My reading is biased towards history, these years are mainly based on "general history" reading, from the pre-Qin to the modern, the new books published every year, all in my reading path, as far as possible to turn over, the interest is large on the perusal, and the past books collected at home are the focus of my reading.
"Shi Ji" can be said to be a great work before the opening of Chinese biography writing, and the Benji, Shijia and Liechuan pioneered by Ma Qian of the Taishi Company opened the tradition of writing history in the "Ji Chuan Style", and was established as the "Zhengshi" in the "Sui Shu Jing zhi", and the "Twenty-Four Histories" all followed the style established by the Taishi Gong "Shi Ji".
The "Chronicle Style" and the "Chronicle Style" history writing tradition initiated by the Spring and Autumn Period and the Zuo Chuan have become the mainstream of Chinese historical writing. By the Southern Song Dynasty, Yuan Shu's "Tongjian Chronicle at the End of the Chronicle" created the "Chronicle of the End of the Chronicle", which constituted the three major examples of Chinese historical writing. The "Chronicle Body" takes the biography of the character as the outline, the "Chronicle Body" takes the time context as the axis, and the "Chronicle Script" combines the two, with storytelling as the core.
"History", "Zuo Biao" and so on are books that are read every year, and now, my primary school students have also joined the ranks of reading, of course, he reads the comic version. Discuss with him every day the characters and stories in the "History", expand more details for him, sort out the historical context, and make people feel that the meaning of reading is more precious at this time.
Counting the books you have read in 2021, there are more than ten biographical books, if you count them according to the "chronicle", they are counted:
Wei Li's Book of Seeking Saints (Pre-Qin)
Li Kaiyuan's Hanxing: From Lü Hou to Emperor Wen of Han (Western Han)
Shang Sijia's Zhongshu Ling Sima Qian (Western Han Dynasty)
Liu Bo's The Wild of Sima Qian's Memories (Western Han Dynasty)
Zhang Xiangrong's Xiangrui: Wang Mang and His Time (New Dynasty)
Xiao Huarong's "The Miao Family: The Legend of the Langya Wang Clan in the Six Dynasties"
The Magnificent Family: The Legend of the Xie Clan of Chen County in the Six Dynasties (Wei Jin)
Meng Xianshi's Study of Wu Zetian (Tang Dynasty)
Liu Zijian's Wang Anshi and His New Deal (Northern Song Dynasty)
[Japanese] Miura Kunio's Wang Anshi: The Man Standing in the Turbid Stream (Northern Song Dynasty)
Huang Kuanzhong's "Sun Yingshi's Eunuch Career" (Southern Song Dynasty)
Wang Dongjie, "The Sages in the Township: Yan Yuan and the Transformation of Ming and Qing Thought" (Ming Dynasty)
Fang Jixiao, "Chen Mengjia and His Friends" (Republic of China)
In addition, there are also some memoirs and diaries, such as "Hua Jia Lu", "A Generation of Words Zong Xia Chengtao", "Late Qing Dynasty Official Mirror: Du Fengzhi Diary Research" and memorial collections, so that the biographical works account for almost one-fifth of my annual reading. Here, I choose a few books to share with you, and I will not recommend them one by one.
First of all, I recommend bibliophile Wei Li's "Book of Seeking The Saints". 2021 is the 2500th anniversary of Confucius's death, and Wei Li began his "journey to find the saints" as early as ten years ago, because he felt that there was still time to search for some saints in other series of searches. And in 2019, when he was ready to go all out to launch the "Journey of Seeking Saints", there was a new crown pneumonia epidemic, and his search trip encountered many difficulties, even in this case, Wei Li still seized the time when he could travel, and finally published this "Book of Seeking Saints" in 2021 to commemorate The Saint Kong in this special way.
What is the image of Confucius in your heart? Is it the labeled "Most Holy Ancestor", or the old-fashioned, pedantic, and teacher-loving Confucius; the Confucius of the "Great Sect" aristocratic blood of the Song Dynasty in Sima Qian's "History of the Confucius Family"; or the cute old man in the "Analects" who has a temper, loves to compete, and even gets into trouble with his disciples; or Confucius who travels around the world like a lost dog, or even the handsome and handsome Confucius in the film and television drama? Wei Li's Confucius put aside all the "human designs" and looked for traces left by Confucius in the classics and the present world, including the Confucius Temple, Confucius House, and Kong Lin in the hometown of Confucius in Qufu, as well as the Temple of Literature, the Temple of Confucius, the Temple of Confucius, the Temple of the King of Wenxuan, the Temple of the Most Holy, and so on; there were different landmarks when Confucius traveled around the world, such as the Kuangdi where "the Son feared Kuang", and the place where "the Son smelled "Shao" in the "Analects", "The Son smells "Shao" in Qi, and the smell of meat in March" and so on.
