In fact, from the moment I stepped into my own year, I was thinking about how to control my desire to read books. It should be said that in the more than half of the year, I basically came according to the plan, roughly controlling the average rate of one or two new books "entering the account" every month. However, it is not a good time to say that the perfect plan once survived the test of the last quarter, so that nearly half of the books were collected in the fourth quarter, as if opening Pandora's box.
Looking back at the results of the book hunt in the past few years, among the 50 kinds of new books with a total of 59 volumes, the books of literature and history still occupy more than half of the country. Although this is really a bit unprofessional for a person like me who relies on the law to eat, it seems that after so many years, it seems that it has been consistently taught and unchanged, which can be described as stubborn! Of course, if you put aside the rules and regulations mentioned above, 2019 is a year of books full of harvests for me, and some of the harvests are still big surprises, please allow me to come here one by one.
One of the first big surprises was in April 2019, when Yan Nianke, a writer who is famous in the contemporary literary world and most likely to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, came to Xiamen to give a lecture on "the truth and fiction of our time". In order to get a closer look at this literary master and satisfy my desire to sign, I was fully prepared early. On the afternoon of April 27, at the Paper Times Bookstore, I got Yan Nianke's signatures on his books "Hard as Water" (Yunnan People's Publishing House), "Ode to The Wind and Grace" (Henan Literature and Art Publishing House), "Exploding Chronicles" (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House), and "Quick Sleep Together- A Non-Fiction of My Life" (Baihuazhou Literature and Art Publishing House). In order to commemorate it, I issued the following testimonial in the WeChat circle of friends on the same day: "Among the mainland writers produced after the 'reform', Yan Nianke is a more special one, mainly because his works are more alternative and passionate, and even occasionally show madness. Perhaps because of this, his works tend to be 'iconic'. I thought it would be more difficult to see such a writer, but I didn't expect that it would be 'no effort at all'." However, as a professor writer who dropped out of high school and grew up in the army, Yan Nianke also had certain knowledge bugs, such as in the lecture in Xiamen, he mistakenly regarded Gulangyu Island in Xiamen as the place where Ouyang Shan's novel "Three Family Lane" took place, which really surprised me.
Another big surprise that followed came in late September 2019, when the Winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the Tibetan writer Alai, gave a lecture in Xiamen that also delighted me. To be honest, although Alai's name has long been heard, his works have never been read before. I don't know what kind of concept is the cause, but I have rarely dabbled in the works of ethnic minority writers all along, and it seems that there is always an unspeakable doubt lingering in my mind. But even so, in order to listen to this dialogue about the cycle of life and death, I tried to change myself, not only buying Alai's "Dust Settled" (People's Literature Publishing House), "Records in the Clouds" (Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House), "Alai's Poems" (Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House) and asking him to sign it, but also during the spring festival of this year' epidemic, he stayed at home alone and quietly read his "Records in the Clouds" written for the undead in the Wenchuan earthquake. From this, I also realized the world and life that Alai depicted in his pen with a certain heaviness.
The third big surprise of the year was the accidental completion of the Complete Works of Shi Tuo (Henan University Press). Mr. Shi Tuo is a famous modern Chinese writer I know well and had a long friendship in my early years. After Mr. Shi Tuo died of illness in Shanghai in October 1988, it was not until 2004, 16 years later, that the 5-volume and 8-volume Shituo Complete Works were officially published by Henan University Press, with a total of 2,500 copies of the first edition; then, between 9 and 2013, Henan University Press republished a total of 2 volumes of "The Complete Works of Shituo", with a total of 1,000 copies of the first edition, and the total print volume was very small. As far as I know, whether it is the Complete Works of Shi Tuo or the Continuation of the Complete Works of Shi Tuo, it is difficult to find them in bookstores in Xiamen, and I have only bought the 5th volume (epistolary volume) of the Complete Works of Shi Tuo and the 2 volumes of the "Complete Works of Shi Tuo" online a few years ago, but the first 4 volumes have been in a state of absence. However, having said that, it really fulfilled the sentence "Mountains and rivers are doubtful and there is no way, willows and dark flowers are bright and another village", in mid-October 2019, occasionally hanging out in the "Confucius Old Book Network", just in a casual inquiry, I was very surprised to find the most economical way to make up, so I bought the missing 4 volumes of 7 volumes of "The Complete Works of Shituo" (a new book with slight appearance problems) in a bookstore in Kaifeng, Henan Province, and finally let it achieve "reunion" in my study. That kind of natural satisfaction is just how exciting it is.
There are still many memories of taoshu that are worth mentioning in the year of Haihai, such as the autographed book "Protagonist" (Writers Publishing House), the award-winning work of Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Chen Yan, which was purchased online in mid-September, the signed copy of "The Day of Watching the Sea" (Taiwan United Publishing House), which was purchased at the 15th Cross-Strait Book Fair in Xiamen in late September, and the signed copy of Guan Jiping, a famous Shanghai artist who bought it at the Shanghai Ancient Books Bookstore on Fuzhou Road when he returned to Shencheng in mid-November to participate in the activities of his alma mater. Guan Zhong PeepIng Books (Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House) and the author's signature book of the late famous writer Huang Pei's collection "Yuxia Xishi" (Qilu Book Society) have made me fall in love with them. It is precisely because of the company of books that whenever I stop in the study and read and taste these autographed books in my collection, many good memories flow from them.