probably what made me prefer this book because the environment of reading was close to the reality of a fictional character in the story. The passages included in this collection of novels, in my opinion, have a similar theme, that is, the characters who originally lived in the metropolitan civilization, under unexpected circumstances, went to the desolate and exotic land of the so-called "good mountains and good waters", but suddenly had great doubts about their original lives.
Look at the original text I quoted below from "The Fall of Edward Barnard" and you will understand what I mean.
"I was reading for exams, for chatting so that I wouldn't fall behind, to complete a job. Here I learned to read for pleasure. I also learned to chat. Did you know that talking is one of the supreme pleasures of life? ...... So what is the use of abandoning busyness and constantly struggling all the time? ...... And what did all these actions end up with? Can one get the best out of life in this way? ...... Hurry to the office, work hour by hour into the night, and hurry home, have a meal, rush to the theater? Is this how my youth will be spent? ”
Finally, I would like to talk about a more scholarly set of works, the complete works of the German thinker Han Bingzhe published by CITIC Andy city-state. The reason why it is recommended is because Han Bingzhe's acumen and insight do position some of the things that we can feel but can't say at the moment in an accurate philosophical language.
For example, we all say that the mechanism of 996 and the system and algorithm make many workers in society very tired, and we are still using some external disciplinary power (these mechanisms are an external power) to try to explain the current state, but in the book "Burnout Society", Han Bingzhe made a different interpretation, he believes that our society today has long gone from "discipline society" to "performance society", and neoliberalism that emphasizes performance allows everyone to take the initiative to exploit themselves, not the command of external forces. Rather, it is your own desire to do more things, earn a little more money, and the excessive affirmation and empowerment of the self eventually burns out the "self" and leads to today's social state of anxiety and mania and burnout.
Become Beauvoir
Kate Kirkpatrick, translated by Liu Haiping
CITIC Press, 2021-3
The Fall of Edward Barnard
[English] Maugham, translated by Chen Yikan
The Republic of china | Guangxi Normal University Press, 2016-10
"The Society of Burnout"
[De] by Han Bingzhe, translated by Wang Yili
CITIC Publishing Group, 2019-3
"As an ordinary person, how do you live righteously?"
Zhao Wanxi
The night I learned that Wu Yifan had been criminally detained on suspicion of rape, I reopened the book "Great Currents: The Tide of the Great Era".
To sum up, this is a collection of feature articles by a veteran journalist who has been in the industry for many years and has painstakingly saved. The book brings together the individual stories of Wang Feng, Lang Lang, Guo Pei, Su Mang, Li Bingbing, Wu Yifan, Zheng Xiaolong and Zeng Fanzhi, which imply the background of the Spring Festival Gala, reform and opening up, the Olympic Games, the Asian Games, and the reform of the cultural system.
Today's public figures have long been wrapped up in the brokerage team, the thinking of the rice circle and the logic of capital, and there is no longer such a character feature - "The Great Current" belongs to the previous generation.
With the collapse of Wu Yifan's people, from the entertainment circle to the circle of rule of law, and then re-watching the chapter of "Wu Yifan: Homecoming", the extremely strong prophetic nature between the words, I was simply shocked.
For example, he wrote about the huge growth crisis that Wu Yifan faced after immigration. Ji Yi showed it this way: "In the years of not communicating with people and getting along with inspirational books for a long time, the emergence of basketball made Wu Yifan connect with the outside world for the first time... It was also then that he first discovered what he later identified as the "most precious thing" in his character: simplicity and simplicity. So much so that later "he had a natural desire to prove his innocence in the presence of his true brothers."
Talking about the influence of the fan industry on him, the article said, "Only in the short time of catching the plane, he can show his ideas to fans through clothing and get the opportunity to express themselves freely." "Wu Yifan is very proud to have fan evaluations, and Wu Yifan will only show them when he wants to be handsome, which means that he has the right to speak in this matter."
After re-reading it, I sighed, the formation of a giant baby was so easy, and the fall of a star had already been foreshadowed.
Among the fictional works, Sun Pin's "In the Name of Birds and Beasts" published in April this year amazed me. I think Sun Pin is a writer who unfortunately missed major domestic book and literature awards this year.
"In the Name of Birds and Beasts" was included in Sun Pin's "Mountain Forest Series" works. Wrapped in the shell of a fantasy suspense novel, it tells three stories about homeland and modernization, escape and search. The three novels build a new spiritual space on the physical imagery of Yangguan Mountain and Wengu River, which seems loose and brittle, but in fact it is deep and timeless.
For example, in the novel of the same name, "In the Name of Birds and Beasts", "I", who made a living writing suspense novels in Beijing, returned to his hometown to collect materials, and accidentally learned that one of his elementary school female classmates had been murdered, and the case did not progress. On the surface, this is a story of searching for a murderer, but in the process of searching, the more important part is revealed, that is, the fate of "me" and the mountain people who immigrated from the mountains.
Sun Pin skillfully incorporates time, history and memory into the text through elements such as cultural relics, mountains and forests, and former friends, and tries to complete a journey of exploration and healing of the self by combing through the relationship between people and things, people and time, and people and self.
Sun Pin's depiction of the natural environment is misty and fresh and cold, familiar and sophisticated and simplified, and the poetry and spirituality in her text feel somewhat similar to Chen Chuncheng's "Submarine at Night".
Among foreign literature, "Deer River Has a Lot of Dung" is very good. It is no accident that Li Cangdong's two novel collections (the previous one was "Burning Paper") have been rated as the first foreign literature (novel category) by Douban readers for two consecutive years.
As a sealed work, "Deer River Has a Lot of Dung" is more intense and pathetic than "Burning Paper". You can feel the author's vigorous desire and instinct to write all the time, his thinking and questioning of the eternal pain of life, and his observation and perception of human nature and emotion. Of course, more importantly, he asks us a seemingly insoluble question: How do you live righteously as an ordinary person?
Dai Jinhua once said in the book "Film Theory and Criticism": "In the sequence of the works of any film artist, there is a kind of deep structure that is almost unchanging. In fact, Li Cangdong, who crossed over from a writer to a director, his literary world also maintained this almost unchanged deep structure. As fans and readers, it is our good fortune to observe this isomorphism of an artist.
The Great Current
Written by Ji Yi
Lakeshore | Beijing United Publishing Company, 2021-3
In the Name of birds and beasts
Written by Sun Pin
People's Literature Publishing House, 2021-4
"There is a lot of dung in Shikagawa"
[Han] by Li Cangdong, translated by Chun Xi
Wuhan University Press, 2021-8
Today's topic
Happy start of construction in 2022!
What good books have you read in 2021?
We look forward to your sharing
· END ·
Author | Xiao Feng, Cao Jili, Cheng Chi, Hao Han, Zhao Wanxi
Edit | Cheng late
Proofreading | Sunny
Planning | Xiao Feng