Jonny's disciples were seventy-two, with different personalities and strengths. "Virtue: Yan Yuan, Min Ziqian, Ran Boniu, Zhonggong." Words: Kill me, Zigong. Political affairs: Ran You, Ji Lu. Literature: Ziyou, Zixia. "Most disciples can trace in Qilu, but there are also Yan Yan (ZiYou) who are Wu people, and there are Yan Zi's former residences and cemeteries in Yushan Town, Changshu. Bu Shang (Zi Xia) was a native of Wen County, Jin Dynasty, and later taught in the State of Wei, and among his disciples were Duan Ganmu and Wu Qi. There are also three disciples of xirong, who are now going to Gansu to trace it.
Although after years of searching, there are still many traces of saints that have not been found, and the disciples of Zhongni have only visited more than 30 people, but this huge project, Wei Li has finally completed the stage results, as well as a large number of Confucius Temple, Confucian Temple search, and a number of books. Wei Li's "Seeking The Sacred Book" is like a "living" classic, implementing the Confucian tradition in the field and in the physical object, rather than those difficult texts or dull preaching.
Secondly, last year's reading focus was on the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and I read more than a dozen books on this broken era, among which the scholar Xiao Huarong's two famous books, "The Miao Family: The Legend of the Langya Wang Clan of the Six Dynasties" and "The Magnificent Family: The Legend of the Xie Clan of Chen County, Six Dynasties", have been re-read and still gained. The two books were published by Triptych Books in 1995 for nearly 30 years now, and they are no longer out of date.
The family history of the Lang evil Wang clan and the Chen Junxie clan is a history of the Six Dynasties of Wei and Jin. "Wild grass flowers by the Suzaku Bridge, the sunset at the mouth of Wuyi Lane. In the old days, Wang Xie Tang Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people. "We are all familiar with Liu Yuxi's "Wuyi Lane" of the Tang Dynasty, but how much do we really know about the two great families of Wang Xie in Wuyi Lane in Nanjing?
"Wang Xie Fengliu" is not an illusory empty flower, but a real deed. Wang Dao and Xie An, who have been famous for thousands of years, developed and preserved half of the Eastern Jin Dynasty for the Jin Dynasty in a dangerous situation, the so-called "king and horse, the world together". In that era of fragmentation and frequent changes of dynasties, how did the Wang family and the Xie family always stand at the center of power, firmly grasping the power lifeline and dynastic center of different dynasties? In addition to the tradition of the door valve family, it is more about grasping the situation and its own outstanding talents. The children of the Wang family and the children of the Xie family have talents from generation to generation, and the geniuses always come in groups.
Starting from Wang Xiang and Wang Lan's brothers, the Lang evil wang family created the prosperity of the Wang family, Wang Dun, Wang Dao, Wang Rong, Wang Yan, Wang Cheng, Wang Kuang, Wang Bin, Wang Xizhi, Wang Huzhi, Wang Biaozhi, Wang Xun, Wang Mi, Wang Huizhi, Wang Xianzhi, Wang Hong, Wang Tanshou, Wang Shenglang, Wang Shengqian, Wang Yu, Wang Jian, Wang Su, Wang Yan, Wang Zhi, Wang Zhen, Wang Meng... Of course, there are more than that, the branches of the Wang family are worthy of the title of "China's first family", and many of them are related to the national community.
Chen Jun's Xie clan established the status of the family slightly later than the Wang clan, and it was only when the famous Xie An really entered the ranks of the first-class family, and at this time, the Wang family had already inherited four generations in the ranks of the family. Xie An and Wang Xizhi's contemporaries, and the fourth generation of the Wang family did not have particularly first-class figures, and the Xie family was more important and played a more critical role in the political situation in the last years of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Xie Shang, Xie Yi, Xie An, Xie Wan, Xie Shi, Xie Tie, Xie Xuan, Xie Lang, Xie Yan, Xie Xun, Xie Chong, Xie Yuan, Xie Chao, Xie Zhan, Xie Lingyun, Xie Han, Xie Yao, Xie Hongwei... Similarly, after the end of the Jin Dynasty, the Xie family still played an important role in the Southern Dynasty Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen dynasties.
Successive dynastic changes, the family and a family, Wang Xie and the two families have always been in the perfect transition between the old and new imperial courts, without experiencing a devastating blow, "Wang Xie's flow" can be passed down from generation to generation, running through the entire Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Until the Sui Dynasty destroyed Chen and unified China, there was no choice but to spend the flowers, and the "Wang Xie Fengliu" withdrew from the stage of history. However, Wang Xie's disciples still had high positions and good performances in the later Sui and Tang Dynasties, but they no longer had the flow of the past.
Obviously, history cannot record all people, and those who are recorded naturally have their reasons for staying in history, such as Kong Shengren, Sima Qian, Wu Zetian, Wang Anshi and other big figures needless to say, and like the Southern Song Dynasty grassroots officials Sun Yingshi, the late Ming dynasty folk thinker Yan Yuan, etc., although they are not so famous, they still add a stroke to history with their own deeds and ideas, and are paid attention to and recorded by scholars of later generations, which is the value of biography in the writing of Chinese history.