The first quarter of 2022 seems to be particularly long, from winter to spring, it is already April, and it is still raining coldly in the south.
We spent this time reading:
At the beginning of the year, editors recalled the era of travel globalization in the book list; in March, the sound of gunfire came from the "European Gate", and we tried to find the answer in the Russian-Ukrainian monograph.
We have a lot of book lists, and at the same time we are constantly reflecting on our own list. In 2019, New Weekly launched a feature titled "The Power of The Book List," which asked the question: Who is deciding and influencing what books we read? What exactly is a good book?
No book list is perfect, but as the writer Zhang Jiawei said, people who love books are good at finding more books of interest from every book and every book list:
"I believe in the unintentional interest of the writers I love, according to Tussoji. Pound and Fitzgerald were found from Hemingway, Juan Lulfo was found from Márquez, Wang Wei was found from the chat between Dai Yu and Xiang Yun in Dream of the Red Chamber, and of course, "The Tale of the West Chamber". Cortázar was found from Llosa, Hawthorne was found in Melville's tribute, and many of the names of people he used as talkers were found in Russell's History of Western Philosophy. ”
If you want to offer a reading suggestion, both Virginia Woolf and Harold Brom believe, please follow your own nature and use your own reason.
"I urge you to look for something that is truly close to you, something that can be used to weigh and think. Not to believe, not to accept, not to refute and read deeply, but to learn to share the same nature to write, to read by the same nature. (Harold Brom, How to Read, Why Read)
In this period, we may all have a similar experience. We are all concerned with the distant places, from the shadows of Europe to the demise of the rainforest; we are also concerned with vegetables and grain, and we are also concerned with how poets and novelists describe the tides of cities and the changes in their homeland.
The theme of the first Blade Book Awards in 2021 is "Bass and Edges", and the theme of the 2022 Blade Book Awards is "Voices and Monologues", and we hope to present a list of books that focus on diversity and care for the individual. This year, the Blade Book Awards will launch four season lists and one annual list, inviting readers to interpret the voices and monologues of the times from the book.
Here's the spring 2022 list.
Top 10 good books in the fiction category
(In no particular order)
"White-Haired Auntie and Others"
Brief introduction
White-Haired A'e and The Other is a collection of short stories by Sisi, including eight short stories spanning 20 years from 1980 to 2000, presenting the lifestyle of the elderly in the city.
Comments
A person and the times in which she lived were destined to disappear. The Left-Handed Prologue has already set the tone, and Sissi tells the story of old age with a charming rhythm of language. ——Chen Ying
"In the Ward Under the Rainstorm"
Brief introduction
"In the Ward Under the Rainstorm" is su fang's third collection of short stories after "Some Moments" and "A Stranger's Tale". Most of these novels are emotional stories about a man and a woman, "abnormal relationships". The characters in the book constantly change scenes, meet at different ages and in different identities, and stage a tragicomedy.
Comments
There are many enviable points of the novelist Su Fang, such as meticulous observation, clean text, good grasp of the rhythm of proportions, no deliberateness, etc., but the most rare thing is the emotional depth achieved, whether it is experience or performance. All of this is fully reflected in her latest work, "In the Ward Under the Rainstorm". - Shibu-an
Teacher Su Fang has ascended to the realm again. Xiao Suo was beautiful, swaying without regret, and born in despair. You may not be able to hear clearly, but your heart is beating faster. - Shi Hang
Writing in the age of the pandemic, about the emotional lives of urban men and women. --Zhang Li
"Bemba"
Brief introduction
Liu Liangcheng's latest novel, set against the backdrop of the Mongolian epic "Jianger", traces the lost human childhood: in The country of Benba, everyone lives at the age of twenty-five, without aging or death.
Comments
He comes from an empty world, and I don't think he can write a novel well. The magic of his is that he offers another kind of fiction. --Bi Feiyu
Tide Chart
Brief introduction
Featuring a 19th-century frog-shaped girl, the book unfolds a picture of China before the Opium War with non-existent fiction. This magical story rooted in the terroir of Lingnan, from the Pearl River Water People's Home to the Thirteen Elements of Guangzhou, makes a brief stop at the Macao Treasure Garden, and explores the rivers and oceans of the spirit of all things, where China and the West meet.
