In fact, from the moment I stepped into 2019, I wondered how to control my desire to buy books. It should be said that for more than half of the year, I basically came according to the plan, roughly controlling the speed of one or two new books "entering the account" per month. However, it can be said that the good times did not last long, and the once perfect plan did not survive the test of the last quarter after all, so that in the fourth quarter, almost half of the books were found, as if opening Pandora's box, and it was out of control.
Looking back on the results of this year's book search, among the 50 kinds of new books with a total of 59 volumes, books on literature and history still occupy more than half of the country. Although this is a bit unscrupulous for a person like me who lives on the law, it seems to be a consistent and stubborn way over the years!Of course, if you put aside the rules and regulations mentioned above, 2019 can be called a fruitful year for me, and some of the gains can be regarded as big surprises, please let me go through them one by one here.
One of the earliest big surprises came in April, when Yan Nianke, a well-known writer in the contemporary literary world, came to Xiamen to give a lecture on "The Truth and Fiction of Our Times". In order to get a closer look at this literary figure and satisfy my desire for an autograph, I was well prepared for it. On the afternoon of April 27, at the Times of Paper Bookstore, I got Yan Nianke's signature on his books "Hard as Water" (Yunnan People's Publishing House), "Song of Feng Ya" (Henan Literature and Art Publishing House), "Exploding Chronicles" (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House), and "Seeking to Sleep Together: A Non-Fiction of Me and Life" (Baihuazhou Literature and Art Publishing House). In order to commemorate the occasion, I posted the following comments in the WeChat circle of friends that day: "Among the mainland writers produced after the 'reform', Yan Nianke is a special one, mainly because his works are more alternative and passionate, and even occasionally crazy. Perhaps because of this, his works tend to be 'iconic'. I thought it would be difficult to meet such a writer, but I didn't expect it to be 'effortless.'" However, as a professor and writer who dropped out of high school and grew up in the army, Yan Nianke also has certain knowledge bugs, such as in the lecture in Xiamen, he mistakenly regarded Gulangyu Island in Xiamen as the place where Ouyang Mountain's long ** "Sanjia Lane" took place, which really surprised me.
Another big surprise came in late September, when the winner of the "Mao Dun Literature Award", Tibetan writer A Lai, gave a lecture in Xiamen, which also made me happy. To be honest, although Alai's name has been heard for a long time, his works have never been read before. I don't know what kind of concept is at work, but I have rarely dabbled in the works of ethnic minority writers, and there always seems to be an indescribable doubt lingering in my heart. But even so, in order to listen to this dialogue about the cycle of life and death, I still tried to change myself, not only bought Ah Lai's "The Dust Settled" (People's Literature Publishing House), "Notes in the Clouds" (Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House), and "A Lai's Poems" (Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House) for his signature, but also stayed at home alone during the Spring Festival in 2020 and quietly finished reading his book "Records in the Clouds" written for the souls of the dead in Wenchuan Da** In this way, I also realized the world and life that Ah Lai depicted with a sense of heaviness.
The third big surprise in 2019 is the unexpected completion of "The Complete Works of Shi Tuo" (Henan University Press). Mr. Shi Tuo is a well-known modern Chinese writer who I know well and who had a period of friendship in my early years. After Mr. Shi Tuo died of illness in Shanghai in October 1988, it was not until 16 years later in 2004 that the complete works of Shi Tuo, with a total of 5 volumes and 8 volumes, was officially published by Henan University Press, with a total of 2,500 sets of first editionsAfter that, after an interval of 9 years to 2013, Henan University Press republished a total of 2 volumes of "The Complete Works of Shi Tuo", with a total of 1,000 copies printed in the first edition, and the total print run was very small. As far as I know, it is difficult to find both the Complete Works of the Master and the Continuation of the Complete Works of the Master in bookstores in Xiamen, and it was only a few years ago that I purchased the fifth volume of the Complete Works of the Master (the letter volume) and the second volume of the Complete Works of the Master on the Internet, but the first four volumes have been missing. However, having said that, it really fulfilled the sentence "the mountains and rivers are doubtful, and the willows and flowers are bright and another village", in mid-October, I occasionally wandered around the "Confucius Old Books Network", and in a casual inquiry, I was very surprised to find the most economical way to make up, so I bought the missing 4 volumes and 7 volumes of "The Complete Works of Shituo" (a new book with a slight problem of quality) in a bookstore in Kaifeng, Henan Province, and finally let it achieve a "reunion" in my study , that kind of spontaneous satisfaction is not to mention how energetic.
Looking back on this year, there are still a lot of memories worth mentioning about Taoshu, such as the autographed copy of the award-winning work "The Protagonist" (Writer's Publishing House) by Chen Yan, the winner of the Mao Dun Literature Award that year, which was purchased online in mid-September, and the autographed copy "The Days of Watching the Sea" by the famous Taiwanese writer Huang Chunming purchased at the 15th Cross-Strait Book Fair in Xiamen in late September (Taiwan United Publishing House) The autographed copy of "The Book in the Tube" by the famous Shanghai writer Guan Jiping was purchased at the Shanghai Ancient Books Bookstore on Fuzhou Road in Shanghai in mid-September (Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House) and the edited autograph of the late famous writer Huang Shang's collection "Yuxia Xishi" (Qilu Publishing House), etc., all made me love and dislike. 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, there are many good memories flowing from them.