This week's "New Book of the Week" is meeting readers again. In this column, we will not only list good books to write a recommendation, but we will also give our own opinions on books that readers are concerned about or have just published, as far as possible within the scope of our own reading efficiency. If the content of a new book is very exciting, we will spare no effort to recommend it, and if the content of a book does not match its attention, we will also express our opinions unreservedly in the reference opinion. In order to more intuitively see our attitude towards a book, we will also add a "recommendation index", similar to the Douban score.
Of course, the judgment of any reading is personal, and our opinions may not be correct, and may even be biased, but they must be sincere. We're just providing a reference and hope to provide readers with a guide to reading (after all, this may also risk offending the publisher). If you have a new book that you are more hesitant about and want to know our attitude, please leave a comment in the comment area, and we will give our opinions as soon as possible.
history
Hanwa: The Revelation of Hongye in the Western Han Dynasty
Author: Liu Sanxie
Version: Mark | Beijing Science and Technology Press
October 2021
Referral Index: ★★★★★
Recommended by: Lee Shane
The true location of the HanBa Mausoleum was determined, and the sleeping master of the mausoleum, Emperor Wendi of Han, was once again pushed to the foreground and examined in the spotlight. In the past two thousand years, this emperor has always been known for his forbearance and benevolence, and is a model of benevolence that Taishi Gong called "Han Xing, to the forty years of filial piety, and virtue to Shengye". He is the only monarch who has entered the folk twenty-four filial piety stories with the honor of the emperor, and his frugal virtue is even more popular, especially about the construction of the mausoleum behind him, ordering that "all tiles, not decorated with gold, silver, copper and tin, because of its mountain, no grave", but also let the future generations lament that his frugality was carried out before and after his death.
Emperor Wen of Han said this with sincerity, but five hundred years after Emperor Wen of Han's death, the Baling Tomb was stolen and excavated, and the result was "more treasures". Therefore, today's researchers wonder whether Emperor Wendi of Han hid another face in addition to the image of generosity, benevolence, diligence and thriftiness established in the history books. And that face is the true face of Emperor Wen of Han?
To this question, Liu Sanxie's "Hanwa" gives the answer: Emperor Wen of Han has always had only one face, and the reason why he suspects that he has two faces is because the historical data is not read in detail. Although emperor Wen's dynasty accounted for less than one-tenth of the book, it was quite evident in the author's ability to interpret historical materials. Among them, with regard to the discussion of the process of Emperor Wen of Han's ascension to the throne, the author deliberately selects four things that Emperor Wen of Han did on the night he entered the Weiyang Palace in Chang'an, including song chang and Zhang Wu, two close associates who worshiped his fiefdom, Song Chang and Zhang Wu, respectively, "Wei General, Zhenfu Southern and Northern Armies" and "Lang Zhongling, Xingdian Zhong", and then came to the front hall and issued an edict overnight praising the "General Xiang lie Marquis Zongshi Chancellor" who had exterminated the Lü clan in the process of supporting him to ascend the throne. At the same time, he did one more thing:
"At night, the Division of Yousi destroyed Liang, Huaiyang, King Changshan, and Emperor Shao's residence."
The Kings of Liang, Huaiyang, Changshan, and Shaodi, these four were the sons of Emperor Wen of Han's predecessor, Emperor Hui of Han, especially Emperor Shao, who had been nominally reigning for four years during Lü Hou's reign and was the legitimate ruler of the Han Dynasty, however, with the entry of Emperor Wen of Han into Chang'an, he and several of his brothers were reduced to prisoners of the order within a few days by the son of Emperor Xian, the legitimate successor of the dynasty, and even deprived of their bloodlines, and finally lost their lives for the purpose of cutting grass and eradicating roots. Although this was the routine operation of the ancient Chinese court coup. However, Liu Sanxie extended from the four things that Emperor Wen of Han did this night, arguing that the Han Dynasty founded by Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, had actually died in name only on this night, and the ruling order he established was actually the same as that of the Qin Dynasty, which was also "the death of the second dynasty".
