The weather is getting colder, with snow in the north and rain in the south. After walking through the "light snow" and "heavy snow", the north ushered in one snow after another, and it was already nine cold days, and the year has come to an end. Looking back at 2023, reading is casual and writing is casual, compared to 2022, I read less books and write more, but fortunately I am still on the road of reading and writing.
I will never forget the joy of reading the world literature masterpiece "Paul and Weginny" for the first time, and the passion of writing ** for the first time, when I was ten years old, and since then I have embarked on the road of reading and writing. When I was in junior high school, I went to the library to borrow books during the winter and summer vacations. "Jane Eyre", "Wuthering Heights", "Orphan of the Fog", "Lone Star Blood and Tears", "Les Miserables", "Red and Black", "La Traviata", "*The Earl of the Mountain" ......The family has a collection of books such as "Dream of Red Mansions", "The Legend of Marriage in the Awakening World" and "The Legend ......of the West Chamber".I also read it, swallowed it, immersed myself in it, and gradually appreciated the joy that words brought me.
Mu Xin said: "Art is just a dream, but it is more beautiful and lasting than the dream of power, wealth, and **, and art is the best dream." "Fortunately, when I didn't have dreams of power, wealth, and **, I started dreaming of literature.
Dreaming has always been my own business, and literary dreams have made me fall in love with solitude. Where no one intersects, it is possible to talk to the great souls of history, to talk to your own soul. With books as a companion, I rarely feel lonely;In the literary dream I weaved, I always felt joy. The three years of junior high school were the period when I read the most literary masterpieces, in fact, I could understand it, but it paved the way for me to walk on this road later.
Busy with school, work, and family, I only cared about picking up "sixpence" in those years, and forgot to look up at the moon. Busyness does not enrich me, but rather gives birth to anxiety, and I often fall into an inexplicable emptiness. Most of the literary masterpieces that used to obscure me were dusty, and the books next to my bed were magazines like "Reader" and "Youth Digest". It wasn't until I saw a review of Wuthering Heights in a journal that I thought I had read it, but it didn't look like I had never read it, so I looked for it to reread it. After ten years, I realized that I had never read and never known Catherine, even Jane Eyre, who thought she was familiar with. Rereading "Dream of Red Mansions", the favorite Daiyu is also unfamiliar. After that, I gradually returned to my previous state of reading, not only reading the literary masterpieces of the 19th century, but also reading contemporary literature, especially the works of some masters of the 20th century in the West, such as Hemingway, Kafka, Woolf, Márquez, ......I used to read more of the literary masterpieces of the 19th century. No matter how busy you are every day, you must read a book before going to bed, even if it is a few pages or lines, the previous worries and inexplicable sense of emptiness will slowly fade away.
Once you get into the habit of reading, it's like an addiction. I have worked in a university library for many years, read a lot of good books, and like to walk through the high shelves, read quietly in libraries and bookstores, such times reappear in my memory from time to time, especially after leaving the library. Fast-paced metropolis life, more in the subway, on the street, reading with a mobile phone. Once upon a time, I always had to carry a book in my bag to feel at ease;Now, I panic when I don't see my phone.
Reading can be addictive, and writing seems to be addictive too. When I was a child, I wrote a diary, talked to myself, and wanted someone to listen to me, but I didn't know who to talk toWhen I was a child, I liked to listen to stories, especially thrillers and suspense stories, and tell them to others, or this is also the original intention of writing. The real writing was in 2009. After experiencing the "2008 Wenchuan Da**", I felt that I had too many things to say, and I was not satisfied with writing in the diary, only talking to myself, so I picked up the pen again, and converted my thoughts and feelings into words, and posted them in QQ space, which was where I first posted.
At first, I mainly wrote some small essays, a little life insight, and the reader. Write less, read more. When reading, I like to excerpt the sentences in the book, and write a few comments and feelings by the way. When I first read Mu Xin's "Literary Memoirs" in 2013, I copied a thick notebook, and those witty words were like sparkling pearls, which dizzy me and inspired me to start writing book reviews and movie reviews. If reading is input, writing is output, but writing book reviews and movie reviews are constantly importing and outgoing. In particular, in the process of writing, I will re-read a certain chapter or sentence of a certain chapter or sentence from a book I have read before, or even read it repeatedly, and I will also consult related books, and many questions that I didn't understand before can still find answers in rereading and writing, even if I can't find the answer, I can still make myself think. Good books don't give us the answer in the first place. Writing a book review to make the book thicker and thicker you read, is it just reading a certain book. The film reviews I like to write are often based on **. For example: "Tess", "Atonement", "The English Patient", "The Dream of the Covered Bridge", "The Sheltered Sky", ......I also enjoy the process of combining books and movies, constantly transforming words and images into my own words. Therefore, writing book reviews and movie reviews is very slow, but there are many gains.
At the beginning of writing modern poetry, it was only because this genre was very suitable for expressing the emotions of a moment, a painting, a flower, a leaf, and people on the road or in the subway saw someone ......can be converted into verses. I read Neruda's "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" and tried to write about it. Poetry is not easy to write, unlike prose, and even more different from commentary. Language, thought, artistic conception, rhyme, rhythm, ......In just a few sentences, pondering repeatedly, chewing word by word, precisely because the language of poetry is particularly concise, it is also the best way to practice writing language. "You stand on the bridge and look at the view, and the people watching the view are watching you from upstairs. The bright moon decorates your windows, and you decorate other people's dreams. "Whenever I think of Bian Zhilin's "Broken Chapter", a painting and a ** appear in my mind.