Every paragraph, every word, has a southern poetry. In this "Tide Map", Lin Zhao turned the majestic epic into a private whisper. In these years of Chinese creation, such writing is rare and precious. - Hardcore Book Club
AnThology of African Short Stories
Brief introduction
For the first time in China, the works of Nobel Prize winner Gurna were translated. 16 countries, 38 writers, using literature as a method, narrate the flow of Africa, showing the cohesion and dispersion of African history.
Comments
It includes the masterpieces of short stories by representative African writers, covering a wide range of themes, not only the grandeur of the times, but also the cultural memory and real life of African peoples in detail. --Liang Yong'an
"Across the Ocean to Send You"
Brief introduction
In the latest novel by post-70s writer Shi Yifeng, Shi Yifeng has dropped his brush strokes on the "indigenous people" in Beijing's hutongs, reflecting the historical changes of half a century by exploring the life experiences of the second generation of grandchildren.
Comments
Lovely Beijingers, lovely Beijing novels. --Bi Feiyu
A new attempt at writing, interesting and vivid, about the new Beijing life, the new Beijing youth and the new Beijing life. --Zhang Li
Just like Lao She's "The Legend of Niu Tianqi" and Zhao Zhao's "Wang Zhaojun", this is a novel by a Beijing writer who writes about the things that Hou Dao people encounter in this world that are not necessarily hou Dao, and, actually, they are not chilled! There is also a common denominator, which is a story of a child from another generation. Because the parent generation is often trapped by life, the fly camp dog, only the grandfather's generation, still vaguely remember what is decent. The child does not say it in his mouth, and his heart is greedy for this. - Shi Hang
"The Fish is on Land"
Brief introduction
The collection of short and medium stories by Xu Chang, a post-90s author, presents the fission of an ordinary family and a fishing village snow field in the economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s from the perspective of foster children.
Comments
Write about the stay and growth of a generation, and present the deep ripples under the change and restlessness of the times. - "Essay"
"Fish Without Feet"
Brief introduction
Following the Icelandic Trilogy, Icelandic writer and poet Jørn Kalman Stefansson once again used Iceland as a backdrop to tell the story of Icelandic society.
Comments
After the removal of romantic imagery, Iceland has become a truly barren land in Stefansson's pen. Individuals, cities, and countries are shattered by beautiful brushstrokes, and then restore the loneliness of the deepest part of adult nature. Flipping up a page at will, there are amazing expressions. - Hardcore Book Club
The Final Story
Brief introduction
This book is a collection of short stories by Irish writer William Trevor. The collection of novels contains ten stories, continuing the author's consistent writing style, describing dramatic moments in the lives of ordinary people, and exploring the loneliness and loss in the depths of the human spirit.
Comments
It is difficult to write a recommendation for a collection of short stories, and the conclusion of William Trevor's posthumous work is his final farewell and ten decisive moments that are careless and change everything. ——Li Jingrui
"The Pearl Spit Collection"
Brief introduction
The little book "The Collection of Pearls and Spits" is a selection of 200 poems from the 1500-page Gregorya Encyclopedia, which is a small semicolon for the "Ramon" House of Curiosities.
Comments
In Spanish, in the name of poetry, a sentence or two is a work, as if it were trembling wit, but it shook out a place of sadness, and then drifted away- "There is sadness in the eyes of the cat, and sorrow for the eyes that can only be cats." "The river is always writing the longest letter to the sea." "Smoke is the prayer of the stove." "The woman looked at me like she was looking at a taxi with a passenger." "The statue lives by eating pigeons." "The question is: When the water boils, are you crying or laughing?" "Cats are the only animals that have lived a retirement life since birth." There is also a very appropriate sentence: "Every time it is fired, the cannon retracts backwards, as if frightened by what he has just done." --Shi Hang
Top 10 good books in the non-fiction category
(In no particular order)
The Man in the Shadows
Brief introduction
The second part of the "Mariupol Trilogy", the companion part of "She is from Mariupol". Following "She's from Mariupol," Natasha Woddin embarks on a journey to find her father, telling the story of her mother's suicide in 1956. In the process of trying to find the key to understanding, Natasha uses the experience of homelessness and nowhere to go, writing about her father's silence, but also writing about the contradictions and struggles of the deformed father-daughter relationship.