Non-fiction
Artificial Stars in My Body
Author: [Irish] Hined Gleason
Translator: Lu Yixin
Version: One page folio | Guangxi Normal University Press
Recommendation index: ★★★ ☆☆
Recommended by: Xiao Shuyan
Despite the risk of being attacked, I would like to say that, in my opinion, this book has been greatly overrated.
Just by its theme, or the slogan written for it by the publisher on the waist seal, you can understand why it has occupied the Douban new book list for a long time and received a high score of 8.7: "Hair, blood, uterus, face... The starry sky of female life constructed by love and pain; motherhood, art, creation, death... To write a physical escape from imprisonment", any word can hit the common life experience of most women, in line with the most popular female body reflections.
Yes, the book does talk about women's body organs such as hair, blood, and uterus, and the unique, subtle psychological experiences they bring, and there is no shortage of sonorous and powerful golden sentences between the lines, such as "Of course, our body is sacred, but it often does not belong to us", but it is more like an essay that records the author's own history of illness and the life and death of relatives and friends around him: on the one hand, its narrative is limited to special individuals, However, it does not see a broader group of women, a human group, nor does it extract a more universal observation from individual experience; on the other hand, it only presents the pain caused by disease and the female body, that is, "building the starry sky of female life with love and pain", but it does not give people the power to escape from imprisonment on this basis, and cannot let the reader get any comfort and hope from this empathy. Coupled with the author's erratic and obsessive writing style in individual chapters, obsessed with a large number of unnecessary details but ignoring important narrative plots, I read it two or three times and still have difficulty grasping the main point, and I can only choose to give up.
I don't think individual narratives are bad, but for this subject, I think it's not enough to limit itself to this. If I hadn't read Susan Sontag's The Metaphor of Illness before, or Leslie Jamison's Eleven Heartbreaks recently, maybe I would have rated the book a little higher. Although these books are irreplaceable, if time is limited, Artificial Stars in My Body is the first one I will give up.
literature
"Thoughts"
Author: [English] David Lodge
Translator: Liu Bin
Edition: Nova Press
November 2021
Recommendation Index: ★★ ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by: Miyako
The hero is a professor at the Center for Scientific Research, and the heroine is a professor in a creative writing class, and when these two people fall in love, what kind of sparks will collide in their minds—this seems to be a very interesting writing topic, and the debate between literature and art and the concept of thought is also a topic of long-term concern. David Lodge, as a scholarly writer, is also very comfortable writing about this subject, but as a novel, its disadvantage is that the characters are too deliberately shaped, like a Renaissance English novel. In the novel, not only are the dialogues of the characters platonic speculative dialogue, but even the way they live, the landscapes that Ralph sees are organic materials, and human behavior is "ordinary non-specific thinking". The novel is full of conceptual debates, but it cannot bring any vitality to people - and for any form of literature, the lack of vitality is an undisguised defect.
philosophy
The Philosophical Adventures of Young Ian
Author: [Beauty] Jack Bowen
Translator: Jiang Haoqian
Edition: Synopsys Culture | CITIC Publishing Group
Recommendation Index: ★★★★ ☆
Recommender: Xu Yuedong
If you've read The World of Sophie, you'll be very familiar with the way philosophy is discussed in this book. The book is a boy's version of "Sophie's World", through the adventures of young Ian, the author discusses philosophical issues such as knowledge, self, mind, science, religion, ethics, reason, free will, and politics. The narrative approach not only allows the reader to better enter the context of thinking about philosophy, but also allows the reader to think about philosophy from a first-person perspective, making difficult and obscure philosophical terms easy to understand. In order to assist the reader, when mentioning each philosophical vocabulary and philosopher in the book, there are areas such as "tips" to help the reader better supplement the background knowledge. In fact, the dialogue body has always been a good genre for discussing philosophical issues, from Plato to Hume, the dialogue has always been an important form for philosophers to guide readers to think. "The Philosophical Adventures of Young Ian" is a high-quality philosophical popular science work, and because it is like a traditional philosophical dialogue, it allows readers to reflect on problems step by step in different perspectives.
Author | Editorial Board of Book Review Weekly
Edit | Li Yongbo Qingqingzi
Proofreading | Lucy