In the fast-paced era, how to attract more people to "read quietly"? Just this past weekend, the "restart" Sinan Book Club made many readers sincerely sigh "long gone!" The cold winter is warmed by the fragrance of books.
The Sinan Book Club, which was born in the historic district of Sinan Mansion in Shanghai's Huangpu District, meets with citizens almost every Saturday, and then presses the pause button due to the epidemic, and a string of data has become a vivid footnote to the city of books - in the past eight years, it has held 383 events, invited nearly 1,500 writers and scholars, and attracted nearly 70,000 readers... From book clubs to literary anthologies, from novel awards to annual book lists, "Cultural Sinan" has gradually become a matrix, actively exploring a diversified guide to the sea of books outside the "information cocoon". Reading the World in Sinan, which simultaneously records the development of the book club, has published five volumes, and the sixth volume, which is being edited, will retain the reading memory of the book club during the epidemic. Including the Sinan Book Club, more physical bookstores and reading salons are taking root and growing in Shanghai, converging into a charming and beautiful urban reading expression.
Jump out of the cold algorithm, and read with temperature into the daily life of the city
"In China, the annual production of new books is amazing, and sometimes I feel at a loss in the sea of books. How to choose so many books? Jin Li, a critic and professor at fudan university's department of Chinese, expressed the confusion of many people. He described that a good reading club is like a "nautical chart", "everyone comes to a literary covenant, chats with trusted scholars and friends, listens to professional aesthetic judgments, and advances from extensive reading to intensive reading, and often has surprising gains." ”
Translator and writer btr have the same feeling, "Sometimes when buying books on e-commerce platforms, big data will remember your choices and preferences, and the system pushes 'guess what you like' according to the algorithm, that is, according to the books you have read to judge the books you will read in the future, but the taste under the control of the algorithm inevitably makes reading more and more narrow." At the beginning of the new year, the first sinan annual book list was released, and the planners of the Sinan Reading Club and the Sinan Literary Anthology hoped to use this warm guide to reconstruct the connection between literary reading and a broader humanities and social science vision. In BTR's view, the book list subverts the cold algorithm model, jumps out of the "information cocoon" effect, and helps expand the reading horizon, "just like a rich collection of buyers' shops, but also a bit like the Sinan Mansion, which combines selected culture and art and lifestyle into a vibrant humanistic community." ”
He believes that reading is not the whole of life, but reading can make people stick their heads out of their busyness, take a breath, and see the experiences and experiences of others. When "quiet reading" becomes an important way for us to maintain close contact with the world, more people taste the "sweetness", and daily life will shine a small but lasting light.
"Cultural Sinan" gradually became a matrix, and Haipai architecture was rejuvenated
Not long ago, Sinan Mansion was selected as one of the first batch of "National Tourism and Leisure Blocks" by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which is the epitome of the transformation of Haipai Old Bungalow into an open and shared public cultural platform on the basis of combing the historical context and thick cultural connotations.
As one of the pilot projects for the preservation and protection of Shanghai's historical and cultural features and outstanding historical buildings, Sinan Mansion is the only project in downtown Shanghai with the purpose of preserving and protecting a piece of garden houses. In the past eight years, combing through the "Sinan productions" reflects the flourishing branches of the city's book fragrance - in February 2014, the Sinan Reading Club was founded in the Historical Building of Haipai; in February 2017, the "Sinan Literature Anthology" with the purpose of finding, identifying and sharing contemporary high-quality texts was launched to fill the gap in the matrix of Shencheng Literary Journals; in October last year, the Sinan Literary Anthology and the "Novel Circle" magazine established and awarded the first short story biennial award to promote the creation of short stories; until sinan's annual book list, the judges included writers. Critics, translators, scholars with social science backgrounds, using composite perspectives to construct a pluralistic book list...
On the basis of the Sinan Reading Club, a series of quality activities such as Sinan Documentary Space, Sinan Appreciation Art Festival, Sinan Urban Space Art Festival, Sinan Open-air Museum and so on have gradually been cultivated, driving more social forces to join the shaping of urban public space and adding color to the empowerment of Shanghai's cultural brand.
Listen to book clubs, go to the nearby Sinan Bookstore and poetry shop, scan the code and punch the clock in the open-air museum... Readers from all over the country have left footprints here, and they have also extended a touch - there are retired elderly people who regard sinan reading clubs as university classrooms, set up WeChat groups to exchange reading experiences, on-site videography, text collation, production and upload notes, the division of labor is well-organized, senior reader Xu Shujian sighed: "We go further through the bibliography, texts and guest interpretations of the book club, go further, think more deeply, and find the motivation of inner life more clearly." "There are famous literary translators like Ma Zhencheng who take the bus to punch in regularly; not to mention the diligent notes-taking readers, the visually impaired people who put their guide sticks under the seats and listen attentively...
When "Sinan" is not just a geographical term, people have reason to expect that in the future, it will continue to explore and discover richer reading paths and prospects in the form of book clubs, book series, anthologies, book lists and other diversified forms.
Author: Xu Yang
Editor: Wang Xiaoli
Editor-in-Charge: Wei Zhong
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.