I wrote ** when I was ten years old, but it was just a story, and I didn't dare to write it after reading some good books. When the light and shadow gradually lost weight, experienced some things in life, met some people, and wanted to write them into words, thinking that ** was the best way to express it. In recent years, I have only started to write**, and I only dare to write about realistic themes, and I dare not write about fantasy and detection, although I like Agatha Christie's ** very much. When I wrote **, I seemed to go back to the time when I was making up stories in my childhood, and I slowly became obsessed with fictional literature, but it was not completely detached from reality. I think that the short story of Zhang Ailing, Bai Xianyong and Ah Cheng is a good model. When I started to write, I didn't just look at the plot, but also the author's artistic expression, especially the language. Now to read, first look at the language, if the language is not good, give up immediately. At the moment, I only try to write short stories**, and I don't know if I will write medium and long stories in the future. It's a long road, with thorns and flowers, and at least I'm still enjoying it.
Reading and writing have never been inseparable, it is okay to just read without writing, and it is impossible to only write without reading. A lot of reading is the source of writing, and there is no opportunistic shortcut in writing. There are a lot of writing classes out there, and it seems that writing can be done quickly. It is true that a training course can teach you a lot of methods, but without a lot of reading, I am afraid it will be difficult to write a high-quality article. From time to time, you can see advertisements from some writing training institutions, as if you can make a lot of money by writing. Or, for the market, catering to the public, you can write explosive articles and win fame and fortune in a short period of time, but if you don't really like it, it may be difficult to stick to it just for the purpose of making money. However, since I opened *** posting, I always pay attention to traffic. After a long time, I found that I felt that the traffic of writing was average, but the traffic that I felt was okay was not good. **The articles recommended by the platform are not necessarily articles that feel good about themselves, but they can resonate with everyone. Sometimes ask yourself, what should I write?If there is no reader, will you still write?It's not easy to get back to the original state of writing, writing just for the sake of writing itself. Or reading, listening to the voice of the master, gradually brought me back to the original state of writing.
Reading Dostoevsky and Kafka taught me to keep a distance from the current environment, not to follow the crowd and do things that go against my will;Reading Tolstoy, Flaubert, and Hardy made me learn to look at the people and things around me with compassion, and to be more sympatheticReading Cao Xueqin, Lu Xun, and Zhang Ailing let me know the ugliness of human nature, slowly see a little bit of the complexity of human nature, and learn to protect myself and treat others well.
Classic, timeless. It was Mr. Mu Xin who asked me to regard the literary masters in history as relatives of my "spiritual bloodline", slowly form my own reading taste, keep a distance from popular books, not blindly follow the trend, and choose books with my own eyes. Books are not about reading more, but about being fine, and striving to gain something from every book you read.
Looking back at 2023, there are few paper books to read, although they will be read on their phones at any time, but very few can be remembered, many articles are put down after flipping, and it is rare to read an e-book in its entirety, and it is still paper books that are deeply memorable. This year, the books that moved me the most were Hesse's "Siddhartha", "Steppenwolf" and "Demian", Carson McCullers's "Song of the Sad Café", and "Jiangcheng" by American writer Peter Heisler and Chinese name He Wei. Only "Song of a Sad Café", for which a book review was written. Hesse's book, I thought I would have to read it a few more times before I dared to write it. He Wei's "Jiangcheng" prompted me to write a reminiscence essay "Memories of the Three Gorges". Yi Zhongtian and Deng Xiaomang's aesthetic book "The Symphony of Yellow and Blue" has been read for a long time, just like going back to the student days and gnawing on textbooks, which is not easy to read. "Reminiscences of the Years Like Water" is not easy to read, seven volumes, and now I have only read the first two volumes, and I am often attracted by those beautiful words, even if it is separated by translation. "Madeleine's Cake" made Proust think about it, and reading this book also made me think about it, that is, to write what I want to write, it doesn't matter what I write, the key is how to write it. When I started writing, I was worried about what to write, but now I will automatically find what I want to write, and I have to think about how to write. This year, ** and modern poetry were written more than last year, and the prose was about the same as in previous years, but the book reviews were written less and there was not much satisfaction. Next year, I will strive to enjoy the "Madeleine Cake" and let my literary garden bloom a few more flowers.
Reading my favorite paper book on a sunny afternoon in the cold winter has become a luxury, and occasionally for it, time seems to slow down, and it seems to return to spring, to the years of dreaming, and I have not yet woken up from my dreams in autumn. Life is originally a big dream, from Cao Xueqin's "Dream of Red Mansions" to Proust's "Reminiscences of the Watery Years", all of them are dreamers. There are countless small dreams in the big dream, and the dream is like "Zhuang Zhou's dream butterfly", but you might as well make the little dream a little more beautiful and give meaning to the meaningless life. In my dreams, it is to find the past from words, to understand the charm of words in the intersection of time and space, to experience the diversity of life from time to time, and to live elsewhere from time to time.
Walking on the road of reading and writing, trance is always in spring.