Comments
Last year I recommended Natasha Woding's "She's from Mariupol" (one of the "Mariupol Trilogy"), and I remember telling the editor-in-charge that not many people knew about the city in the title. I didn't expect that after only a year, it would become very famous. Now the second part of the "Mariupol Trilogy" has also been translated and published. The previous one, which erected a moving literary monument to his mother, turned his brushstrokes to his father. After her mother committed suicide in 1956, the author longed for a normal life, but her father imprisoned her and tried his best to keep her away from the German world. "Every individual and family is a sample of national politics." As always, the author quietly unveils the scars of marginalized groups and focuses on the side of that era. And this time, she herself was among them. - Shibu-an
Masters in the Wilderness
Brief introduction
"Masters in the Wilderness" tells the story of the beginnings of Chinese archaeology in the 1920s. The author takes the development of the four major institutions of the Geological Survey, the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies, the Institute of History and Language of the Academia Sinica and the Construction Society as the main line, and depicts the birth of Chinese archaeology.
Comments
The theme is unique, the first-hand archival materials are very rich, full of emotions but do not feel excessively overflowing, rich in story, similar to the "crowded in the carriage" style of the beginning often makes people shine. There are several abrupt stops in the book that feel abrupt and regrettable. ------------------
Breaking the romantic imagination of the "golden age" of the Republic of China, it shows the arduous process of research, discovery and creation of scholars in the chaotic world. The historical materials are solid, the narrative is vivid, and it is full of affection. ——Zhao Dongmei
Both calm and moving, the recommendation comes from the conclusion of the book: As an unprecedented generation, they are both protégés of "Mr. Sai" and believers of "Mr. De", in the cracks of the times, trying to maintain the independence and dignity of thought, trying to make scholarship transcend politics, constantly hitting walls, but repeatedly losing battles. They were more patriotic than the scholars of many previous eras, more eager for revival, obsessed with the art of wealth and strength, willing to pay any price for it, but this patriotic enthusiasm was basically sober and not completely polluted by ultra-nationalist sentiments. They no longer blindly follow their predecessors or are obsessed with the so-called authority, but prefer to put aside their prejudices and go to the field to explore and empirically explore the secrets of the earth or restore the truth of history with scientific methods. ——Li Jingrui
Zhang Quan has been tracing the fate of intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty, and in this book we can read about the familiar Liang Qichao, Chen Yinke, Wang Guowei, Fu Sinian, Liang Sicheng, Liang Siyong, and Lin Huiyin, but it is rewritten from a perspective that is rarely discussed, and a large number of references and interviews are used to unveil such a period of turbulent history, portraying the group portraits of scholars in cultural rebirth. The text of this book reveals the spirit of the spirit, feeling that the scholars are catching up, and at the same time writing elegantly and decently. ------------------
Relive the blue wisps of a generation of scholars. ——Tencent News, Short History
"The Return of the Fierce General: A History of the New Jiangnan of Dongting Dongshan"
Brief introduction
This book takes Liu Meng of The Eastern Mountains of Taihu Lake as the starting point, attempts to sort out the process of the landing of water people in the East Taihu Lake area and its impact on the social economy of Jiangnan, and finds a new interpretation path for the formation of agricultural settlements, the prosperity of commerce and towns, and the construction of clans in the Jiangnan region.
Comments
The latest demonstration of historical anthropology in the study of Jiangnan history. --Luo Xin
Broken Lives: The 20th Century Experienced by Ordinary Germans
Brief introduction
Based on a first-hand account of more than seventy autobiographies and memoirs, Broken Lives depicts 20th-century Germany from the perspective of ordinary people.
Comments
From a microscopic, everyday perspective, it reveals the suffering of ordinary Germans in the 20th century under the mechanisms of nazi dictatorship. ——Chen Ying
In order to restate the fate of the individual – "the connotation is greater than that of the individual, but smaller than the collective biography of the whole society", the author deliberately circles the people born in weimar, their grandparents experienced the empire, their parents experienced the First World War, they experienced golden childhood, depression, extremism, violence, war, regime change, faced with ideological choices, various factors prompted many people to choose to become evildoers, and then became victims, and rebuilt their lives in the peace of the second half of the 20th century. The book reveals the misogyny of nazi misogyny, but also some of the stories of women who embraced the Nazis. Recalling this act is difficult, and the book also takes a dialectical look at memory reconstruction and oral history. ------------------
Dostoevsky: The Pinnacle of Literature, 1871-1881
Brief introduction
This book is the fifth and final volume of Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky Literary-Cultural Biography, in which Frank describes the later decade of the writer's life from the perspective of socio-cultural history and literary history. During this decade, Dostoevsky wrote The Boy, The Writer's Diary, and his culminating masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, which is interpreted chapter by chapter in this volume.
Comments
This is the fifth volume of Dostoevsky's most important biographical and research work, Dostoevsky, which deals with the last decade of Dostoevsky's life, involving the writing of The Boy, the Writer's Diary and the Brothers Karamazov, as well as the fact that he finally reached the pinnacle of Russian literature and thought before the end of his life by publishing his famous speech about Pushkin. Tohs is arguably the greatest writer in the history of world literature, and his five-volume work has finally been translated. The brilliance of Russian literature and thought cannot conceal the ugliness of its history and reality, and vice versa. The brilliance that shines in the midst of ugliness is the dazzling place of brilliance. - Shibu-an
Describes how a great writer's last 10 years have reached the pinnacle of achievement. --Wang Di
"I Am Fragrant"
Brief introduction
After telling the story of his mother ("Autumn Garden") and the villagers ("Driftwood"), Yang Benfen turned his attention to marriage, telling the marriage story of an ordinary woman in the 1960s and 1970s.
Comments
The non-fiction work of the 80-year-old grandmother is sincere and moving. --Zhang Li
The Formation of Modern China
Brief introduction
This book mainly focuses on the re-understanding of the formation process of modern China and the problems existing in the historical writing of Modern Chinese History itself. From the perspective of global history, the author Li Huaiyin focuses on the three elements of geopolitics, financial military and political identity, comprehensively discusses the formation process of modern China in the 17th to 20th centuries, and explores the unique path of the formation of modern China from the perspective of world history.
Comments
To deeply understand the current China, it is necessary to understand China's history. ——Yan Fei
The Little Mandate of Heaven: Ancestral Shrines and the Politics of the Ming Dynasty
Brief introduction
This book is the first to study the ancestral hall between the politics and beliefs of the Ming Dynasty, and through a large number of inscription records, local fangzhi and literary collections, it examines the ancestral temple system and expounds the thinking on the political and ideological system of the Ming Dynasty.
Comments
In the traditional view, the Ming Dynasty was a highly centralized dynasty, and the people were not only creeping under the dictatorship, but also drowning in the historical narrative. When we sink our perspective to the commoners of the Ming Dynasty, through the examination of the ancestral temple, a complex and interactive "bottom-up" political history is presented. - Hardcore Book Club
"Demise in the Rainforest"
Brief introduction
In the 1990s, the young anthropologist Don Kurik, walked alone into the rainforest of Papua New Guinea, in the middle of a swampy village of just 200 people, recording a dying local language, Teyabbo. During this period spanning thirty years, he visited the local area repeatedly, each time staying for several weeks to more than half a year, witnessing the thinning of the language environment and recording everything he could learn and see.
Comments
One of the reasons for the disappearance of biodiversity is actually the loss of cultural diversity, in the face of external shocks, the disappearance of language, what does it mean? From the perspective of an anthropologist, contemplating the vanished rainforests in his observations. The story of Papua New Guinea may seem far away, but it is happening all around us. ——Li Binbin
Monsters of the Gods
Brief introduction
American science, nature and travel writer David Quiyman has set his sights on the rapidly disappearing wilderness due to human expansion, to track the stories and cultures of large predators, in hopes of re-examining our fears of cannibalism, reflecting on the relationship between humans and wild animals, and appealing to the currently unoppostic situation of top predators.
Comments
In an era when humans and nature were more closely connected, tigers, lions, brown bears and other beasts of prey were the nightmares of our ancestors. These nightmares have stimulated history, created some cultural phenomena, and even shaped some civilizations. The author of this book revisits the relationship between these beasts and us, explores their disappearance, and observes our fears on another level. The translator, Liu Yanlin, is also the big bull of the Cat Alliance, who is a beast research and protection worker. Even better, for years, the direction of his research has been man-beast conflict. A good translator will undoubtedly make a book more brilliant. - Flower erosion
· END ·
Introduction 丨Xiao Feng, list editor 丨 Xiao Feng Zhong Yi
Design | Zhuang Zhixuan, typography | Zhang Wenxi Wang Yaqi
Proofreading 丨 Xiangyang early in the morning